Stand on the Maine coast and contemplate the sea, as I did on my last vacation, and one thing is clear: There is no definitive adjective to properly describe it. Immense. Colossal. Powerful. Mysterious. Unfathomable. Mind-blowing. These words and their hyperbolic brethren are all startlingly inadequate when it comes to contemplating the sea. Our planet's blue space is what ultimately takes care of us, and is something we must start taking better care of.
Reading around various campfires, I learned a lot last week about why this is so. The ongoing Census of Marine Life, for example, a 10-year, $650 million project attempting to catalog everything that's in the sea, is discovering some truly extraordinary things in the world under the waves. For example, fish and other creatures that routinely migrate across entire oceans. A type of shrimp presumed extinct for 50 million years. Starfish as big as a manhole and sea spiders the size of your head. And that's long before we get to the sea floor, a vast pitch-black realm of insane extremes that was once thought to forbid life entirely, and is now believed to hold more biodiversity than even the rainforest.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that oceanographers have found that the top 1/500th of an inch of the ocean is actually a sheet of microbial jelly that contains a distinct community of microbes vital to the sea's ability to breath. It's an entire ecosystem thinner than a single human hair that floats unseen atop the waves. Without it, life as we know it might not be possible.
You learn a fact like that and it puts things into perspective. Makes you think about all the things we don't know about the sea. We need to remember that our waterways can only give so much before they give out.
Overfishing is perhaps the biggest threat. We're taking too much out and leaving too little behind. In fact, some research suggests that if present trends continue, in 50 years the world's oceans will be largely devoid of commercially viable fish (i.e., the kind we like to eat). The good news, however, is much better: While I sat at a waterfront shack communing with fresh lobster, a new alliance of marine biologists and fisheries managers was publishing a landmark paper that says it's quite possible to turn things around. We just have to watch what we eat and leave a reasonable number of fish where they swim.
For our part, we consumers should shop smart in the seafood section. That's easy to do with help from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which has just updated its great pocket seafood guide. Download a copy and use it when you shop and eat out to put sustainability on your plate. Because we are the sea and the sea is us. I'm quite sure I speak for all of humanity when I say this is one fish tale we really want to have a happy ending.
