  Healthy Oceans New Key to Combating Climate Change. Credit: UNEP
By IDN Environment Desk
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
(IDN) - But for the World Oceans Day, that "continuous body of water" covering about 71 percent of the Earth's surface will be hardly on anyone's radar screen. In fact, the United Nations too started focussing worldwide attention on the oceans only in 2009 by marking June 8 as the World Oceans Day.
There is more than one reason to put the spotlight on oceans: they impact the global climate; most of the goods move by ship between seaports; they serve as the major supply source for shrimp, fish, crabs and lobster.
According to marine experts and legal scholars, the world has already consumed 90 per cent of the global stock of large fish on the high seas -- a third of it caught by illegal, unregulated and unreported vessels.
The rest of the fish could disappear by 2050, threatening the well-being of oceans and humans alike, warning that, unless humankind reversed course soon, it could be too late, they said kicking off the second annual World Oceans Day at a press conference on June 8, 2010 at the UN headquarters in New York.
"The actions that will be taken, starting now, for the next 10 years, may be the most important in the next 10,000 years," said Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and Adviser to Disneynature on the film 'Oceans'.
The Disneynature production, screened at UN headquarters, aims to raise public awareness about the need to better protect the sea. Also on June 8 night, New York City’s Empire State Building was lit up in white, blue and purple to signify the entirety of the oceans, from the shallows to the darker depths.
"Anything we care about -- our economies, our health, our security, life itself -- depends on the fact that this is a blue planet," Earle said. "It's our responsibility as never before to enable the ocean to prosper."
Noting that oceans regulated the world climate and were a critical part of the biosphere, she pointed out however that only 1 per cent of them were deemed protected areas.
Humans had eaten not only 90 per cent of large fish, but also smaller species like tuna, swordfish, shark and herring, while dumping ever-increasing quantities of plastics and other garbage into the seas.
That altered the seas in ways that scientists could not keep pace with, having merely scratched the surface of marine exploration, understanding and conservation, she said. Ignorance and complacency were a big part of the problem, she said.
"There are a lot of people who still think it's okay to put into the ocean whatever we want to, that it will be alright, and to take out of the ocean, without limit," Earle regretted.
CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA
David Freestone, Lobingier Visiting Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at George Washington University (USA), stressed the need for better ocean protection, probably under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 15 years after its entry into force.
He said regional fisheries management organizations were often blamed for overfishing from illegal, unregulated and unreported vessels, but those organizations only regulated two thirds of the fish caught.
"This is a major challenge. This is not the fault of the Convention, this is the fault of implementation," he said, adding that oceans were victims of climate change, but also played a major role in humankind's response to it.
Asked about practical tips for the film's viewers who wished to help preserve the oceans, Freestone said certain fish should be left alone and all fish must be caught in a sustainable way.
Eighty per cent of ocean pollution resulted from land-based sources such as sewage and nutrient runoff from gardens, he said, stressing that people must have more sustainable lifestyles to end the large-scale dumping of plastics into the sea.
The Oceans' adviser Earle said people could contribute on the basis of individual capacity, from legal experts working to enact and enforce rules to schoolchildren tapping into the consciences of policymakers and societies through letter-writing to curb the overfishing of tuna, swordfish and shark and to support protected areas.
Such countries as the Bahamas, the United Kingdom and the United States had already established protected ocean areas and others should follow suit, she said.
Isabelle Picco, Permanent Representative of Monaco to the United Nations, sadi: "We have the science, we have the rules, but what we're lacking is real implementation. So let's raise public awareness to enforce change at the policy level."
Monaco's commitment to protect the oceans was long-standing, she said, adding that the principality's Government had contributed to the film Oceans and would commemorate the 100th anniversary of Monaco’s Oceanographic Museum in November by launching the "Let the Mediterranean Sea Live" exhibition, focusing on desertification and jelly fish outbreaks, among other topics.
Monaco had already prohibited the consumption of Atlantic blue fin tuna in restaurants and other commercial establishments, she said, adding that it had established, alongside Italy and France, the first protected marine area on the high seas.
ENORMOUS VALUE
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged governments and citizens across the global to acknowledge the enormous value of the world’s oceans to humanity and ensure that pollution of the bodies of water by human activity is brought under control.
"The diversity of life in the oceans is under ever-increasing strain. Over-exploitation of marine living resources, climate change, and pollution from hazardous materials and activities all pose a grave threat to the marine environment.
"So does the growth of criminal activities, including piracy, which have serious implications for the security of navigation and the safety of seafarers," Ban said in a message to mark the World Oceans Day.
He said oceans played a key role in people's daily lives and were crucial to sustainable development, and an important frontier for research, with scientists exploring them at greater depths than ever before to discover new forms of marine life, which had the potential to advance human well-being.
"But, if we are to fully benefit from what oceans have to offer, we must address the damaging impacts of human activities," the Secretary-General said.
He pointed out that much action had been taken within the framework of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the so-called 'constitution for the oceans'. "But if we are to safeguard the capacity of the oceans to service society’s many and varied needs, we need to do much more," he added.
The UN Scientific, Education and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also sent out a message to highlight the importance of oceans to mankind and galvanize the world to act to stop damaging them.
"The wastes of our society, flowing from the land, and through the atmosphere, from agriculture, industry and a growing urban population can be seen in the fragile coastal waters and measured even in the centre of the water masses," the message said.
"We must collectively and unambiguously acknowledge the importance of the oceans to our existence on the planet. The ocean cleanses the air we breathe; it influences our weather, climate, and the water on which we depend."
The message was accompanied by an 'Ocean Call', which appeals for priority to be given to programmes in coastal and ocean management, ocean sciences and ocean technologies.
The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), a programme of UNESCO, chose the World Oceans Day to kick off events to mark its 50th anniversary.
"IOC, in partnership with other UN agencies and hundreds of associated oceanographic and marine research laboratories, is playing a vital role in addressing some of the major challenges facing the world," said UNESCO’s Director-General, Irina Bokova.
The challenges include identifying and protecting marine biodiversity, monitoring global climate change and coordinating tsunami warning systems.
Though generally described as several 'separate' oceans, these waters comprise one global, interconnected body of salt water sometimes referred to as the World Ocean or global ocean, derived from the Greek word Oceanus.
This concept of a continuous body of water with relatively free interchange among its parts is of fundamental importance to oceanography.
The major oceanic divisions are defined in part by the continents, various archipelagos, and other criteria. These divisions are (in descending order of size):
- Pacific Ocean, which separates Asia and Australia from the Americas
- Atlantic Ocean, which separates the Americas from Eurasia and Africa
- Indian Ocean, which washes upon southern Asia and separates Africa and Australia
- Southern Ocean, which, unlike other oceans, has no landmass separating it from other oceans and is therefore sometimes subsumed as the southern portions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, which encircles Antarctica and covers much of the Antarctic
- Arctic Ocean, sometimes considered a sea of the Atlantic, which covers much of the Arctic and washes upon northern North America and Eurasia.
BACKGROUND
According to scientists, the Pacific and Atlantic may be further subdivided by the equator into northern and southern portions. Smaller regions of the oceans are called seas, gulfs, bays, straits and other names.
Geologically, an ocean is an area of oceanic crust covered by water. Oceanic crust is the thin layer of solidified volcanic basalt that covers the Earth's mantle. Continental crust is thicker but less dense. From this perspective, the earth has three oceans: the World Ocean, the Caspian Sea, and Black Sea.
The latter two were formed by the collision of Cimmeria with Laurasia.
The Cimmerian Plate is an ancient tectonic plate that comprises parts of present-day Anatolia, Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, Indochina and Malaya regions.
The Cimmerian Plate was formerly part of the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration.
Laurasia was a supercontinent that most recently existed as a part of the split of the Pangaea supercontinent in the late Mesozoic era. It was located in the north after Pangaea split into two followed by Gondwanaland in the south. It included most of the landmasses which make up today's continents of the northern hemisphere, chiefly Laurentia (the name given to the North American craton), Baltica, Siberia, Kazakhstania, and the North China and East China cratons.
The Mediterranean Sea is at times a discrete ocean, because tectonic plate movement has repeatedly broken its connection to the World Ocean through the Strait of Gibraltar.
The Black Sea is connected to the Mediterranean through the Bosporus, but the Bosporus is a natural canal cut through continental rock some 7,000 years ago, rather than a piece of oceanic sea floor like the Strait of Gibraltar.
Despite their names, smaller landlocked bodies of saltwater that are not connected with the World Ocean, such as the Aral Sea, are actually salt lakes. (IDN-InDepthNews/09.06.2010)
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Copyright © 2010 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters
External links:
http://ioc-unesco.org/
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean#Geology
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