Worldwide Coastal and Ocean Woes Continue

"The oceans are in trouble and so are we," oceanographer Sylvia Earle, National Geographic explorer in residence and researcher for the Smithsonian, was quoted as saying in an article on the web by Seth Borenstein writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and San Jose Mercury News Washington Bureaus. Citing a study by the Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment covering 1976 to 1996, Borenstein reports a greater than fourfold increase in harmful algal blooms (74 to 329). "stranding of whales, dolphins and porpoises jumped from nearly zero in 1972 to almost 1,400 in 1994," he writes. And mass fish kills, which were "nearly unheard-of before 1973" reached "almost 140 in 1996." While fish and mammals were dying, and increasing number of people were suffering from health problems associated with water: swimmer's itch, pfiesteria and cholera, according to Borenstein.

If human health doesn't make you worry about the quality of water, consider the economics. Pfiesteria, which causes temporary memory loss, "cost $60 million in losses to fisheries and tourism, hospitalization of victims and cleanup efforts," Borenstein writes.

Don't think that the U.S. coastal woes are the only ones in the world. Ireland's coast has become a dumping ground for "litter, sewage, builders' rubble, plastic fishing gear and coastal erosion," according to a study by an environmental group, Coastwatch, and reported by Tim O'Brien in The Irish Times. He reports that the greatest threat is erosion.

Meanwhile, down under, 200 years of tree-clearing in the Murray-Darling Basin has contributed to "rapid escalation of a 'salinity crisis'" afflicting Australia's biggest river system, the Murray-Darling, according to an article by Murray Hogarth in The Sydney Morning Herald. Hogarth cites a major report by the "Prime Minister's most senior advisors" that warns of a serious threat of salt intrusion on "agricultural production, fauna and flora, water quality and even roads, buildings and other infrastructure in towns." Salinization occurs in the basin because ancient salt deposits are carried to the surface by rising water tables.

Hogarth quotes the doom and gloom report as saying that "The numbers and areas impacted will increase due to past actions, regardless of what actions we take now." He writes: "New forecasts in the report say that over the next 50 years salt is expected to devastate up to 15 million hectares of farmland, half of it in NSW (New South Wales). . .," where it will "also threaten urban water supplies, and a million people in Adelaide may be infected." He writes that the greatest risk is to the "West Australian wheat belt, and much of the Murray-Darling Basin, which provides water for 3 million people in four States, as well as agriculture worth nearly $9 billion a year."

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