The Fate of the Ocean

Our oceans are under attack, and approaching a point of no return. Can we survive if the seas go silent?

By Julia Whitty | March/April Mother-Jones 2006 Issue

"...Although we carry the ocean within ourselves, in our blood and in our eyes, so that we essentially see through seawater, we appear blind to its fate. Many scientists speak only to each other and studiously avoid educating the press. The media seems unwilling to report environmental news, and caters to a public stalled by sloth, fear, or greed and generally confused by science. Overall, we seem unable to recognize that the proofs so many politicians demand already exist in the form of hindsight. Written into the long history of our planet, in one form or another, is the record of what is coming our way.

“The root cause of this crisis is a failure of both perspective and governance,” concludes the seminal Pew Oceans Commission’s 2003 report to the nation [2]. “We have failed to conceive of the oceans as our largest public domain, to be managed holistically for the greater public good in perpetuity.” Instead, we have roiled the waters, compromising the equilibrium that allowed our species to flourish in the first place, and providing ourselves with a host of challenges that will test our clever brains and our opposable thumbs as never before. Afloat on arks of dry land, we sail toward a stormy future.

No one who survives time at sea is ever less than humbled by its powers over life.