Should I care about the ocean?
“With every breath they take, every drop of water they drink, the ocean is teaching them, you should treat the ocean as if your life depends on it, because it does.”
Sylvia Earle, American marine biologist, named Hero for the Planet by Time Magazine.
Because our lives and livelihoods tend to be tied to the land we can lose sight of the fact that the world is predominantly ocean. The world and its health was the subject of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP26, held in Scotland from October 31 to November 13, 2021. The summit of world leaders met with the intention of making serious commitments to address the negative impacts of global warming. This year’s event didn’t appear to achieve much. An unfortunate outcome and disappointing to the many attending the summit and protesting outside the conference. They were deeply concerned that the world and its ocean were facing dire consequences. The Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who in 2019 was included on the Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women and the youngest person ever named Time Person of the Year, accused conferees of a lot of “blah, blah, blah.”
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov
A few facts about the ocean:
● Our planet is mostly water. It’s why Earth is called the Blue Planet.
● It makes up three quarters of the Earth’s surface and 99 per cent by volume of the world’s habitable space.
● It is responsible for global weather systems that make the Earth habitable. It also can create dangerous conditions such as hurricanes, drought, wildfires, floods, and other natural disasters.
● 50-80% of oxygen is produced by the ocean.
● It soaks up roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans manufacture and sequesters more than 90 percent of harmful greenhouse gases.
● A significant percentage of global trade is transported on ships.
● It is a serious economic driver, producing billions of pounds worth of goods and services, providing employment for millions of people, and offering countless hours of unique recreational activities.
● It can provide sustainable protein for more than a billion people and many nutritional products without the use of fertilizer or placing demands on a finite fresh water supply.
·● It contains ingredients used in medicinal products.
Is the ocean really in trouble?
“We are an ocean world, run and regulated by a single ocean, and we are pushing that life support system to its very limits through heating, deoxygenation and acidification,” observed Dan Laffoley of The International Union for Conservation of Nature.
A 2019 report, written by more than 100 international experts and based on more than 7,000 studies, offered an extensive look at the effects of climate change on the ocean. Hans-Otto Pörtner, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and a lead author of the report, observed: “Ecosystems are changing, food webs are changing, fish stocks are changing, and this turmoil is affecting humans.”
Decreased fisheries
It’s a fact that the ocean is heating. Rising temperatures negatively impact fish, seabirds, coral reefs and seagrasses to name a few. Environmental economist Vanessa Perez-Cirera predicted that an increase of global temperature of 1.7 degrees would result in the death of all coral reefs. In addition to the devastating consequences that would have on the marine life that depends on coral reefs, Perez-Cirera called attention to the livelihoods of all the fisherwomen and fishermen that would lose their livelihoods. It also has been projected that if ocean temperature continues to rise, the maximum number of fish that could be sustainably caught from the ocean could decrease by up to 25 percent before the end of this century. This decline in catch would have significant implications for humans because nearly 20 percent of the world’s animal protein intake is produced by the ocean. It would further depress the livelihoods of the millions of people worldwide whose income comes from fishing. A 2020-2021 report by the non-profit Oceana indicated the extent of this loss. It stated that a healthy ocean ecosystem is able to “support fisheries that can feed more than a billion people in a truly sustainable way.”
Lowered oxygen
A healthy ocean is productive in more ways than fish production. It produces more than half of the world’s oxygen. The majority of the oxygen comes from oceanic plankton or small drifting plants, algae, and some bacteria that are capable of photosynthesis. Another serious consequence of a warming ocean is deoxygenation or the reduction of oxygen dissolved in the water. Reduced oxygen levels affect the survival not only of the organisms that live in the ocean but also for those that live on land. Almost all living things need oxygen for life and depend on the ocean to produce it. Reduced levels of oxygen can become particularly problematic in areas where algal blooms die. When the decomposition of living matter uses oxygen faster than it can be replenished dangerously low oxygen concentrations result. These areas are referred to as dead zones. In dead zones, the oxygen is insufficient to support most marine life.
Increased acid
Ocean acidification isn’t due to global warming; it contributes to it. The burning of coal, oil and natural gas has led to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Some of the carbon dioxide gets redistributed into the ocean where it dissolves and consequently changes the chemistry of the water, making it more acidic. Why is this important? A small change in ocean acidity can harm marine life, affecting their reproduction and growth. As an example, marine animals such as corals and oysters find it increasingly difficult to build their shells in increasingly acidic conditions because the chemical processes needed to construct strong shells is blocked.
Sea level rise
There are many other consequences of a warming ocean. One of these is that a warmer ocean contributes to a rise in sea level. Warmer air temperatures cause glacial ice like the polar ice caps and the Greenland ice sheet to melt. The melted ice is responsible for the overall amount of water in the ocean. Warming ocean water contributes to sea level rise in another way. As ocean water is heated, it expands or increases in volume. Thus, there are two factors that contribute to sea level rise: the addition of more water and water molecules that occupy more space.
There are an array of factors that indicate that the ocean is in trouble. Whether it is the depletion of fish stocks, changes in water chemistry, or plastic pollution, human activities negatively impact the ocean and threaten the health of the ocean and all life on earth.
What’s the answer?
The concluding remarks at COP26 by António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations were bleak.
● Our planet is hanging by a thread.
● We must phase out the use of fossil fuels with a 45% cut by 2030 when compared to 2010 levels.
● Even if fully implemented, the world is on a pathway that leads to a temperature increase above 2 degrees by the end of the century.
The future looks grim for some species, island nations, and others that need the world to make significant changes and do so quickly. There is more optimism if we look toward the longer term. World leaders must continue to identify actionable items, actions they can achieve on a global scale. However, the real work falls to all of us, as individuals, as communities, as states, as regions, and as countries to find solutions that we can make happen.
What does this mean? Friends of Casco Bay located in Portland, Maine is an example. The non-profit has been working for the past 30 years to improve and protect the environmental health of Casco Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Maine along the southern coast of Maine. To achieve its goals, the organization has collected scientific data; engaged with local, state, and regional governments, communities and volunteers to educate, protect, enhance, and advocate for the Bay. Friends of Casco Bay admitted in a post COP26 statement, they were disappointed that significant results were not achieved but believed there was a valuable takeaway from the outcome. The lesson was that international change often begins at home. Maybe this is the case because local communities know what they need and how to get the work done.
Think globally, act locally is an apt slogan here. It might not solve the biggest problems, but it is nonetheless an important observation. It also is a way to keep hope alive and offers a way for each of us to fight climate trauma. Climate trauma is one of the newest and more personal consequences of global warming. It is the anxiety, sometimes depression, that comes with a person feels powerless to make a difference in the face of the immensity of the global warming crisis.
Resources
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/climate/climate-change-oceans-united-nations.html
https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/ocean-acidification
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/climate/cop26-climate-summit-takeaways.html
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/why-care-about-ocean.html
https://aambpublicoceanservice.blob.core.windows.net/oceanserviceprod/news/june14/our-ocean.pdf
https://www.unep.org/technical-highlight/ocean-life-can-help-mitigate-climate-change-new-study
