The Ocean is Dying from Human Arrogance and Apathy
Commentary by Captain Paul Watson
Massive die-offs of marine life in Nova Scotia, in Chile, in California, and in so many other places around the planet and the authorities say they have no idea why.
There is no one answer. There are many causes. What it comes down to is that the Ocean is dying. I have been saying this for years. If the Ocean dies, we die.
What is the cause that the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the other "experts" can't find.
The cause is manyfold. Over-fishing, feeding almost half the fish caught to domestic farm animals, plastic pollution, acidity, oxygen depletion, weakening of bio-diversity, chemical pollution, agricultural run-off, climate change, radiation, methane release etc.
All summed up by the fact that human over population and a complete lack of respect for the basic laws of ecology has been leading towards collapse for some time.
There is a complete breakdown in biodiversity and and it is biodiversity that sustains life in the sea. There has been a 40% decline in phytoplankton since 1950 and one of the causes has been the diminishment of whales and sea-birds. Seal populations are now less than 10% of what they once were in the North Atlantic 500 years ago. A healthy fish population requires a healthy predator population. The more seals, the more fish, the more whales, the more plankton, the more plankton, the more fish. That is the way it works when we don't interfere.
Predictably the DFO in Canada will find another scapegoat to avoid addressing the real cause and that real cause is ourselves.
The solution is a moratorium on all commercial fishing, an end to killing seals and dolphins, seabirds and invertebrates. The removal of so much biomass year after year is the primary cause of what is happening. The solution is to eliminate plastic and the dumping of poisons into the sea. The solution is to reduce acidity by cutting the burning of fossil fuels. The solution is to learn to live within the biosphere instead of dominating it.
These are solutions that will not be entertained because anything that even suggests we stop over exploitation is dismissed immediately.
It all comes down to too many people consuming too many resources and returning nothing to the sea but toxic poisons, plastic, radiation and chemicals.
These die-offs will continue because real solutions are unacceptable to modern so called civilized humanity.
I have traveled this world from the Arctic to the Antarctic, walked the beaches of remote islands, dove in the waters of the Great Barrier reef, walked on the ice floes off Labrador and in the Southern Ocean, swam in the waters of West and East Africa, in the Caribbean and the Med, the Black Sea and in the Galapagos. And everywhere it is the same, marine life dying, coral reefs bleaching, plastic everywhere, diminishment of life everywhere and even worse a pervasive attitude of arrogance and apathy - everywhere.
We know why the Ocean is dying, We just don't care to know why! We choose denial over solutions and that will be our undoing.
I am not surprised by the "mysterious" mass die-offs taking place on Nova Scotian beaches right now. I've been predicting this and seeing this for years. We are looking straight in the face of an approaching ecological collapse but we can't see that face because it is wearing a mask of arrogant and willfully ignorant denial.
Muppet wrote: Been saying for ages I will be surprised if humanity goes another 200-400 years. |
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