Word: oceanic
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...lonely center of the North Pacific Ocean, farther from just about everything than just about anywhere, lies Midway Atoll. I've come with Canadian writer Nancy Baron to the world's largest Laysan albatross colony--400,000 exquisite masters of the air--a feathered nation convened to breed, cramming an isle a mile...
Ravenous, goose-size chicks so jam the landscape that it resembles a poultry farm. Many have waited more than a week for a meal, while both parents forage the ocean's vast expanse. An adult glides in on 7-ft. (2-m) wings. After flying perhaps 2,000 miles (3,200 km) non-stop to return here, in 10 minutes she will be gone again, searching for more food. She surveys the scene through lovely dark pastel-shadowed eyes, then calls, "Eh-eh-eh." Every nearby chick answers, but she recognizes her own chick's voice and weaves toward...
...Most people think oil spills cause the most harm to ocean life. They don't. Fishing does. When a tanker wrecks, news crews flock to film gooey beaches and dying animals. Journalists rush right past the picturesque fishing boats whose huge nets and 1,000-hook long-lines wreak far more havoc on the marine world than spilled...
...Most ocean pollution doesn't come from ships. It comes from land. Gravity is the sea's enemy. Silt running off dirt roads and clear-cut forest land ruins coral reefs and U.S. salmon rivers. Pesticides and other toxics sprayed into the air and washed into rivers find the ocean. (Midway's albatrosses have in their tissues as much of the industrial chemicals called PCBs as do Great Lakes bald eagles.) The biggest sources of coastal pollution are waste from farm animals, fertilizers and human sewage. They can spawn red tides and other harmful algal blooms that rob oxygen from...
...biologically richest stretches of ocean are more disrupted than the richest places on land. Continents still have roadless wilderness areas where motorized vehicles have never gone. But on the world's continental shelves it is hard to find places where boats dragging nets haven't etched tracks into sea-floor habitats. In Europe's North Sea and along New England's Georges Bank and Australia's Queensland coast, trawlers may scour the bottom four to eight times every year. And the U.S. National Marine Sanctuaries hardly deserve the name. Commercial and recreational fishing with lines, traps or nets is allowed...