Saturday, March 01, 2008


ABOUT YOUR CHLDRENS' OCEANS...


There are folks that say global warming is a hoax, no danger of overfishing, plenty of whales, same for the dodo, passenger pigeon, buffalo, polar bear who really gives a shit, but here you can see just a single day's worth of what is being done to YOUR oceans, to say nothing of the oceans of your children and theirs... and theirs...

These are just the shallow scourings, the ones you can see, the ones visible from space... The sight you have is nowhere near the netting, the trawling, the pollution and other aspects of blindness. Imagine a year's worth of everything invisible that's done to the oceans.

Enjoy that tuna sandwich.

source: Treehugger, via neatorama

"Arguably the single most destructive human action for the world's oceans, bottom trawling, a practice commonly used to dredge up deep water fish, leaves behind a trail of destruction that can clearly be seen from space. The above image of the Gulf of Mexico, captured by the Landsat satellite in late 1999, shows the sediment trails left behind by individual ships (the bright spots) - a testament to the utter devastation the practice exerts on vast seafloor ecosystems.

Les Watling, a zoologist at the University of Hawaii who was interviewed by LiveScience's Andrea Thompson, said that bottom trawling drags the equivalent of an area twice the size of the combined lower 48 states each year. The sediment plumes arise as ships drag their nets across the ocean floor, moving rocks, crushing reefs and stirring up various marine organisms.

Watling described these plumes as just the "tip of the iceberg," explaining that most trawling takes place in waters deep enough to mask the plumes from sight. He presented the results of his work at the AAAS meeting in Boston alongside John Amos of SkyTruth, the West Virginia-based remote sensing and digital mapping non-profit group that tracked the plumes."

3 comments:

Martin J Frid said...

Thanks for posting that image, I saw it a few days ago, and felt terrible. I wonder if the fishermen have seen it... Or the company excecutives? Or are they maybe so hardened by what they hear and see every day, that this is no longer an issue? After all the image is almost a decade old.

Why we were not told?

Who should tell us?

Anonymous said...

Thanks Bob, I come from a seaside suburb of Brisbane Australia where there is a sizeable prawn-fishing fleet -I suppose you'd call it a 'fleet'. And I read some time ago that prawn-trawling degrades the ocean floor - haven't indulged in prawns since. I ate sushi twice last week and felt guilty both times. Used to be 'semi-vegetarians' could afford the ethical luxury of 'eating fish occasionally' - doubt that would stand up to scrutiny nowadays, esp here in Japan. Thanks for caring.

Anonymous said...

This, and so much more is terribly sad to me. Mankind will be the destruction of mankind; and all other creatures as well.