Since Costanza et al. (1997) put forward their estimated value of global ecosystem services and natural capital, many attempts have been made to improve the capabilities of economic methods to estimate the value of seas and oceans. While useful for raising awareness in situations where natural resources and ecosystems are insufficiently protected,
260
the monetization of the benefits humans receive from nature may, however, be misleading. The recent estimates published by Costanza et al. (2014) and de Groot et al. (2012) suggest that coral reefs, coastal wetlands and coastal systems are the biomes whose values would be the highest, while the value attributed to open oceans could be lower than all other biomes, including terrestrial ones. Figure-L2 37
