Celebrate Ocean Day-World Ocean Day-Think Blue
Celebrate Ocean Day-World Ocean Day-Think Blue, as today, Monday, June 8th, 2009 is the first United Nations Official, World Ocean Day.
The world wide event comes only after years of pressure from conservation groups and thousands of activists who clamored for everyone to know and understand what’s happening in our oceans.
The U.N. reports that 75 percent of seafood species are maxed out or over exploited and catches of nearly a third of these species are less than 10 percent of what they once were. Ninety percent of the big fish, such as sharks, tuna, swordfish are already gone, according to a 2003 study in Nature.
The chemistry of the oceans is changing as they absorb 11 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, and scientists say the acidifying waters will make it impossible for coral reefs, the nurseries of the sea, to grow.
At the current rate of acidification, corals, sea snails and other calcium carbonate requiring life forms, could begin to dissolve by the middle of the century, with potentially catastrophic results. Shellfish and fish will be in deep trouble as well.
This is all happening on our watch, Baby Boomers. I have a few favorite Ocean sites. Here are a few:
SeaWeb
Nova
MarinePhotoBank
ProjectAware
ASeaChange
Celebrate Ocean Day-World Ocean Day-Think Blue, like Ted Dawson who became an ocean activist in 1987. He is the narrator of a great documentary film called “End of The Line.” It is released today for World Ocean Day.
The movie describes how marine scientist Daniel Pauly, discovered China had been falsifying its fish catch data, and that instead of increasing, global fish catch had actually peaked in the late 1980s at about 80 million tons a year and had been falling ever since, despite better and faster technology and billions of dollars in government subsidies.
The film also describes how we are about to fish one of the most magnificent fish in the ocean, the bluefin tuna, into extinction. It’s not the only one we’re eating into non-existence.
For more information about “Celebrate Ocean Day-World Ocean Day-Think Blue,” and the movie “End of The Line,” go to CNN News.
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