In an ever more connected and globalized world, we’re increasingly confronted with the ways in which our actions–whether political, economic, or other–can have enormous impacts in other regions. Unfortunately, when it comes to oceans, it has been easy to ignore the devastation that occurs below a seemingly pristine surface. Today is World Oceans Day and as Brett Israel points out, they make up 70 percent of the planet’s surface. And given that 95 percent remains unmapped, the marine realm is our generation’s great unexplored frontier.
After a disaster like the BP spill, images like this brown pelican drenched in oil remind us that we ought to be better stewards of oceans. But too often, we forget as soon as we turn the newspaper page or click a different url. Jeremy Jackson’s right: We’re wrecking oceans through overfishing, climate change, and pollution. So watch, listen, and most importantly, remember…
On the road somewhere in Tennessee tonight, I read the present top story at the NYTimes:
Nuclear Option on Gulf Oil Spill? No Way, U.S. Says
The chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: What about nuking the well?
Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow. Why not try it here?
Of course this won’t happen, but the idea isn’t actually all that far fetched. Furthermore, does anyone have a better suggestion? Now go read the article and let’s get an interesting discussion going in comments…
Well, I’m back. Over the past month, the devastating BP spill that began April 20th has become catastrophic in scale. And that’s an understatement.
When I checked on my inbox early May, it was overflowing with questions from our readers about oil’s impact on the marine realm, its potential to spread, and the long-term possibilities across sectors. Foremost, I want to thank Wallace J. Nichols and Philip Hoffman for posting in my absence when I asked them to provide details. Chris has also done a good job covering the reasons we should all be concerned about the 2010 hurricane forecast.
In short, the BP oil spill is as bad as it gets. It’s an unprecedented social, environmental, and economic disaster in the US. And it’s not over. The public seems to have expected that scientists and engineers would have a quick fix immediately–not surprising given that on television, problems take less than an hour to solve (with commercials). Now any fix will do, but no one’s sure what we’re dealing with 5000 feet below sea level. I haven’t kept up with all of the coverage while overseas, though I’m sure much of what I’d say about the tragedy itself would be repetitious. Instead, I will add this…
No matter what took place and why it happened, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico belongs to all of us. Now it is our collective responsibility to make sure we establish the policies that will prevent it from happening ever again It’s related to oceans, economics, security, and climate change. But most of all, this is all about energy. And the truth is, regardless of the renewable options that are coming down the pipeline, we’re not there yet. Earth will continue to be a primarily fossil-fuel based planet for decades to come. So if we want better related institutions, it’s our choice to enact them.
Over the next three days, I’ll be on the road driving from NY to Austin, Texas. Once I arrive, I’ll share the details of my new job working on energy solutions for the 21st century.
This is a guest post from Wallace J. Nichols, a marine scientist and oceans conservationist who in 1998 founded the Grupo Tortuguero, an international grassroots movement dedicated to restoring Pacific sea turtles and to sustainable management of ocean fisheries. He currently works with several universities and organizations to protect the oceans, including Ocean Revolution and the California Academy of Sciences.
My brave friend Leilani Munter called from the field to report that the National Wildlife Federation and CNN had documented the first sea turtle caught in a slick at sea, gasping for air through an iridescent sheen. Tragically, just as nesting season for a number of the Gulf of Mexico’s sea turtle species is set to begin, these highly endangered animals become the poster species of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Soon, if not already, adult male and female turtles will gather in shallow coastal waters, mate and prepare to nest, precisely where oil is accumulating. The pregnant females will scuttle across beaches at night to lay eggs, just as they’ve done for millions of years, but these beaches will be different—they will be blacked with oil. In a few short weeks, a new generation of hatchlings will emerge from the sand and make their way across oily beaches to an oily sea where tar balls and slicks will make their already-long odds of survival even longer. As they mature, they will have to rise through oil slicks to breathe and survive by eating oil-coated animals, algae and seagrass. While sea turtle will be among the most recognizable victims, they won’t be alone. Many species of birds, fish, invertebrates and plants will fare just as badly.
Even before the spill, sea turtles had it tough. (more…)
When Sheril and Chris asked me to contribute to a series of posts on the losses and challenges from the Deep Horizons well disaster, I had a tough time deciding where to go. It would be easy to talk about the alphabet soup of agencies responding to the disaster; to recount how hard it really is to get oil boom deployed, maintained and retrieved. or discuss in great and probably boring detail the ecosystem services and species now imperiled by America’s carbon burning folly. Instead, I offer you this, as my eulogy to yet another wound inflicted upon my home states by all our hubris (Katrina was the most recent prior one – there have been many others).
At 4AM, Baton Rouge LA is a very quiet town. A day-time drive that takes 15 minutes turns into a five minute sprint. Beside a Quonset hut two large dual cab pick-ups are being loaded. The teams work quietly – but as the coffee kicks in the jokes begin to pervade the air. Boxes of nets, cylinders of chemicals, racks of bottles all emerge from their careful storage rooms and are placed in the backs of the trucks.
In a few short minutes the small convoy is on the road, and running down I-10 leaving the “big city” behind. We exit the Interstate at Donaldsonville, and cross the Mississippi River looking down on the Air Liquide compressed gas plant, and Chef John Folse’s then-new restaurant. Soon enough, the sun begins to think about emerging from the horizon, and we’re in the Hardee’s parking lot in Houma, shoving sausage biscuits and coffee throughout the truck cabs.
We continue on down Highway 30, passing through Galiano and Golden Meadow as the sun begins to seriously climb over the marsh. Golden Meadow slows us down. Like many small bayou towns it is renowned for its fishermen and trappers, its oil industry support, and its speeding tickets. Rumor, or rather rural legend, has it that the Commandant of the Louisiana State Police got a ticket there once. (more…)
NEW ORLEANS — Coast Guard officials said Monday afternoon that the oil spill near Louisiana was now covering an area in the Gulf of Mexico of 48 miles by 39 miles at its widest points, and they have been unable to engage a mechanism that could shut off the well thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface.
This is the seventh in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.
I don’t want to write a post all about climate change on Chris and Sheril’s blog because my fire-retardant suit is at the cleaners. So I won’t. But I will write about what marine scientists can learn from what climate scientists are doing (no “Oceangate” jokes, please).
Each week, I write in this space about a different threat that will inevitably doom our oceans if we fail to act. But which threat is the most critical? At least climate scientists have agreed on a general consensus: most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely due to increased greenhouse gas concentrations as a result of human activities. UC San Diego’s own Naomi Oreskes, in a 2004 Science essay, analyzed nearly a thousand abstracts published in the ISI database between 1993 and 2003 that contained the keywords “climate change.” Three-quarters of them accepted the consensus view and not a single one challenged it. This means climate scientists know the problem (greenhouse gas emissions) and how to address it (reduce emissions). Of course, it’s not that simple, but it’s a basic cause and effect that advocates can rally behind.
It’s not quite so straightforward for marine scientists. (more…)
On Monday, experienced Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau drowned when a 12,300-pound orca named Tilikum pulled her into a tank after the popular Dine with Shamu show. The tragedy took place in front of dozens of tourists with varying accounts of what exactly occurred.
In the days since, I’ve received many questions about orcas like Tilikum. Several of you want to hear my take on the ethics of captive lifestyles for animals. Some use terms like “compassionate conservation” while others talk about “cruel imprisonment.” Meanwhile, lots of advocacy groups have been speaking out by making lump judgments on all zoos and aquariums–which is not right. To be fair, there is a very broad spectrum in terms of the value of–and responsibility at–each. Further, most handlers I’ve personally met are well-intentioned, and focus on conservation and science. So rather than go into a lengthy discussion on the merits and faults of parks, let’s stick to orcas and this very sad story.
Orcas have evolved to be highly intelligent, social animals, communicating to pod members using sounds that travel underwater. They are also powerful hunters. Tilikum was born wild off the coast of Iceland, where he could travel vast distances until he was captured in 1983. Since then, he’s lived in a comparatively small enclosure, siring offspring, and performing simple tricks for us, over and over and over again.
It’s relatively simple to understand why something might go wrong in this situation.
This is the sixth in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.
It seems simple enough: we should manage our marine resources to protect the whole ecosystem, not just a single species. That’s the basic premise of ecosystem-based management (EBM), the topic of this week’s class at Scripps (Read a previous post on EBM by Sheril here). EBM is all about interactions: between predator and prey, parasite and host, nutrients and phytoplankton, humans and our environment. The need for EBM comes from too many cases of a single-species management practice resulting in unintended impacts on the surrounding environment. (more…)
This is the fifth in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.
In my favorite movie of all time, Jurassic Park, scientists clone a bunch of dinosaurs from the blood of prehistoric mosquitoes. I’m sure you’ve seen it. In the sequel, The Lost World, a Tyrannosaurus rex escapes from a cargo ship on mainland U.S. soil and wreaks havoc on my current hometown of San Diego—if this happened in real life, San Diegans would just shrug, grab their surfboards, and look for the next set of good waves. What if the T-Rex hadn’t been tranquillized and returned to its island? What if multiple dinosaurs had propagated on our continent and formed stable populations? We would label them invasive species. Or would we? After all, dinosaurs were native to North America about 70 million years ago. But I digress.
In our most recent class, we unfortunately did not discuss whether the repopulation of our country with dinosaurs would constitute a species invasion. We did, however, talk about many of the vectors that transport invasive species through the marine environment. One such vector is the ballast water of ships: a freighter will fill its ballast tank in one part of the globe with water and various organisms, traverse an ocean to deliver its cargo, and empty the water and non-native organisms into a new, unsuspecting region. The result is an invasion of crustaceans, mollusks, and algae that might out-compete native species in new habitats. The most famous ballast tank stowaway is probably the zebra mussel, native to the Black and Caspian Sea, which has invaded North American lakes.
