Word: oceanic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This summer's pollution of Northeastern beaches and coastal waters is only the latest signal that the planet's life belt, as Cousteau calls the ocean, is rapidly unbuckling. True, there are some farsighted projects here and there to repair the damage, and there was ample evidence in Atlanta last week that the Democrats hope to raise the nation's consciousness about environmental problems. The heightened interest comes not a moment too soon, since marine biologists and environmentalists are convinced that oceanic pollution is reaching epidemic proportions...
...blight is global, from the murky red tides that periodically afflict Japan's Inland Sea to the untreated sewage that befouls the fabled Mediterranean. Pollution threatens the rich, teeming life of the ocean and renders the waters off once famed beaches about as safe to bathe in as an unflushed toilet. By far the greatest, or at least the most visible, damage has been done near land, which means that the savaging of the seas vitally affects human and marine life. Polluted waters and littered beaches can take jobs from fisherfolk as well as food from consumers, recreation from vacationers...
Despite the overwhelming evidence of coastal pollution, cleaning up the damage, except in a few scattered communities, has a fairly low political priority. One reason: most people assume that the vast oceans, which cover more than 70% of the world's surface, have an inexhaustible capacity to neutralize contaminants, by either absorbing them or letting them settle harmlessly to the sediment miles below the surface. "People think 'Out of sight, out of mind,' " says Richard Curry, an oceanographer at Florida's Biscayne National Park. The popular assumption that oceans will in effect heal themselves may carry some truth, but scientists...
Marine scientists are only now beginning to understand the process by which coastal waters are affected by pollution. The problem, they say, may begin hundreds of miles from the ocean, where nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as contaminants, enter rivers from a variety of sources. Eventually, these pollutants find their way into tidal waters. For the oceans, the first critical line of defense is that point in estuaries, wetlands and marshes where freshwater meets salt water. Marine biologists call this the zone of maximum turbidity -- literally, where the water becomes cloudy from mixing...
There, nutrients and contaminants that have dissolved in freshwater encounter the ionized salts of seawater. The resulting chemical reactions create particles that incorporate the pollutants, which then settle to the bottom. As natural sinks for contaminants, these turbidity zones protect the heart of the estuary and the ocean waters beyond...