TROUBLED WATERS
Over the millennial, the world’s ocean has been of tremendous value to every living creature in the Earth ecosystem. Serving as an aquatic highway linking up continents, nations and cities, it supplies an array of food, medicine and the much needed oxygen cooling down the heated environment. An endless cycling of water, it collects every unwanted materials from rivers, purifying the water bodies around it.
Being the origin of life itself, the oceans contains over 90% of living space and an estimated 80% of all life on Earth can be found within the ocean. However, less than 10% of this has been explored so far. In fact, it can be inferred that we have a more detailed map of the rocky planet Mars than we have of the Earth’s oceans. There is so much more about the ocean that we may never be able to explore. Unfortunately, within the last 150 years, we have been destroying this magnificent ecosystem with our activities.
Marine plants such as phytoplankton, kelp and algae are the power house of the Earth as these tiny plants accounts for most of the oxygen in the atmosphere. In fact, scientists at the National Geographic estimate that they account for 70% of oxygen in the atmosphere. It is appalling that the proliferation of greenhouse gases poses a serious threat to this Earth engines. The oceans serve as a carbon sink for the continuously polluted planet, absorbing most of the harmful gases that have been prevented from escaping into outer space due to the abundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These tiny marine plants absorb and recycle these gases giving out oxygen as a byproduct. However, there is a limit to which the oceans can absorb these gases and when that is reached, it becomes toxic to aquatic fauna and flora.
Water behaves like a black body thus it has a very low albedo- it reflects a relatively low amount of sunlight than it receives. Short wave radiation from the sun infuses into the Earth’s atmosphere so much energy than is needed, thus the unused energy ought to be reflected back into the atmosphere, but the proliferation of greenhouse gases prevents this from happening effectively and all these energy needs to go somewhere. The world’s oceans absorb this excess energy preventing the earth from getting too hot. Consequently, this absorption of excess energy has adverse effects one of which is the excessive warming up of water bodies and the melting of ice caps.
The world’s ocean in spite of its magnificence is faced with another serious threat which not only threatens aquatic live, but also life on land including humans through a process known as biomagnification. The culprit of course is no other than the homo sapien — man. Since man invented the artificial plastic, the world would never remain the same. Though having many advantages, its disadvantages stealthily threatens the continuous existence of man on the planet. Wherever plastics are discarded indiscriminately, they pollute. But in the oceans, they not only pollute, they become poison traps for aquatic creatures that mistakes them for food. Hundreds and thousands of sea creatures as well as birds are washed ashore every year, dead. When dissected, plastics are found within these birds and this came from the fish they ate which swallowed plastics. Plastics are not biodegradable — they cannot decay. In fact, all plastics ever produced still exist.
Once polluted, oceans are difficult to clean up. At Step-Up Green, we say that it is pertinent that Man threads carefully so he doesn’t wipe off other species from off the face of the Earth and himself. It is high time the word is spread out and man stands up to his responsibility of taking care of the ecosystem. The most advanced of creatures ought to be in charge and take care not being in charge and destroy. Mars has no ocean. There’s no planet B. We’ve got to stand in for the planet. Let’s take responsibility.
27 August 2020
-Imoikor Joshua
#Environmentalist #PreserveLife #ClimateAction #ExploreOcean #ForNature #Wildlife #ClimateAction #StepUpGreen #OceanLife #CitizensClimateLobby #Sustainability #OurResponsibility #UN #PlanetEarth #PlantTrees #Afforestation #NoPlanetB #gca #unep
