What future for the Oceans?

Oceans, which move in deep connected currents over nearly three-quarters of the globe, have historically been slow to exhibit change. Recently, oceans have begun to undergo an accelerated transformation that has caught most people, even in this scientific age, unaware and unprepared. Both the advers...

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Main Author: Swing, John Temple
Format: Book
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Summary:Oceans, which move in deep connected currents over nearly three-quarters of the globe, have historically been slow to exhibit change. Recently, oceans have begun to undergo an accelerated transformation that has caught most people, even in this scientific age, unaware and unprepared. Both the adverse trends and the potential of newly discovered resources have received scant public note and, until recently, woefully insufficient attention from the U.S. policymakers. Oceans are being bombarded almost daily by land-based pollutants that include river runoffs, the dumping og untreated sewage, toxins carried by the atmosphere, and even innocent-seeming dredge waste. Collectively, these represent an on-going threat to ocean stability and human welfare. Anather threatening source of pollution is the Asian haze, a huge brown cloud that formed over the India Ocean and southern parts of asia in the summer of 2002. This cloud, as large as the continental United States, consists of pollutants from biomass burning and industrial emissions. It adversely affects the phytoplankton involved in the carbon-oxygen transfer by reducing by some of percent the solar radiation reaching the oceans. Another exiciting prospect is to declare parts of the more prominent underwater seamount as marine protected areas. Relatively pristine seamounts still exist, but fishing pressure on them is growing rapidly.