World's Oceans: Is it too Late to Save Our Most Precious Resource?

Could it be too late to save the global ocean, which covers 70% of the earth’s surface? When you tally up all the environmental damage from a variety of causes it’s not hard to conclude by the end of this century the ocean will be unable to support the vast diversity of life we have come to associate with it. Instead of shellfish, whales, and tuna, it will be teeming with algae and jellyfish.

Humankind’s gluttonous appetite for plastic, fertilizers, and of course, carbon fuels is the cause.

Plastic? You might how this could be a major problem until you realize the average consumer in an industrialized country uses 250 pounds every year. Plastic from around the world, including billions of plastic pellets representing its initial form, gets into the ocean from multiple entry points—rivers, sewage, ship spills, liter, runoff, etc. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that currently 46,000 pieces of plastic are floating on every square mile of the ocean.

The problem in the Pacific is so severe a humongous plastic-strewn patch floats between California and Hawaii within the North Pacific Gyre. According to the man who first discovered it in 1997, Captain John Moore, this patch is 1 ½ times the size of the contiguous United States and goes to a depth of at least 100 feet. And there is another huge rubbish patch off the coast of Japan. (View a YouTube video of Captain Moore visiting the Pacific garbage patch )

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation, founded by Moore, reports pieces of plastic outweigh surface zooplanton by 6 to 1 in the central North Pacific Gyre. According to their report, “Ninety percent of Laysan albatross chick carcasses and regurgitated stomach content contains plastic. Fish and seabirds mistake plastic for food. Plastic debris release chemical additives and plasticizers into the ocean. Plastic also absorbs hyrophobit pollutants like PCBs and pesticides like DDT. These pollutants bioaccumulte in the tissues of marine organisms, biomagnify up the food chain, and find their way into the foods people eat.”

Worldwide, eating pellets or other pieces of plastic kills more than a million birds each year along with hundreds of thousands of other fish and wildlife.

And now for fertilizer: You may think we are fertilizing lawns and crops, but ultimately we are fertilizing the ocean and feeding algae, jellyfish, and bacteria. As a result, huge dead zones of marine biotoxins are spreading from the mouths of the world’s major rivers, and massive algae blooms are occurring off many coastlines. Dead zones are primarily created when algae dies and sinks to the bottom thereby decreasing oxygen in a process called “hypoxia.” Runoff water containing phosphates and nitrates is responsible for 245,000 square miles of dead zones and according to a recent study published in Science, there are now 405 dead zones in the global ocean. The largest dead zone is the entire Baltic Sea, whose bottom waters now lack oxygen year-round. (View a map of dead zones around the world)

 As oxygen declines in dead zones a massive flight of fish, crustaceans and other ocean-dwellers takes place while those who cannot relocate, such as claims and other bottom-dwellers simply die. Hypoxia off the coasts of New York State and New Jersery has cost commercial and recreational fisheries more than $500 million and each season, 75,000 metric tons of fish are lost to the Chesapeake Bay dead zone, enough to feed half the commercial crab catch for a year.

Off the coast of Sweden, gigantic blooms of cyanobacteria turn the Baltic Sea each summer into a cesspool of stinking, yellow-brown slush. Off Florida’s gulf coast, toxins from red tides are killing thousands of sea mammals and causing respiratory illnesses among coastal residents. Jellyfish swarm so thick near the Spanish coast that nets have to be strung to protect swimmers, and white mucus blobs of congealed algae and bacteria, some bigger than a person, foul the beaches north of Venice, Italy. And there are many more examples—it’s getting worse every year.

The damage by plastic and fertilizers is monumental and rapidly growing but it is not enough to destroy the global ocean. You have to add in carbon fuel pollution to finish off the job.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago, the ocean has absorbed 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide, steadily increasing to today’s rate of 100 million tons per hour. Normally the ocean acts as a passive sponge for CO2 but we’ve long since passed the tipping point where acidification kicks in.

At the current rate of increase, the acidity of the ocean will be 2 ½ times what is was before the Industrial Revolution. As the acidity of the ocean rises, it produces less of the calcium that carbonate coral and other sea animals need to build shells and skeletons. Coral reefs become too brittle to withstand pounding waves, shells too fragile to protect their inhabitants, and the planktonic plants that represent the bottom of the food chain begin to disappear. Just slightly acidic seawater is toxic to the eggs and larvae of some fish. In others, including amberjack and halibut, it can cause heart attacks.

The global ocean’s coral has been reduced by 20 percent, and over half of the remaining coral is in poor condition. 25 percent of all marine species need coral to live and grow, while 40 percent of the commercially caught fish use reefs to breed.

Unless there are dramatic reductions in the world’s use of carbon dioxide by the end of the century there will be no more coral, no more shellfish, and no more plankton.

The ocean, as we know it, will no longer exist. It will instead be a gooey-gray primeval stew.

Posted by: David Bunnell.

(Editor's Note: David Bunnell was the founder/editor of both PC World and MacWorld. Dave is now working to help save the world's oceans).

Related Galaxy posts:

'Extreme Water' Found at Atlantic Ocean Abyss
Can Changes in Sea Level Cause Periods of Mass Extinction?—A Galaxy Exclusive
The “Little Ice Age” Argument Makes a Comeback: Abrupt Climate Change Goes Both Ways, Warns Scientist
Are Global Warming Models Accurately Predicting Our Future? New Study Reveals the Answer—A Galaxy Interview
Experts Ask: What Will Happen to Biodiversity When the World Becomes A Giant City?
The Earth's 6th Great Mass Extinction is Occurring as You Read This
Bigger Threat Than Global Warming: Mass Species Extinction
Urban Life -An Organism "Beyond the Bounds of Biology"

 

Sources:

Discover Magazine
Scientific American
Los Angeles Times

Comments

[nepharous]

Now the question is this, what is the key cause of all these problems? OIL OIL OIL OIL OIL OIL. Oil has lead to a doubling of world population in 100 years. It has lead to the lifestyle of materialism over spirituality. It has created the fast food culture that has destroyed the health of our children and fellow citizens. Is all this BS worth the death of our mother planet? At what point do the conviences of "modern" life snuff out the ability of LIFE IN GENERAL to exist? Are bigger cars,more TV's, Ipods, green lawns and trinkets so damn important that they over rule life itself? I weep for the future that my kids will be a part of. For any out there who contest my points, put yourself in the shoes of a 6 year old right now and think about watching the future die. If you cannot empathize with these kids plight and you continue to support this suicidle lifestyle than you are already spiritually dead. Go enjoy your day at Wal-Mart.

[SB]

An organic vegan diet will maintain the health of humans, animals and the planet as a whole. It's as simple and as confronting as that.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/16/scidiet116.xml

What we eat has by far the biggest impact for the
environment. And oil is very much a part of this,
as it's used to make pesticides, which in turn poison
humans, animals, and the planet.

PS great articles

[SB]

An organic vegan diet will maintain the health of humans, animals and the planet as a whole. It's as simple and as confronting as that.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/16/scidiet116.xml

What we eat has by far the biggest impact for the
environment. And oil is very much a part of this,
as it's used to make pesticides, which in turn poison
humans, animals, and the planet.

PS great articles