The Stray World

Ocean life is amazing.

I fear the ocean. It is an alien world over­whelm­ingly unsuit­able for my land-locked body.

It is an envir­on­ment where all life truly func­tions in a three-dimensional landscape.

For­wards and backwards;

left and right;

down­wards and upwards.

It’s depths hides many secrets. Won­der­ful, beau­ti­ful creatures of the deep more ima­gin­at­ive and won­drous than any fic­tional char­ac­ter humans can breath to life in sci­ence fiction.

Fall­ing into the ocean would be a heav­enly stroll if only we could explore it without dying from the immense pres­sures and  over­come our inab­il­ity to extract water-bound oxy­gen naturally.

Sci­ence now offers us a glimpse of the beauty to be found in the ocean depths via the Census of Mar­ine Life. And images delivered by our instru­ments lend us a sense of won­der upon the amaz­ing life that we had hitherto been ignor­ant about.

As Dis­cover Magazine notes:

The Census of Mar­ine Life was offi­cially launched in 2000. After a dec­ade of work, some of the most inter­est­ing find­ings are the delin­eations of the ocean’s unknowns. For example, the Census upped the estim­ate of the num­ber of known mar­ine spe­cies to nearly 250,000, but still couldn’t estim­ate the total num­ber of spe­cies in the ocean. It might be mil­lions, the report says, or tens or hun­dreds of mil­lions, when all the ocean’s microbes are accoun­ted for.

Unfor­tu­nately, much of what we now see is in danger of dis­ap­pear­ing while we stand by with eyes wide shut.

A study of 10 groups of large, com­mer­cially import­ant mar­ine anim­als (such as reef fish, whales, sharks, and open ocean fish like tuna) found that at their low­est point, these groups had declined by nearly 90 per­cent from their his­toric baselines. How­ever, after reach­ing their low points a few of these groups have shown signs of recovery–a hope­ful indic­a­tion that con­ser­va­tion pro­grams can work. On the other end of the food chain, research­ers found evid­ence of a global but patchy decline in phyto­plank­ton, the tiny pho­to­syn­thetic organ­isms that are a cru­cial source of food for many ocean critters.

Now we have our senses enlightened. Images uplift­ing and wondrous.

These are the creatures that we are stead­ily mur­der­ing with impun­ity. As selfish­ness, stingi­ness, and greed replace our inher­ent abil­ity to reason, and to decide that some things are worth protecting.

Whatever the price may be.