Editor’s note: This is part of a project by GlobalPost’s Study Abroad team and summer interns. They spent the summer learning about the world’s endangered oceans and their work is displayed in this interactive graphic.
BOSTON — Deep, beneath the surface of any exploration of climate change lies the ocean.
It covers nearly three-quarters of the earth’s surface, and so there is no more expansive issue to be considered at next month’s climate-change conference in Copenhagen than the health — or ill health — of the world’s vast bodies of water.
But the impact of climate change on the oceans and seas — and the role our waters play in keeping the planet cool — has been surprisingly overlooked. Many top environmentalists and scientists fear oceans will get insufficient attention at Copenhagen, where 65 world leaders, including President Barack Obama, will gather from December 7th to the 18th to try to hammer out an international agreement to mandate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
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View the Oceans interactive graphic |
“The discussion has tended to focus on atmosphere and greenhouse gas mitigation, like carbon taxing," said Margaret Davidson, director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s coastal services center in Charleston, S.C. "Just now we are really beginning to bring the importance of climate and the oceans in that relationship, and their impact on coastal communities, and the ecosystem to the front and center of the discussions.”
These issues that impact oceans, Davidson said, “must get more air time in Copenhagen than they have in previous conferences.”
This summer, GlobalPost’s team of student correspondents set out to explore the big issues surrounding the health of the world’s oceans. They wanted to look into the impact and consequences on a human level of centuries of neglect and pollution that have destroyed whole ecosystems and killed off fish stocks.
Their work in compiling facts, figures and interesting stories about the world’s oceans could not be more timely than right now in the run up to the historic gathering in Copenhagen.
Early last summer, one of the GlobalPost interns, James Walsh, who received his degree from the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, talked about gyres, the swirling currents of water and air that attract and push garbage into a floating vortex way out to sea.
“Most of the plastic ever produced since the 1940s still exists on the planet somewhere,” said Walsh.
The team of seven interns and Newsroom Manager Kathleen Struck blinked back at him in disbelief, and the team began to focus its project on gyres.
“The oceans are simultaneously being filled with garbage while emptied of sea life," wrote Struck, who helped guide the students on their research. "What floats and does not degrade, such as hearty plastic, ends up in a soupy melange of pieces small enough for plankton to ingest. For larger marine animals, there are plastic bags, six-pack rings and Lego pieces on which to nibble.
"Mariners find these hanging from the throats of sea birds or in the guts of other dead animals floating among the garbage that killed them.”
Our interns are all travelers, having participated in Study Abroad programs in many corners of the world. From their wanderings, they reached into their experiences and conversations to bring us this series about how we are trashing our oceans.
GlobalPost web developer, Luke Parlin, pulled together these reports in the interactive graphic that is the organizing principle of this project.
On the interactive map, you can link to a series of stories and fact boxes. James Walsh writes about ocean gyres. Ashley Herendeen and GlobalPost correspondent Patrick Winn write about sea slaves, a centuries old phenomenon in which the owners of large fishing vessels capture and Shanghai their crews. Drew FitzGerald, currently a GlobalPost intern who is studying journalism at Boston University, writes about the not very nutritious alternatives to seafood, which are proliferating around the world: jellyfish. Elizabeth Tuttle, a summer intern and now a GlobalPost student correspondent in Brazil where she is on a study abroad program through Smith College, writes about drowning islands, such as I-Kiribati. Sean P. Smith, a summer intern from Tufts University and now a student correspondent in Lebanon, writes about saving our stocks. Shirin Jaafari, a GlobalPost intern and Tufts University student, writes about resorts and swish residences in the Persian Gulf, which are filling in the coastline and destroying coral beds. And you can also read about the 600-year lifespan of the most durable plastics in the ocean in Countdown to calamity.
Our interns found other pockets of despair around the globe. In Ghana, workers melt down the metals from the cell phone and laptop you tossed away in the U.S. While some of it will be sold, some of it will run down in rivulets that feed into the sea, where marine life ingest it. Eventually, those fish could become your meal, seasoned by the heavy metals from the cell phone you casually threw away.
Rod Fujita, director of ocean innovations at the Environmental Defense Fund in San Francisco, told GlobalPost that ocean experts at Copenhagen will have to find a way to help leaders gathered there understand what is at stake for the world’s oceans if climate change is not reversed.
The White House told reporters last week that President Barack Obama would present to Copenhagen a proposed target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after facing pressure from international environmental groups. Still, many environmentalists worldwide say they’re frustrated with the Obama administration’s failure to take the lead at Copenhagen even though the U.S. has produced more greenhouse gas than any other industrialized country.
Fujita said that standards for reducing gas emissions are, of course, important, but insufficient in addressing the overall problem of climate change.
“Really, the most realizable target should be based on early warning ecosystems, like the oceans. When you set targets for reducing greenhouse gas, if you set them too high, you’ll lose the coral reefs, the mangroves, the wetlands," Fujita said. "It’s a food security issue for about a billion people on the planet. The stakes are high on the protection of these coastal ecosystems.
"There should be a scientific rationale for setting greenhouse gas reductions. Those targets are often negotiated away for something that is more feasible, as this idea of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration someday. It might be politically possible to do that, but from an ecological point of view, it’s not going to be enough to protect these systems,” he added.
As National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration director Davidson told GlobalPost, "The challenge is public awareness. The fundamental challenge is getting people to listen.”
We hope the way in which our outstanding team of interns have shaped this interesting body of work about the world’s oceans will get you to listen and explore. The stakes have never been higher.
Learn more about our endangered oceans in this interactive graphic.
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