It’s the personal tale of Ivan Macfadyen, a Newcastle
yachtsman who sailed for the second time from Brisbane to Osaka. The first time he did it was a decade ago –
but the Pacific was a very different ocean then, one where flocks of birds
tracked along in his wake scouring the sea for fish. This time, as the title implies, he found an
ocean that had been broken. The birds
and fish and whales that had accompanied him ten years ago, were now replaced
garbage, silence, and wasteful, senseless death.
By no means a happy story,
it was one Macfadyen felt compelled to share.
“I wanted to get the word out to everybody I could reach, to tell them,
the ocean is broken,” he said in a follow-up article. “We have to do something and we can’t waste
any more time.”
He’s right. We can’t waste anymore time. The statistics are grim: 3/4 of the world’s
fish stocks are being harvested faster than they can reproduce. Eighty percent
are already fully exploited or in decline. Ninety percent of all large
predatory fish – including tuna, sharks, swordfish, cod and halibut – are gone.
Scientists predict that if current trends continue, world food fisheries could
collapse entirely by 2050. That’s a
terrifying thought when you consider one in five people on this planet depends
on fish as the primary source of protein.
Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) ensnared near the mouth of the fish trap. Public Domain, courtesy of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. - See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2013/10/future-ocean-megafauna-world-animal-day/#sthash.iVNNeB4G.dpuf
Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) ensnared near the mouth of the fish trap. Public Domain, courtesy of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. - See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2013/10/future-ocean-megafauna-world-animal-day/#sthash.iVNNeB4G.dpuf
Atlantic bluefin tuna
(Thunnus thynnus) ensnared near the mouth of the fish trap.
Public
Domain, courtesy of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
And if you’ve read last week’s blog, or caught this article that just appeared in Mother Nature News, you know all about the plastic problem:
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/even-barnacles-eat-ocean-plastic
A few facts to consider:
A few facts to consider:
- The average American will throw away approximately 185 pounds of plastic per year.
- 8% of the world’s oil is used for plastic production.
- Biodegradable bags prevent the deleterious effects of plastic on ocean environments. They break down naturally, and don’t leave harmful chemicals behind.
- Plastic in the ocean breaks down into such small segments that pieces of plastic from a one liter bottle could end up on every mile of beach throughout the world.
- Approximately 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. That’s more than 1,200 bags per US resident, per year.
Ridley Sea Turtle rescued by the Pacific Voyagers.
Photo Courtesy of Pacific Voyagers Foundation.
As tragic as all of this is,
we need to remember that things that have been deemed “broken” CAN be fixed. We cannot let these statistics paralyze us,
rather let’s use them to motivate us to do even more.
Macfadyen’s words were
potent and sobering enough for his article to immediately go viral via social
as well as mainstream media. It
registered 620,000 unique readers on the Herald site by Tuesday
afternoon, appeared on the front page of Reddit on Monday, was trending in
Melbourne early Monday afternoon, and was even re-tweeted by Jack Dorsey, the
founder and chief executive of Twitter.
He's is hoping he can
harness international public concern about the state of the oceans to help stop
the damage. ‘‘I’ve been put in touch
with a lot of people from all over the world who want to help, so it’s a matter
of working out the next step,’’ he said. Whatever that “next step” will be could define how we turn this tide. What steps do you suggest? Share your stories with us and join in this "RevelOcean" by following Tide Turners on Facebook and Twitter.
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