Brent Kearney

This blog entry brought my attention to the L.A. Times special report, Altered Oceans. The first part describes how our many years of polluting the oceans has lined the ocean beds with “a virulent pox” in which ancient bacteria and all sorts of nasties are thriving. Now,

… some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

One example is the miles of “hairy growth” that appeared on ocean beds around Australia. Local fisherman have dubbed it, “fireweed”. It is so toxic that to come in contact with it causes skin inflammation and boils, searing welts that won’t stop burning, and leave scars. Residue from it is not a good thing to breathe:

When fishermen tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air.

After one man bit a fishing line in two, his mouth and tongue swelled so badly that he couldn’t eat solid food for a week.
…
“It’s like acid,” Tanner said. “I couldn’t believe it. It kept pulling the skin off.”

University of Queensland’s marine botany lab identified the toxic weed as “a strain of cyanobacteria, an ancestor of modern-day bacteria and algae that flourished 2.7 billion years ago.”

Plankton and algae were once consumed by swarming clouds of small fish such as sardines and anchovies. These small fish have been harvested to feed our fish farms, reducing their numbers dramatically, allowing algae to flourish.

…every day about a billion gallons of sewage in South Florida are pumped offshore or into underground aquifers that seep into the ocean. The wastewater feeds a green tide of algae and bacteria that is helping to wipe out the remnants of Florida’s 220 miles of coral, the world’s third largest barrier reef.

97% of elkhorn and staghorn corals, previously the most populous kind, are gone, and threatened with extinction. Marine life in general is dying off, as the algae suck the oxygen out of the water, leaving little for more complex organisms. As fish die and sink to the bottom, even more food for bacteria is created in rot, and a self-perpetuating downward spiral has been gaining momentum. As if our overfishing wasn’t a big enough problem for marine life.

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