Empty Oceans

   I was late in making this entry, so I have written a thousand words to make up for being a day late, and I will not count a single word of this for this week.

   Have you ever seen the Little Mermaid? Or perhaps an Animal Planet program on sea life? You see before you thousands upon thousands of fish and other creatures of the deep. It is no wonder that little see a problem in the amount of fishing we do. Such films working over our entire lives will definitely make us a little biased against the scientists who try to spread the word about the destruction we do.

   Such movies and influences have made us think that the ocean is a huge, bountiful place. They think that since the ocean is so vast, it will never run out of life and food. Not so. Most scientists will tell you that the ocean is like a desert. There are so little places to hide, so little food, and so little nourishment, that although there is a lot of life, it is concentrated in a few areas.

    We call these areas reefs. They are comparable to an oasis in a desert, for they hold a huge abundance of life. The structure of a reef is made up of bony coral. These corals provide several key things for the survival of many species of sea life. They provide shelter, food, and a place to do things such as farm algae and perform symbiosis (two species interacting with each other).

   So with all of those traits, we get several algae and coral and other life forms near the  bottom of the food chain. That, of course, brings in predators, producing a thriving ecosystem which can be as large as a few square feet, to the huge Great Barrier Reef, which can be seen from space.

   Reefs were few and far apart already before man ever came to be, and they were fairly safe from harm even when we just started throwing in a pole. It has only been in the last few decades, when technology has began to catch up with them, and start to deplete them. Not only this, but destructive devices and practices (such as bottom trawling) destroy reefs and waste unwanted animals that will not be used and will just become debris in the bottom when they dump them overboard.

    There is a certain point when nature cannot replenish itself from what we take. We have more than passed that point with our motor boats and detection technology. The ocean is starting to look more barren than it even used to look. If we don't do something, we may end up with an extreme crisis.

    Government officials have made regulations, restrictions, and rules, but although they exist, there is no one to enforce them. The coast guard is not responsible, and there is no man-power to make sure that all fishermen and women use the ocean in a good, renewable way. So, if they took out the regulations now, it really wouldn't make much difference. Our government still does not care about the environment and making sure it stays replenish-able and healthy.

   If you want much more detailed account of our problems with the over-fishing, I would recommend either renting or finding on Youtube a movie called Empty Oceans, Empty Nets. It really explains well what some people are doing right, and what a lot more are doing wrong. It shows technologies that we could use to replenish Ocean and Sea life, and prevent them from ever happening again.

   If we were to lose the ocean life, it would be disastrous for the entire human race. No more sea food. To you and me, we might not care, because in the land-locked U.S.A, we don't need fish very much, for we have other main sources of food. Some countries around the world, however, depend almost one hundred percent on seafood to feed the people. Millions would die, and millions more would go hungry. All because we are wasteful and destructive.

   This is a much more serious problem than Global Warming or even Oil shortages, for very few people know how much is gone and how much is truly at stake. We are risking what will be the biggest food crisis in the history of humanity. Imagine the Irish potato famine across the whole world. A large percent of the population will die, and here we are indulging and not listening to the facts.

   We as a people must act. We must spread the word, and help to make sure that we can save the creatures of the ocean for the good of our fellow men. We must act, or have the deaths of millions occur because of the short-sightedness of others.

   My biggest fear is that we will be the most villanized generation in all of the history of mankind if we don't act on this and other things. We could also be known as the greatest, if we solved these problems and fixed our government and environment. Unfortunately, we are all human, so the chance of that are small. Please help to make that dream a reality.