The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) focuses on the many factors that threaten the health of Earth's oceans. The organization is managed as a not for profit company registered in the United Kingdom. It is hosted by the Zoological Society of London

Zoological Society of London

The Zoological Society of London is a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats...

. Dr. Alex Rogers is the Scientific Director of IPSO and Professor of Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford.

Areas of research

• Effects of climate change on oceans
• Overfishing
  Overfishing
  Overfishing occurs when fishing activities reduce fish stocks below an acceptable level. This can occur in any body of water from a pond to the oceans....
  
  
• Ocean acidification
  Ocean acidification
  Ocean acidification is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH and increase in acidity of the Earth's oceans, caused by the uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere....
  
  
• Habitat destruction
  Habitat destruction
  Habitat destruction is the process in which natural habitat is rendered functionally unable to support the species present. In this process, the organisms that previously used the site are displaced or destroyed, reducing biodiversity. Habitat destruction by human activity mainly for the purpose of...
  
   of marine lifeforms
• Fisheries and climate change
  Fisheries and climate change
  Rising ocean temperatures and ocean acidification are radically altering aquatic ecosystems. Climate change is modifying fish distribution and the productivity of marine and freshwater species...
  
  
• Detrimental resource extractions
• Marine pollution
  Marine pollution
  Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful effects, can result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Most sources of marine pollution are land based...
  
  
• Introduced species
  Introduced species
  An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...
  
  in marine environments