Environment Forum

Who is responsible for cleaning up our oceans?

– David Rockefeller, Jr. is a philanthropist and CEO of Around the Americas and Chairman of Sailors for the Sea. Any views expressed here are his own. –

When the Ocean Watch set sail from Seattle last May at the launch of our Around the Americas expedition, our greatest challenge was to make Americans start thinking about health of oceans. For too long, we have been taking our rich seafood supplies and scenic seascapes for granted.

One year and 28,000 miles later, and now with the massive BP oil spill, much has changed.

While I’d love to say that our expedition is responsible for finally turning around the slow drip of public concern for ocean health into a steady flow, I am fairly certain that the continuous flow of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico is, unfortunately, driving home what the captain and crew of Ocean Watch have been saying all along.

The fact that our oceans are not too big for one person to damage is becoming clearer with each passing day. In just one month, we have witnessed the largest oil spill in the history of the U.S., with the full repercussions yet to be seen.

We know our Gulf seafood supply of shrimp, oysters and blue crab will likely be damaged for generations to come, to say nothing of the sea turtles, sea birds and other wildlife that are already suffering.

So long, sardines? Lake Tanganyika hasn’t been this warm in 1,500 years

East Africa’s Lake Tanganyika might be getting too hot for sardines.

The little fish have been an economic and nutritional mainstay for some 10 million people in neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo — four of the poorest countries on Earth. They also depend on Lake Tanganyika for drinking water.

But that could change, according to research published in the online version of the journal Nature Geoscience. Using samples of the lakebed that chart a 1,500-year history of the lake’s surface water temperature, the scientists found the current temperature — 78.8 degrees F (26 degrees C) — is the warmest it’s been in a millennium and a half. And that could play havoc with sardines and other fish the local people depend on.

The scientists also found that the lake saw its biggest warm-up in the 20th century.

This unprecedented warm water could interfere with the lake’s unique ecosystem, which relies on nutrients churned up from the bottom of the lake to feed the algae that form the base of the lake’s food web. As Lake Tanganyika heats up, the mixing of waters is lessened and fewer nutrients get to the top level where algae and fish feed. More warming at the surface magnifies the difference between the two lake levels and even more wind is needed to churn the waters enough to get nutrients to the upper layer.

Something fishy about deadly Taiwan typhoon

Taiwan fisheries flopped to an 18-year low point after Typhoon Morakot flooded much of the low-lying south in August, the island’s Central News Agency told us, casting aquaculture as a victim. Fish farmers, swamped by the stench of their own produce a month after the storm, struggled to recover.

But were farmers also villains?

Taiwan’s Control Yuan, a central government agency that can censure public officials, says in a report  this month they were at fault, as were Pingtung county officials who had given permits to only 29 percent of them, ignoring the rest as they pumped groundwater. The use of groundwater for fish farms has sunk surrounding land, leaving villages prone to floods, the report says.

“According to data the county gave us, still more than 70 percent of fish farming households and fish farm land area are illegal,” the Control Yuan autopsy says. “Registration of water rights is a county responsibility, but the county government over the long term pushed away the responsibility and neither offered timely guidance nor enforced laws.”

These findings are part of a bigger search for causes that will eventually name reasons, possibly irregular fruit-growing or forestry practices, triggered deadly mudslides  in Taiwan’s southern mountains.

One possible conclusion: time for Taiwan to quit challenging nature?

More bad news on the fish front

There’s more bad news on the fish front.

According to a new report the advocacy group California Trout, 65 percent of the state’s native salmon, steelhead and trout species may be extinct within the next century. To see the whole report click here. It was written by Dr. Peter Moyle of the University of California, Davis.

“The report’s findings indicate that the state’s native salmonids are in unprecedented decline and are teetering towards the brink of extinction – an alarm bell that signals the deteriorating health of the state’s rivers and streams that provide drinking water to millions of Californians. It’s also a sign that fish are likely to be struggling nationwide in this era of global warming, water diversions, and rapid development into previously uninhabited areas,” the organization said.

Salt and freshwater fisheries almost everywhere are in decline. Overharvesting, poor management of commercial fisheries, habitat destruction, climate change, dams – you name it, the inhabitants of our aquatic ecosystems are in trouble.

Anadromous fish such as salmon — which spawn in freshwater but spend most of their adult lives in the sea — have nowhere to run (well, swim). They get hammered by trawlers at sea and by pressure on their spawning grounds when they return to freshwater. The salmon’s life-cycle is one of the most arduous but compelling narratives in nature, from its birthplace in streams to the open sea and back again. It is a journey that is increasingly fraught with danger from California’s coast to the Baltic Sea.

But the report also highlights the success of restoration efforts which show that when blocked flows are reinstated and migration barriers removed, native fish stocks show signs of recovery.