Our Oceans and the harm we do (Please read)

[W1nTry]

It's funny how in everyday life we take things for granted... there are alot of things going on around us that will directly impact on our well being, our childrens well being and even more so our children's children well being. This article and associated links was taking from an series posted in the LA Times and I believe as a concerned individual you owe it to your world to take a read:

Pollution has a massive impact on oceans' ecosystems

Nano Spot We're all doomed


By Mark Wendman: Tuesday 08 August 2006, 16:51

 A FANTASTIC series started at the LA Times last week - five parts with the first two parts up as of July 31st 2006. It begins to examine the root causes of what can only be called the silent calamity in the oceans.
Part One mostly covers the unusual proliferation of bacterial toxins, slimes, unusual jellyfish blooms and the like - over vast ocean areas, with the effect of killing many developed sea species.

The result suggests the afflicted oxygen-devoid regions may revert back to something approximating the promordial state of the ocean. The net result is that fish stocks and many crustaceans are in precipitous decline from the massive increasing blooms of ocean-born bacterial toxins, both inside these regions and adjacent.

The root causes are three main items:

1] Partially treated sewage discharges accumulating in massive quantities in the sea coasts of high population regions. The effects of partially or untreated sewage are not benign and will come back to bite us severely. Depleted fish stocks are not entirely due to overfishing, the cumulative ocean poisoning is not a minor effect. One wonders if there is some effect upon global warming or vice versa that might accelerate the death of common sea creatures?

2] Agricultural run-off and discharges, laden with animal sewage/nutrients / phosphorous and pesticides in unprecedented quantities. The pesticides while no longer laden with DDT, are in no way benign, and the nutrient/phosphous rich effluent causes massive algae and bacteria blooms, in addition to 1].

3] Many of the chemicals dumped in the ocean are persistent in the ecosystem, causing cumulative effects that are now becoming apparent in increasing level of sick sea mamals. We don't give the sea any time to recover from the continual onslaught of garbage dumped into it. We merely add more fuel to the fire at increasing rates.

In Part Two of the series there is notable coverage of a particular toxin associated with polluted seawater is especially insidious - domoic acid, a lethal accumulating neurotoxin produced by an evergrowing widespread diatom, Pseudonitzschia pungens.

The effects of domoic acid on the afflicted sea or land species (including man) are cumulative as the acid destroys neurons in the affected species hippocampus (man animal or fish) by forcing continous neural firing until the afflicted neuron dies. There is no safe dose, although no regulations properly acknowledge this.

The result of domoic acid exposure in any mammal - man, dolphin, whale and other sea creatures that might injest domoic acid through the food chain (clams and oysters are notorious for harboring poisonous domoic acid seasonally) is gradual cumulative cognitive decline in memory, or death beyond a critical cumulative dose/rate.

In the case of many sea mammals that have weirdly beached themselves, this can be often be due to acute exposure to large doses, fomenting domoic acid's destruction of the ability to navigate in their intended travel / migration, although on occasion due to powerful naval sonars damaging sensitive whale or dolphin organs. µ

L'INQ
LA Times