26 Powerful Photos That Show Why Oceans Still Need Our Help
Updated: May. 29, 2020From plastics pollution to acidification, the world’s oceans are in serious trouble—and it’s a much bigger problem than you likely realize.
Our oceans are under attack
World Oceans Day falls on June 8, and after sheltering in place for more than two months, we're all ready for a reason—any reason—to celebrate. Unfortunately, the state of our planet's largest bodies of water is not the place to start. A United Nations report from September found that oceans were "under such severe stress that the fallout could prove difficult for humans to contain without steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," the New York Times reported. How bad is it? These photos offer the beginnings of a clue. Of course, these are only a few of the reasons that the earth, as a whole, desperately needs our help.
Oil spills
Pretty much everything that's wrong with our oceans is due, on some level, to human interference, but the effects of oil-tanker spills on ocean wildlife are especially shaming. Yes, numbers are way down since 1978, a record-high year in which there were almost 120 spills worldwide. But in the last decade, there have been 62 spills classified as "large," meaning that they dumped at least 7 tonnes (metric tons) of oil and which taken together are responsible for 164,000 tonnes of oil leaking into our oceans. Five hundred seabirds, including 350 endangered African penguins (shown here), were covered in oil following a 120-tonne spill in Cape Town's harbor in 2015, according to the AP.
Plastics pollution
Eight million tons of single-use plastic makes its way into our oceans every year, where it ensnares and suffocates wildlife when it is ingested by birds, fish, and seals, according to the United Nations. It also floats around out there for hundreds of years. It's the largest source of ocean pollution by far, making up about 80 percent of all the junk we toss in there. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) deems plastics pollution "the most widespread problem affecting the marine environment. It also threatens ocean health, food safety and quality, human health, coastal tourism, and contributes to climate change."
Ghost fishing gear
One of the most insidious forms of ocean pollution, plastic or otherwise, is fishing gear that's been discarded, lost, or abandoned. This so-called ghost gear, which includes things like nets, "continues to fish and trap animals, entangle and potentially kill marine life, smother habitat, and act as a hazard to navigation," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). An estimated 640,000 metric tons of it goes missing every year, notes Scientific American. The photo shown here was taken on a beach in Karnataka, India, in 2019; in it, a dead olive ridley sea turtle, most populations of which are threatened, is shown strangled by a piece of rope, likely from fishing equipment.
Shark finning
Sharks rarely get the love and respect they deserve, except, tragically, as an ingredient in certain traditional medicines. Rather than slaughtering these essential apex predators outright, however, fishermen hunting sharks for their supposedly curative properties, as well as for the delicacy shark-fin soup, cut off their fins and toss the animals back into the ocean, where they promptly drown. Approximately 100 million sharks are finned every year, according to Smithsonian Ocean.
Smaller tuna
Revered as an ingredient in sushi in Japan, bluefin tuna has been steadily in decline, with its populations plummeting by 97 percent, reported The Mercury News in 2017. Regardless, the Trump administration refused to list the Pacific species as endangered, and Japanese fishing fleets have not limited the amounts they're trying to catch. As a result of these factors and others, bluefins that make their way to market are less plentiful and a lot smaller than the 1,000-pound specimens that used to be the norm and once drew heavy bidding at Japan's wholesale fish markets. Is the ocean actually running out of fish? Here's what's going on.
Coral bleaching
Coral reefs all over the world—75 percent of them between 2014 and 2017, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)—have been undergoing bleaching events caused by warming oceans. Living in symbiotic partnership with tiny algae called zooxanthellae, corals eject these necessary algae when stressed, which turns them white and makes them susceptible to death. This has a deleterious effect not only on the coral and the zooxanthellae but also on all manner of organisms for which a coral reef ecosystem provides a habitat, spawning grounds, and sources of food. Find out what else warmer oceans mean for the planet.
Acidification
Our oceans aren't just getting warmer—they're also becoming increasingly acidic. This will have numerous deleterious effects on both the organisms that live in the water and humans, according to Smithsonian Ocean. In fact, some of the effects are being felt already in the fishing industry. Overly acidic water affects the ability of mollusks like oysters and mussels to grow their shells, especially when they are just forming. As a result, oyster fishermen on the West Coast of the United States have been seeing extensive larvae die-offs, reports the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative.
Increased disease
Increasingly warm oceans are also leading to preponderances of certain bacteria and other sources of illness in humans, according to NPR, including of the bacteria Vibrio vulnificus, which is found in oysters and flourishes in ocean waters that are about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, climate change is driving all sorts of new diseases and pests, both on land and in the water. In case you were wondering, this is the difference between global warming and climate change.
Dying seabirds
The common murre has had generally strong populations in the northern hemisphere, but an ocean-warming event in 2015–2016 proved that even non-threatened species are susceptible to the vagaries of climate change. Called the Blob, this warming event led to massive shifts in the range of plankton, critically important to murre diets; as a result, murres washed up on beaches from California to Alaska, dead from starvation. In all, scientists estimate that one-quarter of the murre population was wiped out, reports ScienceNews. These warming events are expected to become more common in the coming years. Did you know that these wild animals became endangered in 2019?