Poor diagnoses for ocean health

30/01/09 21:17 Filed in: Environment
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Snip the plastic rings that hold together a six-pack of soda--you could save the lives of turtles and sea birds, my mom told me. But it wasn’t a panacea, and it failed to address a much larger problem: Our plastic waste, among other garbage, ends up in the ocean and stomachs of marine life.

A report released by the United Nations Environmental Program in 2006 estimated that there are more than 46,000 pieces of plastic swimming with the fishes for every square mile of ocean.

Here are some more frightening facts from a recent Calgary Herald story:

  • About 100 million tons of plastic is produced globally each year; about 10 percent of that ends up in the ocean
  • About 80 percent of the garbage found in the ocean did not fall off of a ship; it came from shore
  • One million sea birds and 100,000 sharks, turtles, dolphins and whales die from eating plastic every year
  • Plankton versus plastic in the Pacific Ocean: Plastic wins six times over
  • United States produces nearly seven billion kilograms of plastic per year; we recycle only about one percent of that amount

You may have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch when it received some press two years ago. This floating mass of waste is, based on some accounts, twice the size of Texas. According to the Herald, the so-called patch consists of two large masses: one drifts somewhere in the netherlands between California and Hawaii and the other between Hawaii and Japan. It takes a long time to amass such a toxic collection of trash, and some of the patch’s plastic is 50 years old and up, reported the Herald.

Unfortunately, it would also take a long time--and considerably more effort--to clean up the patch.

The health check looks bleak for tomorrow’s oceans, too. A recent study by a group of Danish scientists found that if temperatures continue to rise as they have in recent years, “dead zones” could crop up around the world’s oceans, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Danish researchers created a computer model to simulate climate change over the course of 100,000 years. Under the worst case scenario, with carbon emissions continuing as they are now, the warmer seas would lower oxygen levels to the point where the ocean could not support fish or shellfish, among other higher forms of sea life. Widespread signs of these lifeless zones could start appearing by the end of the century, and could take as long as 2,000 years to reverse, the Morning Herald reported.

“Reduced fossil-fuel emissions are needed over the next few generations to limit ongoing ocean oxygen depletion and acidification and their long-term adverse effects,” lead scientist Gary Shaffer told the Sydney Herald.

Limit the effects. It feels a bit like cutting up those plastic rings.

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