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Commentary: How to poison 65 million square miles of ocean

Posted by: Maven on April 4, 2010 at 6:35 am

From Roz Savage at The Huffington Post, this commentary:

“The Pacific Ocean is very, very big. Huge. Enormous. Especially when you are crossing it in a 23-foot rowboat at an average speed of 2 miles per hour.

Our usual way of looking at the world does a great disservice to the Pacific. We cut it half, and fling those two halves to the left and right extremities of the map. But go into Google Earth and turn the globe around until you are looking at the Pacific. You’ll see a little wafer of North America in the top right corner, and a sliver of Australia in the bottom left, and 25,000 tiny islands scattered as if by a giant’s hand. Apart from that it is blue, all blue. A whole lot of nothing.

Except that it isn’t. This neglected back-side of the earth is a 65 million square mile life-support system, without which life on this planet would not be possible. Covering nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface, the Pacific is larger than the total land area of the world. Over 60% of the world’s fish catch comes from the Pacific. I tried to find out how many individual fish might be in the ocean, but precise data is lacking. The top ranked reply to my Googled question was “a crap load”, which is probably as good an answer as any. … “

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April 4, 2010 · Filed Under Oceans & Beaches

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