The Ocean Revealed: Part 2
August 12, 2008
This post originally appeared in Creation Care Magazine. You can find Part 1 here.
Hidden Changes In The Sea
The trouble is, climate change is not the only stress on ocean life. Long before greenhouse gases ever rose to record highs, fishermen—from the big commercial captains to small island locals—were taking fish from the sea. Scientists like me who conduct research on coral reefs have become accustomed to a new undersea loneliness, emptiness on reefs that were formerly filled with sea life. What happened to all the fish? We ate them. And we continue to do so around the globe. When we take out more fish than the fish themselves can replace by reproduction, the number of fish declines. Also, our fishing gear can damage the homes and habitats that produce the fish, or it can catch and kill unwanted species—called “bycatch”—in the process.
Longline fishing fleets set hundreds of miles of line and millions of hooks in the water, targeting tuna but also killing unsuspecting leatherback turtles and albatross. Each year tens of thousands of seabirds drown on these hooks. Large fishing boats drag heavy steel plates and enormous nets along the sea bottom. This flattens into rubble the complex rocky hiding spots, coral reefs, and other places where fish like to live. The nets engulf everything in their path—whether wanted or not. Fishermen discard dead, unwanted species overboard. In some places, shrimp fishermen discard as many as ten pounds of sea life for every pound of shrimp they keep. When we buy the shrimp, we commission the waste. Much of this destruction remains unseen, hidden beneath the mirrored surface of the sea. But we do feel the consequences. Over one billion people rely on fish as their primary or only source of animal protein. The collapse of wild-caught fish and their habitats threatens the health of people across the world, especially in developing countries.
For millennia we have taken from the sea, and given back only our garbage. Rivers carry pesticides and fertilizers from farms into coastal ecosystems, causing increased disease outbreaks, blooms of toxic algae, and dead zones—areas too low in oxygen to support sea life. Ships dump an estimated 6.5 million tons of plastics into the ocean every year. In the northern Pacific, our waste stretches across an area the size of Texas and washes up on remote island atolls. Seabirds, turtles, mammals, and fish are killed by entanglement and choking, or are poisoned by chemicals trapped in the plastic particles. Mercury and other industrial pollutants exhaled through factory chimneys rain down onto the sea, where bacteria absorb the toxins and pass them up the food chain. Animals at the top of the food chain, such as tuna and seals, accumulate the poisons and can become unsafe to eat.
Today, Inuit mothers’ breast milk is so laden with toxins from consuming poisoned marine mammals that it is hazardous to their infants. For communities where marine life is the sole source of protein, damage to marine ecosystems is devastating. When our actions threaten the innocent among us, those actions become morally questionable and require swift change.
Remaining Optimistic
The ocean may be embattled, but it is not defeated. Hope lies in the remarkable capacity of the ocean to restore its abundance and health when given enough space and time. Few extinctions due to human activities have occurred in the ocean, which means the potential for recovery still exists in most circumstances.
Marine reserves are protected areas that limit fishing, mining, drilling, or collecting for aquariums. These areas allow sea life to recover, with some reserves showing an increased number and size of fish after only five years of protection. Some large reserves (bigger than 40 square miles) protected for over 20 years hold 10 times more fish than nearby sites outside of reserves. Despite the proven success of marine reserves, social and political conflicts have limited them to less than one one-hundredth of one percent (<0.01%) of all United States’ waters. Reserves are one of the most powerful and under-used tools for restoring ocean health. Establishing and enforcing new and larger reserves will go a long way toward promoting the recovery of diminished marine life and habitats.
When we alleviate some of the stress of human activities, sea life stands a much better chance of warding off threats to its survival such as disease or climate change. For example, corals located offshore, away from pollution sources, resist disease better than corals living in polluted waters. So if we can clean up pollution, we may be able to reduce disease. In the South Pacific, coral reefs exposed to abnormally high water temperatures all showed signs of illness. However, reefs located in remote islands free from overfishing and pollution recover much more quickly than reefs that suffer multiple stresses.
Positive change can come quickly within oceans. Twenty years ago, officials recommended tetanus shots for sailors who fell into Boston harbor. Now, those waters are safe to swim and fun to fish. On the West Coast, efforts to restore Santa Monica Bay since the 1980s have seen fish numbers increase and sickness among surfers and swimmers decrease. We don’t have to stop all of our marine activities, but we do have to manage those activities wisely. Fishing laws, when based on science and properly enforced, have helped sea life rebound, sometimes in short time periods.
Healthy ecosystems withstand and recover from disturbances—whether oil spills or hurricanes—far better than degraded ones. In the face of climate change, creation’s own natural resilience provides the best defense. There are many ways we can effectively restore this resilience: by creating reserves, supporting effective management, cleaning up land-based pollution, and making educated choices about what seafood we buy. All hope is not lost, but we must make these changes now. Caring for creation, and protecting the life-support systems we depend upon, means that we must care for the ocean that supports us all.
Marah Hardt is a research fellow at Blue Ocean Insitute where she works to share the message of climate change effects on oceans and potential solutions with people around the globe.
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[...] This is Part 1 of a two-part article. Part 2 appears here. [...]