Is the ocean broken?

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by daiquiri, Oct 24, 2013.

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  1. daiquiri
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    daiquiri Engineering and Design

    According to the author of this story, it is: http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken

    And I would add - not only the oceans. Same stories can be heard from the old fishermen in the Med. I remember one of them telling me a story of how rich was the sea just 30-40 years ago. He could catch big lobsters and octopuses few meters from the shore, just outside of his small town in the Adriatic Sea. Now he has to search for long time before he finds few rare examples, and generally in some far and hard to reach spots. There were a few recent years, he told me, when no signs of octopuses could be seen around at all.

    I also remember an article in a Croatian newspaper dealing with the same fact, trying to dismiss it in a conceived way as a matter of natural cycles. I don't buy that story.
    I believe that the truth is much simpler - we are exhausting our seas and oceans. We are catching too much and throwing away too much.

    And I feel very worried about it.
     
  2. Mr Efficiency
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    Mr Efficiency Senior Member

    Or pollutants have taken their toll, including unknown effects, even of trace amounts, of certain chemicals that just weren't around till our lifetimes. Not far from where I live there has been a virtual collapse of an estuarine system that is now virtually depleted, except for a few exceptions, of everything that was once found there. No one seems to know what the cause is, but I don't think it is a co-incidence that the catchment of streams that empty into the area has undergone intensive residential and industrial development in recent times, where formerly it was just farmland or forest.
     
  3. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Ive been sailing east west, several times every year, in the med for almost 40 years.

    The change is dramatic. The huge migrating schools of tuna are gone, along with the sardines, anchovies, seabirds, sea turtles , whales...



    I can remember seeing hundreds of migrating sea turtles on the surface sleeping,
    I did not see one sea turtle in 9000 miles of sailing between may 1 and oct 1.

    Not one
     
  4. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Its over fishing. Too many people on earth..the ocean cant support it.

    Pollution and habitat destruction is also an issue but people pressure is the big one.

    The oceans will never recover.
     
  5. daiquiri
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    daiquiri Engineering and Design

    Yes, I believe this pretty much sums it up.
     
  6. dskira

    dskira Previous Member

    I agree completely with you.
    Fishing industry is the problem, not global warming or pollution or climate change.
    Since the nineteen century, fishing industry rampaged the sea.
    It is sad since the fish doesn't go all for human consumption, the most part of the fishing industry catch goes for feeding animals (poultry, beef, veal, porks), pharmaceutical, domestic cat and dog food (2 $ billions a year industry) and other products.

    disclosure: I did part of my living designing and building fishing vessel, and went myself on them. I know what we did first hand.
    It is not very honest for me now that I am almost retired to criticize the hands which fed me for so long.
    But it is the truth.
     
  7. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Finfish are history.

    What terrifing at present is the situation with shellfish.

    Farmed oysters and mussels are an environmentalist delight, easily farmed, they clean the water and since they are not carnivores they dont need to be fed.

    Ocean acidification is dissolving the imature shellfishes shell and producing up to 90 percent mortality.

    Bad, bad, bad
     
  8. SamSam
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    SamSam Senior Member

    I remember reading years ago the theory that the ocean was sick in the sense that people get sick, that the oceans were like living organisms and pollution etc had upset the balance and health of them and thereby it's inhabitants.

    In the 70s a friend took me diving on the East end of St Croix to show me the beautiful coral he had been shown the year before. But it was all dead, just a year later. He was pretty upset. There was no fishing there, so what kills coral like that if it's not global warming or pollution or climate change?

    One of the comments about the article..."Good game earth, thanks for playing."
     
  9. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Coral is very complex. They are symbiotic organisms . They cant swim to new areas so they relie on other organisms to deliver what they need. How they can survive for centuries then suddenly die is not fully understood. Obviosly an imbalance in the corals environment

    The same goes posidonia grass. Colonies of this grass can be one hundred thousand years old. The oldest living things on earth..then suddenly the colony dies

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207152545.htm
     
  10. SamSam
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    SamSam Senior Member

  11. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Hmm..... interesting. Its life cycle is similar to the posidonia grass
     
  12. daiquiri
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    daiquiri Engineering and Design

    Posidonia is one of the most important parts of the marine ecosystem. Possibly the most important. It is home, a shelter and sometimes a whole world to hundreds of different living organisms. So if the home gets destroyed, all the rest gets destroyed with it, catastrophically breaking the whole complex food chain of vast areas of the sea. I didn't know that it was declining by 5% every year, thanks for that info. Although it's yet another bad news.
     
  13. michael pierzga
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    michael pierzga Senior Member

    Its also important when it sheds its leaves and they float ashore. The organic debris is home to countless creatures and the meter deep piles of weed washed ashore on the beach forms a berm which protcts against beach erosion and lowland flooding.

    The authorities and enviromentalists are endvouring to protect posidonia but its difficult.

    Yachts and tourists. Anchors and sewage kill colonies of the weed.

    Soon whole coastal areas will be no anchor zones. You can imagine the pressure brought by yacht charter companies to prevent this.
    http://lifeposidonia.caib.es/user/index_cs.htm
     
  14. El_Guero

    El_Guero Previous Member

    Progressives continue to profit from resources and then champion 'environmental solutions.'

    Too MANY people consume too many resources. Malthus said this over 100 years ago, and still 'scientists' laugh at his hypothesis because he misjudged the process by 50 to a 100 years.

    We are catching too much .... same with farming .... oil consumption .... and even BOAT PRODUCTION .... But, we must forgive a little on our desire for new and pretty boats ....

    :D
     

  15. Corley
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    Corley epoxy coated

    It seems that fishing is one of the last areas where we pillage nature in an unrelenting way. Every other situation where we have decided a resource is "vast" rather than finite we have managed to destroy it why would the ocean be any different?
     
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