Oceans at Risk

[groovedaddy]

There is no shortage of scientific studies documenting the degradation of the world’s oceans, the decline of marine ecosystems and the collapse of important fish species. Several have appeared in the last month. What is in short supply is a sustained effort by world governments and other institutions to do something about it.

Last month, a team of American, British and Canadian researchers concluded that not a single square foot of ocean had been left untouched by modern society, and that humans had fouled 41 percent of the seas with polluted runoff, overfishing and other abuses.

A narrower but no less scary study from the University of Oregon found that a dead zone off the Oregon coast had spread south to California and north to Washington and devastated marine life in one of the world’s most productive fisheries. The culprit is believed to be global warming, which has changed the interaction between wind and sea in ways that rob the fish of oxygen.

A third study is the latest legislative report card from the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, established to push Congress and the administration to do a better job of protecting America’s waters and to play a more active role globally. Washington policy makers get no grade higher than a “C” in any category, ranging from financing for scientific research to fisheries management

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/opinion/09sun2.html?th&emc=th

[seasat]

1. Yet, they've gutted funding for oceanographic research

I'm an oceanographer and congress has pretty much gutted the funding. What usually happens is a budget is submitted with a basic level of funding. It then goes to committee and lobbyists (usually the pharmaceutical giants or defense contractors) come in and get them to redirect the funding to their pet projects. It's a tough time to be in an environmental field. Our main funding now comes from some military and a homeland security work. We have to collect data to support those projects and then use it to write related papers regarding environmental or basic science oceanography. Unless things turn around, I may end up teaching high school with my PhD in oceanography. I'm not knocking teaching. I enjoy teaching but I really love research.