Ocean Blues

It's hard to think seriously about anything on a sunny day at the beach. Sitting in a cool shade as the light salty air massages one to sleep or to a trance-like state of mind, one is simply transported from the terrestrial.

This changed one day while vacationing in St Lucia. On my way to visit relatives, I saw these two impressively enormous cruise liners heading towards the pier. What an amazing engineering feat, I thought. It was the following thought that left me deeply troubled: "I wonder where all the waste from all those toilets go?"

Alas, what I found out about the state of our oceans left me in a dizzying state of hopelessness. Here are some disturbing facts:

(1)The oceans are home to 95% of the living space for the Earth's plants and animals. Human activity over the centuries has depleted 90% of marine species, eliminated 65% of sea-grass and wetland habitat, degraded water quality 10-1,000 fold, and accelerated species invasions in 12 major estuaries and coastal seas around the world.

(2)The number of oxygen-starved “dead zones” in coastal waters has doubled over the past decade to nearly 150 worldwide and is projected to become the greatest threat to marine ecosystems, according to a report from the UN Environment Program (UNEP).

(3)Corporate fish operations that use bottom trawlers use enormous nets that drag along the ocean floor destroying anything in their path. It has been estimated that 70% of ocean life scraped up by these nets is unusable--this "bycatch" includes unwanted fish, turtles, seabirds, marine mammals, coral reefs and sponge forests. 18 -40 metric tons of sea life is destroyed PER DAY due to corporate over-fishing.

(4)7 billion tons of trash is dumped into the world's oceans each year

(5)The worst abuse of our oceans comes from the emissions from cars and factories that drive the insatiable appetite to consume. This in turn has lead to the coming catastrophe of climate change. Almost half the carbon dioxide from the past two centuries of human industry has been absorbed by the oceans. The impending tragedy is that the acidity (thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans in 20 million years)of the oceans is rising which is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.

(6) The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet.

(7) Sea-lions, seals, whales, salmon, sturgeon, silver sharks, Steelhead trout, Asia's giant catfish, Atlantic bluefish tuna amongst other sea creatures, are on their death-beds due to human activity.

How can I look at the ocean again without thinking about these dire facts? Although there are a number of proposals out there to save our oceans such as setting aside 40 percent of our oceans as marine reserves, I question the political will of various governments to do anything substantial as long as the the God Mammon holds sway and blinds them all.

And to the answer to the question, ""I wonder where all the waste from all those (cruise ships') toilets go?" I discovered that hundreds of thousands of wastewater and sewage are dumped into the sea once beyond a legally-defined distance beyond shore.

(Check out this short documentary).

Development at any cost? I'll take that topic up at a later time.

:::MixMasterE:::