Oceans of crap

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No Pristine Oceans Left, New Map Shows
Mason Inman
for National Geographic News
February 14, 2008

No areas of the world's oceans remain completely untouched by humanity's influence, according to a new study.

Every area of the oceans is feeling the effects of fishing, pollution, or human-caused global warming, the study says, and some regions are being affected by all of these factors and more.

A team led by Ben Halpern of the University of California, Santa Barbara, created the first global map that shows the various kinds of damage being done to marine ecosystems.

The team assigned scores to 17 human impacts and tallied them up for every ocean region to reveal the overall effect people are having on marine life.

"The ocean is so big, I figured there would be a lot of areas that we hadn't gotten to or that people rarely get to," Halpern said.

"But when you look at the map, there are huge areas that are being impacted by multiple human activities," he said. "It was certainly a surprise to me."

The project revealed that more than 40 percent of the world's marine ecosystems are heavily affected.

Major hot spots include the North Sea off the northern coast of Europe and Asia's South China Sea and East China Sea.

The study will be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

Acid Oceans, Melting ice

Of all the human effects on marine ecosystems, climate change is having by far the largest overall impact, the researchers estimate.

Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are warming up the atmosphere and, more slowly, the oceans, the scientists explain.

Also, carbon dioxide dissolves into ocean waters, turning them more acidic, which makes it harder for corals, shellfish, and other animals to grow their protective skeletons or shells.

Remote, ice-bound areas in Antarctica and the Arctic are feeling the least impact, the study found, mostly because few people live there and those regions are hard to reach.

But global warming is still affecting those places. (Read related story: "Antarctica Ice Loss Faster Than Ten Years Ago" [January 14, 2008].)

The impacts of warming will continue to get worse, the study notes.

"Projections of future polar ice loss suggest that the impact on these regions will increase substantially," the study authors write.

The second biggest factor affecting marine life is fishing, they add.

Trawl-fishing for animals on the ocean floor, such as groundfish and shrimp, is especially damaging because the rest of the seafloor habitat is destroyed in the process, Halpern says.

The habitats that are suffering the worst impacts, rated "very high" in the study, are continental shelves, the shallow areas off the coasts of continents that are 200 to 750 feet (60 to 200 meters) deep.

Other areas with very high impacts include the northeastern U.S., where pollution, commercial shipping, and fishing are the major causes of harm.

The North Sea and Chinese coasts are hit by almost every kind of impact, Halpern said.

"It's a perfect storm."

Marine Parks

Elizabeth Babcock is a marine biologist at the University of Miami who was not involved in the new study.

"The most useful thing about this [study] is the ability to look at the big picture and to pick out areas that are particularly pristine that would be good places for having marine parks," she said.

The research could also be used to find "areas that are a lot more impacted than anyone thinks, that really need some conservation attention," she added.

"The map is useful for international groups to prioritize where they spend money for mitigation [of these problems] and conservation."

John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, said the study "highlights the fact that ecosystems in the sea know no political boundaries. Hence an international, cooperative approach is the only way forward."

The team did not measure the effects of certain practices, such as illegal fishing and aquaculture, the farming of aquatic plants and animals.

"This makes their estimates of habitat decline conservative, and things are probably worse than they outline," Pandolfi said.

Including more local impacts would also paint a bleaker picture, he added.

"A closer look at the nearshore human footprints will probably show a greater degree of degradation," he said.

Yet Halpern remains optimistic.

"My hope is that our results serve as a wake-up call to better manage and protect our oceans rather than a reason to give up," he said.

"Our goal, and really our necessity, is to do this in a sustainable way so that our oceans remain in a healthy state and continue to provide us the resources we need and want."

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Oceans eyed as new energy source
By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 42 minutes ago

DANIA BEACH, Fla. - Just 15 miles off Florida's coast, the world's most powerful sustained ocean current — the mighty Gulf Stream — rushes by at nearly 8.5 billion gallons per second. And it never stops.

To scientists, it represents a tantalizing possibility: a new, plentiful and uninterrupted source of clean energy.

Florida Atlantic University researchers say the current could someday be used to drive thousands of underwater turbines, produce as much energy as perhaps 10 nuclear plants and supply one-third of Florida's electricity. A small test turbine is expected to be installed within months.

"We can produce power 24/7," said Frederick Driscoll, director of the university's Center of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology. Using a $5 million research grant from the state, the university is working to develop the technology in hopes that big energy and engineering companies will eventually build huge underwater arrays of turbines.

From Oregon to Maine, Europe to Australia and beyond, researchers are looking to the sea — currents, tides and waves — for its infinite energy. So far, there are no commercial-scale projects in the U.S. delivering electricity to the grid.

Because the technology is still taking shape, it is too soon to say how much it might cost. But researchers hope to make it as cost-effective as fossil fuels. While the initial investment may be higher, the currents that drive the machinery are free.

There are still many unknowns and risks. One fear is the "Cuisinart effect": The spinning underwater blades could chop up fish and other creatures.

Researchers said the underwater turbines would pose little risk to passing ships. The equipment would be moored to the ocean floor, with the tops of the blades spinning 30 to 40 feet below the surface, because that's where the Gulf Stream flows fastest. But standard navigation equipment on ocean vessels could easily guide them around the turbine fields if their hulls reached that deep, researchers said.

And unlike offshore wind turbines, which have run into opposition from environmentalists worried that the technology would spoil the ocean view, the machinery would be invisible from the surface, with only a few buoys marking the fields.

David White of the Ocean Conservancy said much of the technology is largely untested in the outdoors, so it is too soon to say what the environmental effects might be.

"We understand that there are environmental trade-offs, and we need to start looking to alternative energy and everything should be on the table," he said. "But what are the environmental consequences? We just don't know that yet."

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued 47 preliminary permits for ocean, wave and tidal energy projects, said spokeswoman Celeste Miller. Most such permits grant rights just to study an area's energy-producing potential, not to build anything.

The field has been dealt some setbacks. An ocean test last year ended in disaster when its $2 million buoy off Oregon's coast sank to the sea floor. Similarly, a small test project using turbines powered by tidal currents in New York City's East River ran into trouble last year after turbine blades broke.

The Gulf Stream is about 30 miles wide and shifts only slightly in its course, passing closer to Florida than to any other major land mass. "It's the best location in the world to harness ocean current power," Driscoll said.

Researchers on the West Coast, where the currents are not as powerful, are looking instead to waves to generate power.

Canada-based Finavera Renewables has received a FERC license to test a wave energy project in Washington state. It will eventually include four buoys in a bay and generate enough power for up to 700 homes. The 35-ton buoys rise above the water about 6 feet and extend some 60 feet down. Inside each buoy, a piston rises and falls with the waves.

The company hopes later to be the first in the U.S. to operate a commercial-scale "wave farm," situated off Northern California. The project with Pacific Gas and Electric calls for Finavera to produce enough electricity to power up to 600 homes by 2012. Finavera eventually wants to supply 30,000 households.

Roger Bedard of the Electric Power Research Institute said an analysis by his organization found that wave- and tide-generated energy could supply only about 6.5 percent of today's electricity needs.

Finavera spokesman Myke Clark acknowledged that wave energy is "definitely not the only answer" to the nation's power needs and is never going to be as cheap as coal. But it could be "part of the energy mix," and could be used to great advantage off the coasts of Third World countries, where entire towns have no connection to electrical grids, he said.

Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission, said he fears the wave technology could crowd out his industry, which last year brought in 50 million pounds of crab and contributed $150 million to the state's economy.

"We've got a limited amount of flat sandy bottom on the Oregon Coast where we can put out pots and where we can fish, and the wave energy folks are telling us they need the same flat, sandy bottom," Furman said.

"It's not the 10-buoy wave park that has the industry concerned. It's that if it's successful, then that park turns into a 200- or 400-buoy park and it just keeps growing."

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