The Oceans Have Dead Zones - Oceans Part III

August 17, 2008 by mike.

The oceans of the small blue planet are really the reservoir of all life in this biosphere. Terrapods do not evolve or survive without the miracle of the bonding of hydrogen and oxygen molecules making the splashy stuff that we all know and love. You can add salt, or deal with in the “fresh” incarnation, but the bottom line is we are water beings and life depends on water.

Continuing studies regarding the health of the oceans are reporting increasing areas of oceans that are called dead zones. These are areas where there is so little oxygen available in the sea water that normal sea life dies. There will be some anaerobic life, jellyfish and other forms of life that require lower levels of oxygen, but the basic things that we think of as living in the sea cannot exist in the dead zones. Fish, crabs, dolphins, whales, shrimp, all those sorts of animals move out of the dead zones or they become part of the dead zone.

Ocean dead zones are an alarm bell ringing around the planet. We should all be concerned that industrial, agricultural waste is being discharged from rivers that are used as sewer systems and that the waste is accumulating in sufficient quantity to create dead zones in an ecosystem as large and resilient as an ocean.

I think we are facing an amazing opportunity to recognize that we can’t continue to treat the biosphere and the oceans as an economic asset, a dumping ground for toxic levels of chemical and biological waste. We can’t harvest the fish from the oceans in ways and on scales that the fisheries can’t sustain.

Posted in Connect the Dots, Small Foot Print, Global Warming | Print | 1 Comment »