Future Sea by Deborah Rowan Wright

Author:Deborah Rowan Wright [Wright, Deborah Rowan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCI000000 Science / General
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Dwindling population sizes and range shrinkages amount to a massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services essential to civilization. This “biological annihilation” underlines the seriousness for humanity of Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction event.3

“Ocean temperatures hit record high as rate of heating accelerates. Oceans are clearest measure of climate crisis as they absorb 90% of heat trapped by greenhouse gases” was the headline some months later.4 The sixth mass extinction is upon us and the oceans are warming up dangerously fast, yet the reaction in the corridors of power is minimal, even with this most alarming information. And which is the most disturbing truth? The depressing results of this research? Or that the report triggered little political response? Or that in the mainstream media such earth-shattering news is regarded as less important than what the Duchess of Cambridge was wearing and the result of a third-round match at Wimbledon? Because the day I first read about the sixth mass extinction on Earth it was outranked by those news stories. What’s more, in several newspapers, television broadcasts, and radio bulletins it didn’t feature at all.

Despite much of the media’s confused sense of what matters, pretty much everyone is aware of the major environmental troubles afoot, on land and in the sea. At present, destructive commercial fishing and plastic pollution are widely considered the most acute problems to tackle in the sea, but potentially bigger problems loom and lesser ones lurk. When I typed “threats to the ocean” into a search engine, I saw that most were specifically quantified: “the five worst threats to our oceans” or “the top ten problems facing the sea today.” There are four, or six, or seven perils and ten, twenty, and even twenty-five threats to the ocean to deal with, depending on which website or article you read. I was bombarded by lists of risks and perils, dangers and issues and threats. They blur into one giant mess that we need to sort out. I see them not as disconnected problems but as parts of a complex web of damage and decline, forming its own sprawling ecosystem of troubles. Habitat destruction and biodiversity loss; rampant industrial fishing; corruption, and labor exploitation; plastic debris and discarded fishing gear; 90 percent of top predators gone; all kinds of pollution; damage or noise disturbance from shipping, sonar, construction, oil and gas exploration and mining; an inadequate system of governance and law enforcement; and the effects of climate change—which include ocean acidification, coral bleaching, unpredictable and extreme weather events, warming seas, melting ice, and rising sea levels. In my mind the problems and threats cluster into a hideous watery mass that seems insurmountable. Sometimes, in fact most times, perhaps childishly, I want everything to be so very much not the way it is. I wish it were all a bad dream and that everything in the ocean were completely fine.

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