Our environmental clock is ticking
I have a very special relationship with the Sea of Cortes.
It sits in the Gulf of California between The Baja and mainland Mexico and is the second-longest peninsula in the world. It has a surface area of approximately 62,000 square miles with depths that measure from a few inches at shoreline to nearly 10,000 feet in its deepest waters.
It is home to more than 5,500 marine species from tiny micro-invertebrates to the magnificent whales that give birth in its waters.
I have an ongoing love for it because it sits in my backyard.
Because of its biological diversity, the famed conservationist and explorer Jacques Cousteau called the Sea of Cortes the world’s aquarium.
Author John Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist and ecologist, spent a lot of time along the Baja shores, particularly the area around the estuary at San Jose del Cabo where they collected marine specimens to study at Ricketts’ Pacific Biological Laboratories, a marine biology supply house located in Northern California.
Cara and I lived in San Jose del Cabo for a couple of years. We visited the estuary frequently, walked the streets Steinbeck and Ricketts walked, and drank and ate in one of the cantinas where they would spend an evening after wading through the waters all day.
We would sit in the sand at Playa Santa Maria and watch the humpbacks dance out on the water. I fished those waters and saw some spectacular marlin, the descendants of those that Ernest Hemingway would chase across the mostly glassy sea. I sat in Hemingway’s chair at the One & Only Palmilla Resort, a celebrity playground where you can look out over in the Sea of Cortes and feel the inspiration that coursed through his brain.
We’re a little more northern these days in a little fishing village where every morning the fishermen take their small pangas to sea, whether fair or foul weather, and challenge the elements to eke out a meager living.
It’s a daily ritual in many parts of the world where people’s livelihoods come from our oceans.
Those livelihoods are threatened now, marine life becoming more endangered because of human waste and neglect.
The waters off my backyard are filled with debris.
A biologist friend who was working here to try to save the dying population of vaquita, a mini-porpoise only found here, told me the bottom of the Sea of Cortes is stacked in many areas with four feet or more of abandoned fishing nets. I’ve walked stretches of otherwise beautiful beach in La Paz, where those same kinds of nets have washed ashore.
This problem is not just limited to here on The Baja, either.
Volunteers working with the Ocean Voyages Institute, a nonprofit group out of California, recently returned from 25 days at sea where they dredged 36 metric tons of abandoned fishing nets from a patch of water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California. They picked up another 8 million metric tons of plastic bottles, bags, toys, and other refuse that made its way to sea.
Ocean explorer Victor Vescovo recently made the deepest dive ever by a human in a submarine when he dropped 6.8 miles below the surface to the deepest spot on Earth in a little corner of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
He made some rather important marine life discoveries, of course, but he also found the ocean floor littered with many angular metal and plastic objects.
Still, we remain as dependent on our seas as we were when we first crawled to shore (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/why-care-about-ocean.html).
The oceans provide more than half of the world’s oxygen supply and absorb 50 times more carbon dioxide than our atmosphere.
We rely on the oceans to transport heat from the equator to the poles to help regulate climate.
More than 75 percent of all U.S. trade involves shipping.
The U.S. economy produces $282 billion in revenue related to ocean-dependent goods and services, which employ about 3 million people.
We get many medicines from the oceans.
And of course, it is a tremendous source of food.
We’ve all seen the images of whales and dolphins and sea turtles ensnared by these nets. We’ve all seen how fish get entangled in those plastic bits that hold together a six-pack of beer or pop. We’re seeing more and more images of dead sea creatures that have eaten floating plastic bags, mistaking them for food.
The most common debris they find in our waters?
Cigarette filters, which are made of cellulose acetate, which is almost impossible to break down. Exposure to UV rays simply converts one cigarette filter into thousands of tiny microplastics.
Land contamination flows downstream, threatening our coral reefs and polluting our waters. Blown coral reefs and polluted water destroy habitat, which in turn negatively impacts the lives of marine life from the tiniest micro-organisms to giant killer whales.
It soils the seas, so to speak, interfering with the fragile ecosystems that support life on the planet.
It’s science and it cannot be denied or laughed off by the braying jackasses who shrug off eco-friendly efforts they chalk up to political correctness instead of healing our planet.
That’s why, of course, climate change is also science that is being hugely snubbed by the ignorant and uninformed who would keep us out of green efforts like the Paris Agreement or other global efforts at saving our environment.
Environmentalists have listed the seven biggest environmental threats to Earth as being climate change, species extinction and biodiversity loss, air and water pollution, water crises, depletion of natural resources, deforestation, and soil degradation.
We have a hand in all of those threats.
The late Walt Kelly, the cartoonist who brought us the beloved Pogo comic strip, long ago coined the term, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Although his words were not directed at looming environmental disasters, his words were amazingly prescient.
Our lack of care or understanding of the greater world around us, not realizing how all living things are connected, and the tragic impact of our actions is how we got into this place where we are hustling to steal water from our neighbors and tear up the landscape to transport it to our faucets. We still have a growing dependence and stubborn reluctance to move as rapidly away from fossil fuels as possible. And our steadfast refusal to do all we can to prevent the extinction of the species disappearing around us at an alarming rate. We arrived at this place in time and space because we have fouled our air and water, because we have wasted our resources from water to oil, because we have stripped our forests, and because we have poisoned our soil.
We can do things to help stabilize our environment, of course, but it’s not easy.
The biggest thing would be to improve your home’s energy efficiency. It might cost more for that new refrigerator, but in the long run, it will conserve energy and reduce your monthly power bill.
Buy local. It may cost a little more, but it will cut down on the emissions those trucks that ship your goods spew. It will also sustain the mom and pop shops in your neighborhood.
You can compost to improve the quality of your soil.
You can conserve water. Try xeriscaping, using plants native to your region. A green lawn is nice, but think of how many glasses of water that takes from your children and grandchildren each day.
Support eco-friendly producers. Look for products that are manufactured by companies that use materials that are more environmentally sound.
Drive less or carpool. Yes, we are getting much better mileage from our modern-day vehicles, but we are still using far too much of our fossil fuel supply.
Recycle, reuse, or repurpose all of those items that would otherwise end up in the landfill, spoiling the land for generations or longer.
Most importantly, learn and open your mind.
Our environmental clock is ticking. And we are not doing enough to stop it.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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