> To your first point, aren't most species ocean-dwelling?
Indeed, it part if the joke that most people think of elephants and rhinos as animals under threat before they think about the abundance of life on our oceans.
I believe that the highest concentration if species is found in the rainforest though.
The rainforest is substantial, but it only produces about 20-30% of the oxygen that we breathe, the ocean and all of the life within it form a machine that processes most of our CO2 and CO into the O2 which we breathe.
A frightening amount of the ocean is completely dead, even before deepwater horizon the gulf of mexico was home to one of the largest dead zones in the world - entire collapsed ecosystems.
For ages we have treated the ocean as our geological /dev/null, tossing all manner of stuff into it that we didn't have a better idea for how to deal with, and that is coming home to roost.
It's pointless to protect the rest of the wildlife without protecting the oceans. Check out Sylvia Earle's Mission Blue:
Indeed, it part if the joke that most people think of elephants and rhinos as animals under threat before they think about the abundance of life on our oceans.
I believe that the highest concentration if species is found in the rainforest though.