Top 10 Earth Stories of the Decade – Number 2: Oceans in Crisis
Filed under: Discovery,News & Resources
(Click to enlarge image) Oceans in crisis. (Credit: NASA/GeoEye)
The idea that our oceans are too vast to be hurt by puny human activities died a terrible death this decade.
(From Discovery News) — True, the oceans are vast, but human activities are anything but puny. Giant gyres of plastic have been found in every ocean, entangling wildlife and killing seabirds.
Excessively hot waters in the Caribbean and elsewhere have shocked scientists by causing coral bleaching. Overfishing is driving one species after another off our dinner plates, with one study predicting the collapse of most fish species by 2048.
If we keep adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it could all get a lot worse because that gas enters the oceans and makes the water acidic, hostile to the shell-making animals crucial to marine ecosystems worldwide.
