Prefatory Note: Ominous signs of biospheric distress are appearing everywhere on the planet, of which the article below is yet another indication. Underneath, I've added cites to 7 articles about the effect of global warming on our polar ice-caps and oceans, plus "The Moral Of The Story." Warm Regards...
Ocean scientists took their first look Tuesday (Video) into the oxygen-starved "dead zone" spreading off the Oregon Coast and were shocked by what they saw: a lifeless wasteland of thousands of dead crabs, starfish and no live fish at all. "It was a real eye-opener for all of us," said Hal Weeks, a marine ecologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "I don't think anybody expected this sort of thing."
Dead Dungeness crabs off Cape Perpetua, just south of Yachats, "were like jellybeans in a jar. You just can't count them, there were so many." Oxygen levels in places along the central Oregon Coast have sunk to the lowest levels ever recorded on the West Coast of the United States, said Francis Chan, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University and the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, an alliance of research institutions.
Scientists suspect swings in the Earth's climate tied to GLOBAL WARMING may be shifting wind conditions to bring about such grim results. Seawater turns deadly for marine life when concentrations of the dissolved oxygen they breathe fall below about 1.4 milliliters per liter. On Monday, Chan measured a concentration of .05, or almost 30 times below the lethal level, about 90 feet below the surface. It is very close to a complete absence of oxygen, a situation rarely known in the world's oceans, said Jane Lubchenco, a professor of marine biology at Oregon State. New bacteria that take over when oxygen disappears are known to release poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas.
"We never suspected that could happen here," Lubchenco said. This is the fifth consecutive summer that a layer of low-oxygen water has blanketed the ocean floor along the Oregon Coast, and it has rapidly turned into the most severe episode so far. The layer this year is thicker, lower in oxygen and far larger, covering at least four times more area than in previous years, Lubchenco said.
It stretches at least from Lincoln City to near Florence, and the conditions appear to be worsening. Oregon owes its rich marine environment to water welling up from the deep ocean, rich in nutrients but low in oxygen. The difference this year is that winds from the south have been too unreliable to cycle surface water with more oxygen into the depths, Chan said. Instead, winds from the north are driving the oxygen-poor waters into shallow reaches closer to shore. As tiny marine organisms sink below the surface, their decay sucks more oxygen from the water. Scientists who have watched the eerie phenomenon repeat itself now wonder whether climate changes linked to GLOBAL WARMING are causing changes in the jet stream, which drives Oregon winds.
Though they had tracked the oxygen concentrations, they did not know what was happening to sea life until Tuesday, when a video camera aboard a remote-controlled submarine operated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife gave them a look. Rocky stretches of ocean floor off Cape Perpetua that normally teem with crab, rockfish, anemones and more had turned into ghostly graveyards. Dead crabs rocked with the water, fat pink worms that usually live in the seafloor instead lay dead on the surface and starfish had begun rotting away.
"People were sitting around the video screens with their mouths hanging open," Lubchenco said. The research team saw no fish, dead or alive, in any of the three spots they surveyed. That is different than in 2002, when they found dead fish lying on the bottom. "They were MIA completely," she said. Fish in the area may have fled to waters with more oxygen, while slower-moving crabs and starfish suffocated. Or any fish that died may have washed away.
"I hope the fish might have been able to get up and move," Weeks said. It is unclear what it means for fishermen and crabbers, he said. There have been reports of some anglers being skunked in usually reliable fishing spots. Chan said he had heard from a salmon fishermen who caught a flounder, a bottomfish, far above the bottom, where it may have been avoiding the suffocating layer.
But the last few crab seasons have brought good catches despite the appearance of dead zones, said Al Pazar, a fisherman from Florence and member of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. "The short answer is, 'yes, I'm definitely concerned,' " he said. "The long answer is, 'we'll have to watch this and see what happens.' "
Michael Milstein: michaelmilstein@news.oregonian.com
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7 ARTICLES ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING'S EFFECT ON OUR POLAR ICE CAPS AND OCEANS:
[1] Daniel Perlman's 8-11-06 CounterCurrents/San Francisco Chronicle article, "Greenland's Ice Cap Is Melting At Frighteningly Fast Rate [The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year. Indeed, scentists say Greenland's freshwater glaciers are melting at a rate three times faster than only five years ago, which they attribute to global warming.]: http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-perlman110806.htm
[2] Dr. John James' 8-8-06 CounterCurrents essay, "Collapse Of Greenland Ice Shield: Consequences" [Worth reading because it is based on fact rather than speculation; outlines five important consquences of the collapse of Greenland's ice shield.]: http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-james080806.htm
[3] Jeff Barnard's 8-6-06 AP/Washington Post article, "Scientists: Warming Creating 'Dead Zones'" [Scientists say a dead zone has been created by global warming off the Oregon coastline., and there are signs that it's getting bigger and spreading north to Washington's coastline.]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/06/AR2006080600413.html
[4] Michael Milstein's 7-27-06 Oregonian article, "'Dead Zones' Spread, Thicken Off NW Coast: Researchers Say Oceanic Wastelands May Be Becoming More Severe": http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news/1153968941325770.xml&coll=7
[5] Naomi Oreskes' 7-25-06 CC essay, "Global Warming: Signed, Sealed, And Delivered" [Climate-change deniers can imagine all the hypotheses they like, but it will not change the facts nor "the general induction from the phenomena."]: http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-oreskes250706.htm
[6] Stan Cox's 7-25-06 CD essay, "Cooling The Mall, Heating The Planet" [If the planet's 6.2 billion non-Americans used as much air conditioning per person in their homes as we Americans do, the world's total electricity requirement for residential AC would be 4 trillion kilowatt hours annually. That exceeds the entire combined annual electricity supply of China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Russia, Nigeria, and Mexico, which together are more than half of humanity. Hence, the author recommends that we implement some practical changes to reduce our AC-based consumption of electricity.]: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0725-29.htm
[7] Michael Milstein's 7-2-06 Oregonian article, "Cycle Of Life In Ocean Spinning Into Extremes: Models Suggest Climate Change Is Causing Strange Disruptions In Organisms Off Coast": http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news/1151733444141130.xml
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THE MORAL OF THE STORY. Anyone who's seen Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" knows these ominous signs are only the tip of the evidentiary iceberg. Nevertheless, we can go a long way toward curing the planet's ills and uplifting humankind, without threatening anyone's religious beliefs, by adopting the three-step global ethics:
1. All life is sacred and must be treated as such (this alone would eliminate many of the world ills and protect the environment; derived from Buddhism, Taoism, and many indigenous peoples' religions, such as Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans).
2. Love every person and have reverence for every living thing (this provides relational guidance; derived from Jesus' agape love, Buddha's compassion and Mohammed's charity).
3. Do good, harm no one, eschew war and other acts of evil (this provides social guidance; derived from the Judeo-Christian "Golden Rule" and Hindu-Buddhist "Karma").
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August 12, 2006 Article by: Michael Milstein, Source: The Oregonian newspaper, Prefatory Note, 7 links about global warming, and "Moral of the Story" by Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D.
