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"The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 6: THE DYING OCEANS
Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Wed 28 May 2008 02:00 AM PDT
[ This is Chapter 6 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future.
It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's full
support and permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters
here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). -- To see the
first five chapters, go to:
• Chapter 1: Pattern of the Crisis
• Chapter 2: The End of Civilization
• Chapter 3: Soil-The Basis of Life
• Chapter 4: The Forest
• Chapter 5: The Phantom Agriculture
I hope you find this book as interesting and important as I have,
~ ronjon ]
Chapter 6
THE DYING OCEANS
THE DYING OCEANS
During the first part of the twentieth century, as ocean
fishing increased in intensity, stocks of in-demand fish
began to be “fished out.†Their populations were driven
so low that they were unable to repopulate. Other species
occupied their food chain niches. Recent historical
crashes of fish stocks include: 1935, the Antarctic
Blue Whale; 1945, the East Asian Sardines; 1946, the
California Sardines that fed John Steinbeck’s Cannery
Row; 1950, the Northwest Pacific Salmon which is one of
the many species of migrating salmon on the West Coast
of North America; 1961, the Atlantic-Scandian Herring;
1962, the Barents Sea Cod; 1962, the Antarctic Fin
Whales; and in 1972, the Peruvian Anchovy stocks. The
annual world fish catch rose from 2 million tons in 1900
to 18 million tons in 1950.1 From 1950 to 1970 the catch
rose an average of 6 per cent per year to 66 million tons.
In 1970 it leveled off to a 1 per cent per year increase, an
average rate of growth which continued until 1982 when
it leveled off at 76.8 million tons. Since 1984, the world
fish catch has begun to shrink, even though investment
in fishing equipment has risen substantially.2 In the
northwest Atlantic, catches of cod, haddock, halibut,
herring and other major human food species peaked in
the late sixties. The catch of these species has dropped
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sharply since then, with declines ranging from 40 per cent for herring to over 90 per cent for halibut.3 Today
massive factory fishing fleets of the industrial nations
scour the world looking for protein, yet investment in
fishing brings a smaller and smaller return. The catch
continues to fall, especially for choice table fish. Still
investment continues because the exploding populations
will pay higher prices for food and the bankers who
continually finance new equipment must be paid off.
Thirty-two percent of the world fish catch is now
“trash†fish that are processed into fishmeal, fertilizer,
livestock food and fish oil.4 This means that even though
humans are finding ways to use more kinds of fish, the
total catch, now including “trash fish,†does not increase.
As humans destroy the upper links of the ocean food
chain, we will focus more heavily on plankton and krill,
the tiny organisms that are the base of much of the ocean
life. Japanese and Russian factory fleets are already
taking 100 tons per day of krill from Antarctic waters,
destroying the food chain for the entire ecology of beings
dependent upon krill in that area.5 The phytoplankton
of the oceans produce some 70 per cent of the earth’s
oxygen. As these populations of phytoplankton decline
because of pollution and ozone layer weakening, the
oxygen available for life on Earth will be impaired. The
ocean food chain will weaken further as well. As the
ocean fish stock declines more pressure will be put on
the decreasing amount of arable land. This is because
one-third of the ocean fish catch goes into agriculture
as livestock food and fertilizer. The energy pathways of
fish protein, to agricultural fertilizer and livestock food,
will wither, adding further pressure on the soil and oil-
based, artificial fertilizer supplies. Meanwhile population
increases.
Ocean Pollution
The waters of the oceans continually flow. Jacques
Cousteau notes, for example, that all of the water of the
133
Mediterranean will be exchanged with the surrounding
bodies of water within 90 years. Cousteau points out
that there is already DDT in the livers of the penguins of
Antarctica and that while rivers and semi-enclosed seas
are in worse shape than the oceans today, that will not
long remain the case.6
The open oceans are considered, “biological
deserts.†It is the continental shelves that produce the
basic populations of life in the sea and it is the bays,
wetlands, estuaries, mangrove swamps, coral reefs and
other coastline sanctuaries that incubate that life. As
garbage, sewage, chemical poisons and oil spills flow
with the currents, they concentrate near coastlines and
eliminate the basis of ocean life. What New York City
and surrounding municipalities are doing is similar to
the stories of injury to ocean ecology worldwide. Since
1987, barges carrying all of the sewage sludge from
New York City, two adjoining New York counties and six
New Jersey counties have dumped about 24,250 tons of
wastes every day —that’s eight million tons a year— into
the last place in the U.S. where ocean dumping is still
allowed, a 100-square-mile area of ocean located 106
miles offshore of Cape May, New Jersey, called the 106
Deepwater Municipal Sludge Site. The wastes include
substantial amounts of industrial and household toxic
chemicals. A 1983 report by the U.S. National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration estimates the “area of
influence†of toxic wastes deposited at this dumpsite at
46,000 square miles. The area is a spawning ground for
about 200 species of fish, and is frequented by dolphins,
whales and turtles, some species of which are already
considered to be endangered.7
Fishermen off the New England coast report that the
1988 lobster catch was down between 70 and 90 per
cent, while the lobsters that are caught often have black
holes burned into their shells from contamination. That
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year, Debbie Wynn, a Rhode Island fisherman’s wife, told
In These Times newspaper:
“My husband has been lobstering 17
years and we’ve never seen anything like
this. A year ago, fishermen were returning
more short lobsters than they’d seen for
years. Not a single one has been seen since
the fall. We’re fishing with 20 per cent more
gear and catching 70 per cent less lobsters.
And the red crabs look like somebody’s
taken a blowtorch to them.
“There’s a yellow scum floating on the
surface 150 to 175 miles away from the
dumpsite itself, and all the shellfish have
burn spots from exposure to heavy metals.
I’m so scared. The meat isn’t contaminated
[sic?] but these creatures can’t survive
without their shells. And the pollution
affects crabs and lobsters first, then clams
and scallops, then goes into the fish. That’s
when consumers will have cause to worry,
and we may all be out of business.â€8
Tilefish caught off New Jersey in 1988 were suffering years and we’ve never seen anything like
this. A year ago, fishermen were returning
more short lobsters than they’d seen for
years. Not a single one has been seen since
the fall. We’re fishing with 20 per cent more
gear and catching 70 per cent less lobsters.
And the red crabs look like somebody’s
taken a blowtorch to them.
“There’s a yellow scum floating on the
surface 150 to 175 miles away from the
dumpsite itself, and all the shellfish have
burn spots from exposure to heavy metals.
I’m so scared. The meat isn’t contaminated
[sic?] but these creatures can’t survive
without their shells. And the pollution
affects crabs and lobsters first, then clams
and scallops, then goes into the fish. That’s
when consumers will have cause to worry,
and we may all be out of business.â€8
epidemics of fin rot and lesions. In the summer of 1987,
an unexplained virus killed over 1,000 (a conservative
estimate) of the 6,000 to 8,000 dolphins believed to inhabit
the waters north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. In
November and December of that year, about two dozen
whales were found beached, mostly near Cape Cod,
Massachusetts.9 Eighty-five percent of ocean pollution
originates on land. The run-off of heavy metals from the
continents into the oceans now averages two and one
half times the natural background level for mercury, 4x
for manganese, 12x for zinc, 12x for copper, 12x for lead,
30x for antinomy, and 80 times the background level
135
for phosphorus.10 Toxic wastes have been found in the The Final Empire
deepest part of the ocean and in most ocean habitats.11
The United States has the largest industrial production
and one of the worst ocean polluting records in the world.
By the 1970’s the U.S. alone was discharging over 100
million tons of waste per year into the oceans. The U.S.
as well as European countries, Japan, and others have
dumped radioactive waste into the ocean. The former
U.S.S.R. dumped reactors into the Arctic Ocean and has
radioactive rivers flowing north into that ocean.
It has recently been discovered that acid rain is also
significantly impacting the life of the coastlines. In a
1988 study done for the Environmental Defense Fund,
investigators found that atmospheric sources account
for 25 per cent of the nitrogen pouring into Chesapeake
Bay. (The additional nitrogen came from water run-off.
Thirty-four per cent was from farm fertilizers, 23 per
cent was from sewage and industrial discharges, and
18 per cent was from animal manure runoff, according
to the study.) 12
Petroleum spills will continue to increase as oil is
extracted from increasingly remote, difficult-to-reach
areas of the planet. An estimated 6.61-7.71 million tons
of petroleum now reach the ocean each year from sources
such as leaks in refineries, runoff from land, dumping
from ships, leaks from drilling platforms, blowouts
and the actual breaking up of tankers.13 The spills
destroy huge numbers of birds, mammals, and marine
organisms. The oil is toxic when spilled into the sea and
may become more toxic over time through processes of
chemical breakdown. Oil residues can remain in sea
sediments for as long as a century.14
In the United States it is predicted that, given present
migration rates, 75 per cent of the human population
will live within 50 miles of the coast by the year 2000.
Already 8 billion gallons of municipal sewage is dumped
into coastal waters per day off the U.S. coast.15 One-third
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Wm. H. Kötke
of the shellfishing areas of the U.S. are closed because of toxic contamination.16
Coastal and island “development†often includes the
draining of wetlands and filling in of beach areas. The
building of dams, diversion of river flows and irrigation
all destroy the life-generating ability of coastlines. In
California’s San Francisco Bay, for example, 65 per
cent of the inflow of fresh water has been stopped.17
In Louisiana, one acre of coastal wetlands is lost to
development every 14 minutes.18 More than one million
hectares [2,417,000 acres] of mangrove swamp has been
cleared in the Indo-Pacific region for fish farming.(19)
Diego Garcia Island, in the Indian Ocean, an example
of the wide-spread coral reef destruction, was once the
fertile tropical home of large coral reefs and 2,000 native
people. It is now covered with the concrete of a U.S.
military base, its biology destroyed.20
The massive topsoil runoffs that the land masses are
now experiencing would normally fertilize the ecosystems
of the coasts, lending some kind of saving grace. (An
example of where this does happen is the relative fish
abundance in the South China Sea, which benefits
from the eroding topsoil of China.) The elimination of
estuaries by development and the direct kill of coastal
life by pollution have obviated the possibility of topsoil
erosion increasing the fertility of continental shelves.
The National Academy of Science estimates that
commercial fishing fleets dump 52 million pounds of
plastic packing material and 298 million pounds of
plastic fishing gear, nets, lines and buoys into the ocean
every year. An estimated 270-640 miles of monofilament
netting is lost each year by the huge Japanese fishing
fleet alone. Shoreline garbage accounts for more millions
of pounds of plastic. (Plastic six-pack holder rings will last
450 years.) One hundred thousand marine mammals die
each year from entanglement and ingestion of plastics.
It is estimated that 15 per cent of sea birds eat plastic,
137
confusing it with their natural food. Sea turtles often eat The Final Empire
plastic bags which they think are jellyfish. This plastic
causes havoc with digestive systems and often plugs the
intestines, killing sea creatures and birds.21
Ecological Sinks are the Sores of the Earth
Ecological sinks are areas where the life function
has broken down completely. In these dead areas,
the interlocking energy flows, the food chains and the
chemistry of life, are so disrupted or destroyed that
they fail to function even in a rudimentary fashion.
Some continental examples of ecological sinks include
extremely desertified areas, bodies of water where
eutrophication has used up the oxygen, and lakes killed
by acid rain. Ecological sinks are now being created
within the oceans, particularly along coastlines and in
enclosed seas. Huge algae blooms and the dead fish,
seals and dolphins washing ashore in many areas signal
the approaching death of the oceans. The Golden Horn
estuary of Turkey, areas all through the Mediterranean,
and portions of the coast of Europe and North America
are already “dead.†A band of oxygen-starved, dead water
which can support neither shrimp nor fish life, now
extends from the Mississippi River delta off the Louisiana
coast across the Gulf of Mexico nearly to Texas, a “dead
zone†300 miles long and ten miles wide.22
The largest die-off of seals to occur to date (as of
spring, 1989) took place in Europe’s North Sea during
the summer months of 1988. A mysterious virus killed
some 12,000 of the region’s 18,000 seals. Scientists
believe that the reason why the seals succumbed in such
great numbers is because their immune systems were
weakened by exposure to pollutants in North Sea waters.
Up to 30 per cent of the waters of Europe’s Baltic Sea are
permanently deprived of oxygen. Some reports state that
80 per cent of female Grey seals in that body of water are
known to be sterile, while approximately three-fourths of
Baltic Seals that have been examined show pathological
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Wm. H. Kötke
changes in some organs and in their skins. The species
is not expected to outlast this century.23
The toxic pollution of ocean waters is heaviest in the
most heavily industrialized countries but this does not
mean that other areas are not ecologically damaged. The
mangrove swamps of coastal areas for example are being
decimated worldwide. When we learn that Eskimos are
poisoned with PCB’s and that penguins in Antarctica
contain DDT, we know that the problem of ocean death
is planet-wide.
139
Notes
1. The Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the Edge
of Famine. Georg Borgstrom. Collier Books. New
York. 2nd. Revised Ed. 1972. p.438.
2. State of the World 1985. Lester Brown, et. al. W.
W. Norton Co. New York. 1985. p.74.
3. Building A Sustainable Society. Lester R. Brown.
W.W.Norton Co. New York. 1981. pp.36,37.
4. Gaia: An Atlas Of Planet Management. Norman
Myers, editor. Anchor Books. Garden City, New
York. 1984. p.82.
5. ibid. p.81.
6. U. S. News & World Report. January 23, 1985. p. 68.
7. In These Times. “They’re Killing Our Oceans.†Dick
Russell. April 27-May 3, 1988. p. 12.
8. ibid. p. 22.
9. ibid. pp. 12,22.
10. Myers. Gaia. (atlas). op. cit. p.85.
11. ibid. p.79.
12. Associated Press. 250790 New York. 3:36 am. 4/25/88.
13. Myers. Gaia. (atlas). op. cit. pp.84,85 and
Neptune’s Revenge: The Ocean of Tomorrow. Anne
W. Simon. Franklin Watts, pub. New York. 1984. p.63.
14. Simon. Neptune’s Revenge. op. cit. p.57.
15. ibid. p.87.
16. ibid. p.87.
17. “In Order to Save the Fisheries We Must Rescue Our
Estuaries.†M. L. Edwards, Field Editor. National
Fisherman. January, l988. p.22.
18. ibid. p.21.
19. Myers. Gaia. (atlas) op. cit. p.87.
20. ibid. p.87.
21. “We’re Choking the Ocean With Plastics.†Kris
Freeman. National Fisherman. January, 1987. pp.4,5,32.
22. Time. “The Dirty Seas.†August 1, 1988 p.46.
and M.L. Edwards. National Fisherman. op. cit. p.20.
23. ibid. pp. 6-7.
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