WINS
- New U.S. Ocean Policy: President Obama issued an executive order in July to implement conservation-based management of our public seas -- based on marine spatial planning, or what former Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen calls, "urban planning into the water column." It would try to coordinate everyone (government agencies, ocean industries, environmentalists) to better manage our public seas for healthy ecosystems and sustainable development of our coastal economies.
- Census of Marine Life completed: A decade long exploration of the world's seas; "an international observational program to assess and explain the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans" was conducted by several thousand scientists between 2000 and 2010. It found there's still new and amazing critters and habitats out there.
- New Shark Protection Laws: First Hawaii banned the trade in shark fin that endangers a 600 million year old keystone predator of the sea in order to sell soup to rich people in Asia. Then, just before recessing, our Lame Duck Congress lent a hand (or wing) and passed a bill that all but prevents any new shark finning in U.S. waters.
- New Ocean Wilderness Parks created: California established new no-take protected areas off southern California in December, part of a network of marine wilderness parks under its Marine Life Protection Act. In doing so California joins a number of nations including the U.S. Britain, Kiribati and Australia who have set aside vast areas across the Pacific, Indian, Atlantic and Southern oceans to protect and restore the seas natural bounty. Still, only about one percent of the world's oceans have been given wilderness status. Scientists suggest 20-25 percent ought to be.
- Some offshore drilling protection:
In the wake of the BP disaster, the Obama administration walked back the dogfish saying there will be no new drilling off the Atlantic seaboard or in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. While that's an advance from the President's pre-Gulf blow out proposal to open extensive U.S. waters to oil development, it's still less than what was protected under the drilling moratorium in effect for a quarter century until rescinded during the Bush administration.
LOSSES
- BP Disaster: Flying over the Gulf of Mexico in June seeing oil spills out to the horizon and 100 dolphins and a whale trapped and dying in the slicks, even as the oil blowout continued, it was hard to believe this would not have profound impacts on U.S. energy policy, but it doesn't seem to have. Still, few Gulf locals I continue to talk to believe the government's claim that most of the 200 million gallons of oil released, "went away." Likely impacts will be in the water column, fisheries and wildlife reproduction and bottom habitat for years to come.
- Bluefin condemned to extinction: Japan served endangered Bluefin Tuna sushi at the Convention on Endangered Species meeting in March where it blocked attempts to protect this top ocean predator whose population is collapsing, with 80 percent of the biomass fished out since the 1970s. In the wake of the CITES failure, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas was expected to take bold action in November, but it also failed to act.
- New study says nowhere left to fish: A new scientific study by the University of British Columbia and National Geographic found that we're now overfishing everywhere from the deep ocean to Antarctica, stripping the last previously unfished populations of marine wildlife out of our seas. Few nations appear willing to constrain this global buffalo hunt.
- Plastic waste now found everywhere in ocean: The 2010 '5 Gyres' expedition launched by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation is finding plastic refuse and debris in all ocean gyres or whirlpool currents, while in the central Pacific gyre the amount of plastic has gone from 6 pounds per pound of plankton to over 40 pounds in just the last decade.
- Climate failures mean rough seas ahead: The failure of the U.N.'s 2009 Climate Meeting in Copenhagen and token progress in Cancun this year on addressing fossil-fuel fired climate change means continued trouble for the world ocean including Arctic melting, sea level rise and more destructive storm surges, coral bleaching, shifting wildlife populations and ocean acidification that's changing the very chemistry of the sea, none of which is good for man or fish.
Please Help. If you know of a course that borders the ocean, please email them and ask them to educate their golfers about this problem. I would appreciate this, and you might just save some lives. Thanks
Thousands of years from now, when future archaeologists dig up our era, we will be known as living in the 'plastic age', just as some people lived in the 'iron age' or the copper age'.
Coastal shrimp farming in the tropics is now one of the largest sources of coastal Mangrove forest destruction in the world.
COASTAL MANGROVE FORESTS and COASTAL RIVER DELTAS are the nurseries for the world's ocean and river fish.....or used to be....this is quickly changing as these natural habitats are destroyed.
1.)Dams.....which stop river fish from spawning/laying eggs. Dams also dry-up and destroy downstream river deltas. Millions of young fish are chopped up in dam turbines blades after hatching.
2.)Factory pollutants,
3.)Mining run-off,
4.)Dredging/sand mining of river bottoms which destroys fish eggs/fish habitat,
5.)Soil run-off/erosion into rivers and coastal waters from deforestation and farming which is killing fish eggs, suffocating fish, killing coral,
6.)Agribusiness/factory farm pollution, factory farm sludge-pit overflow. (source of one of the largest fish kills in U.S. history in North Carolina).
7.)Unregulated fishing/overfishing,
8.)Oil spills, offshore oil drilling with poor/inadequate drilling equipment
9.)Sewage run-off, street run-off of gasoline/antifreeze,
10.)Environmental degradation of river floodplains and coastal areas in general, (overdevelopment)
10.)Lack of adequate government oversight regulation of fisheries and the various polluting practices which kill fish.
11.) Lack of coastal marine reserves (coastal marine reserves in New Zealand and other countries have dramatically improved commercial fish catches).
Billions of people who have traditionally depended on ocean and river fish for protein are now turning increasingly to farming and factory farming to get protein as fish populations fall worldwide. This over-reliance on agriculture and agricultural chemicals is further degrading land and polluting water with agricultural waste, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, soil erosion into rivers etc.
Available farm land is already stressed.
When a stranger appeared in a cloud of smoke-I thought I knew him all too well.
He said, You know, I've always liked you boy, cause you are not afraid of me
I got somethin I wanna say, you may not wanna hear it, but I'm gonna tell it to ya anyway.
Things are about to get mighty rough in this Gomorrah by the Sea
It's just like Home, it's so damn hot I can't stand it!
My fine seersucker suit is all soakin wet!
And the wind was blowing and the hills were burnin
And the clock strikes midnight
Don Henley
(Ask me how I could revolutionize cargo logistics, eliminating dependence on fossil fuels while reducing traffic fatalities on highways...)
#76
When we have a Congress intent on relaxing regulations in the guise of 'reducing government', and limiting liability for shoddy products, we need to realize that our country and many other countries have been bought by greed.
Humans, like all animals, are selfish and crude. Altruism and trust emerged when groups and societies of humans (and animals) became viable and desired. Unfortunately the selfish greed still manifests. Smaller groups and villages were able to mollify this 'animal drive' though small talk, gossip, and accountability. As history has shown, once a society becomes larger than several 1,000, the methods to control greed and selfishness had to change. Rules, laws and governance were established for the 'common good' and welfare of the citizens.
In a country like the US, those laws have since become perverted by greed and selfishness to support and protect those who damage and harm the environment, and the citizens, as businesses pursue profit.
We need to make changes in several areas if we are to fix the issues.
1) Appropriate regulation of businesses
2) Full disclosure of political contributions
3) Performance plans with reviews and consequential actions for our elected officials
4) A signed declaration of ethics, eco-friendly and conservation aware practices, and fairness by businesses with reviews and actionable consequences.
That was done back in January of 2009 .... when Obama was in office not less than 2 weeks... where one of the groups populated by the previous administration and buried in or career employees had signed off on this.
I doubt that an issue about Sea Turtles would have gotten to Obama desk in his first couple of week in office... you know with the Economy on the Brink and the Wars and All.
Yes this was done after Obama was in office.... but the people who made this decision were not appointed or hired by the new administration...
Please take that into Account.
I wonder though if we are really going to turn this around in time to protect ourselves. If plastic to plankton ratio can go from 6:1 to 40:1 in just 10 years, whats the next ten years going to look like? Especially now as that everybody is in denial that there is even a problem.
Another 20-30 years from now I'll be telling my children about what it was like to have trees, animals, and fish in the ocean and they won't believe me.