Word: coastal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Whatever the precise cause, trouble begins when the level of pollutants in the water overwhelms the capacity of estuaries to assimilate them. The overtaxed system, unable to absorb any more nutrients or contaminants, simply passes them along toward bays and open coastal areas. "When the system is working," says Maurice Lynch, a biological oceanographer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, "it can take a lot of assault. But when it gets out of whack, it declines rapidly...
When such blights occur in coastal areas, the result can be devastating. Last November a red tide off the coast of the Carolinas killed several thousand mullet and all but wiped out the scallop population. Reason: the responsible species, Ptychodiscus brevis, contains a poison that causes fish to bleed to death. Brown tides, unknown to Long Island waters before 1985, have occurred every summer since; they pose a constant threat to valuable shellfish beds...
...effects of man-made pollution on coastal zones can often be easily seen; far less clear is the ultimate impact on open seas. The ocean has essentially two ways of coping with pollutants: it can dilute them or metabolize them. Pollutants can be dispersed over hundreds of square miles of ocean by tides, currents, wave action, huge underwater columns of swirling water called rings, or deep ocean storms caused by earthquakes and volcanoes...
Some communities are leading the way in trying to preserve their shores and coastal waters. In March the legislature of Suffolk County on Long Island passed a law forbidding retail food establishments to use plastic grocery bags, food containers and wrappers beginning next year. Sixteen states have laws requiring that the plastic yokes used to hold six-packs of soda or beer together be photo- or biodegradable. Last December the U.S. became the 29th nation to ratify an amendment to the Marpol (for marine pollution) treaty, which prohibits ships and boats from disposing of plastics -- from fishing nets to garbage...
...there is all too little in the way of concerted multinational activity to heal the oceans. That means pollution is bound to get worse. Warns Clifton Curtis, president of the Oceanic Society, a Washington-based environmental organization: "We can expect to see an increase in the chronic contamination of coastal waters, an increase in health advisories and an increase in the closing of shellfish beds and fisheries." ) Those are grim tidings indeed, for both the world's oceans and the people who live by them...