[All] Book "Sea Sick" on what is happening to our oceans

[Lori Strothard]

 I am listening to Quirks and Quarks on CBC Radio (89.1 fm) and the author of this book and some other scientists are talking about for one thing the growing number of "dead zones" in our oceans. These occur usually where fertilizer run-off from agriculture and other agricultural waste congregates in the water bodies en masse and makes it anaerobic (sucks out most of the oxygen) so very little can live in it,i ncluding plankton - but jellyfish can live in low-oxygen conditions so they abound in dead zones.. Climate change exacerbates the problem.She said these huge blobs of water are viscous- that nothing will mix with them. But dead zones can revert to normal healthy water if the agriculture stops. For example she said the Black Sea was a huge total dead zone, but in 1989 when Russia was in difficulty, they stopped supporting agriculture there, and the Sea had reverted to a normal healthy body of water by 1993. Other scientists talk about acidification, coral bleaching, huge plastic floating garbage patches, tons of lost fishing nets and crab traps just left to drift, which continue to catch things once abandoned, and are estimated to be trapping and killing about 10% of ocean creatures per year. Very interesting and extremely disturbing.

You can listen to this in a podcast if you go to http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/09-10/qq-2009-09-12.html   

Lori Strothard


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