I've included a video that honestly shook me up. It was created by the World Commission of Protected Areas (WCPA) to bring attetion to the fact that we only have one ocean and we must take care of it before it vanishes forever. The video was posted by a vegan promoting plant-based diets and although I, myself, am not a vegetarian of any sort, this clip really interested me. Taking this class has certainly opened my eyes about the environment and the damage we have done to it. We are causing our world to literally slip away from us.
The video talks about how the earth's seas have been unaffected for most of the 5 million years we have occupied the planet. Just under 1,000 years ago is when humans began taking from the sea and the narrator states that fish populations were so dense that ships could hardly navigate -- the tables have most definitely turned. Significantly. Today 90% of the big fish in the ocean are gone. Our oceans are now acid. Coral reefs are "algae covered deserts". The narrator affrims, "for over 30 years there has been a valiant effort to save the sea and it has failed." We must take extreme measures because evidently we are out of time.
In relation to the Patagonia Environmental Essay by Jonathan Waterman, this video shows how the impacts we have had on earth are affecting all kinds of bodies water, not just the Colorado River. Our ocean is vast and covers 75% of the earth -- that is not something to be messed with and this video surely demonstrates that. Waterman writes about how pathetic it was to walk over dried up land that had once been a lush and flowing river. He describes meandering through a delta "as hygienic as an intravenous drip from a catheter" -- is this the kind of world we want to live in?
The fact that fish populations used to be so dense that ships could hardly navigate is astounding. I come from the coast and worked at one of the most popular seafood restaurants in town during the summer months. At the original opening of the restaurant in the 1930s, virtually all of the seafood was locally caught. However, as demands for seafood grew and fish became less plentiful, the restaurant began importing fish from other areas of the country. I am definitely no stranger to the issues of overfishing. In my hometown everybody knows the legal limits that have been placed on size, weight, and number of fish that can be removed from our sounds and oceans at one time. The removal of 90% of the big fish in the ocean as you state makes me wonder what kind of damage has been done to the ecosystems in which those fish are a part of. Removing these fish will of course affect food chains in the entire system. Humans must be careful about not just drying up water sources, as in the Colorado River case, but also with the marine life contained within them.
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