The Oceans Are in Danger

Man's irrational activities that have led to the oceans' pollution are starting to show their effects.

Two weeks ago, researchers warned about the oceans' acidity increase due to the absorption of huge CO2 quantities. Marine biologists come to complete the big picture of the disaster that awaits us, warning about the increase of the oceanic temperature and about the dwindling of plankton population.

Coastal ocean temperatures are 2 to 5 degrees above normal, which may be related to a lack of updwelling, in which cold, nutrient-rich water is brought to the surface.

On Washington beaches, bird surveyors in May typically find an average of one dead Brandt's cormorant every 34 miles of beach. This year, cormorant deaths averaged one every eight-tenths of a mile, according to data gathered by volunteers with the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, which Julia Parrish, an associate professor in the School of Aquatic Fisheries and Sciences at the University of Washington, has directed since 2000.

Researchers say that this is due to the absence of northerly wind which generate updwelling, an essential phenomenon to the nutritive refreshing of the oceans' upper layers.

"In 50 years, this has never happened," said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport, Ore. "If this continues, we will have a food chain that is basically impoverished from the very lowest levels."