Assignment 17 Speech (Save Our Oceans) along with Works Cited - James Apo

SAVE OUR OCEANS!                                                                            James Apo

I get to spend every summer with my dad in Hawaii. You can’t be in Hawaii without spending time at the ocean, and I spend a good part of everyday there. I have come to love the ocean. I love swimming, surfing, fishing, boogie boarding, snorkeling, relaxing on the beach, and watching the waves and the sunsets.

As much as I love the ocean, I also respect it. Not just for its power, but also for what it gives us. Earth and humankind are dependent on the oceans. They cover nearly 75% of our planet, and hold almost all of the planet's water. Half of the oxygen in our atmosphere comes from our oceans and most of Earth’s carbon is absorbed by them. Our weather and our economies are influenced by oceans. Our oceans connect people from one continent to another, and they are a source of food and many other products.

No matter where you live, whether you are close to an ocean or not, our oceans still affect your life. We depend on them for the air we breathe, the water we drink, much of the food we eat. However, we are not being good stewards of this most important resource, and because of it, our oceans are in real peril.  

About half of the world’s population lives near an ocean, and ocean-based businesses contribute more than $500 billion to the world’s economy. We’ve always thought the ocean was endless, that we could never take too much out of it, or that we could put too much into them. Once thought to be an endless ecosystem, scientists now think that our own abuse has put upon the ocean into danger and that we could actually produce an environmental catastrophe unless we do something drastic, soon!

The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), a global panel of marine experts, issued a report in 2011 that finding the health of our oceans to be unsatisfactory. In fact, they said that we are "at high risk for entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history." So what type of things are we doing that are putting our oceans in danger?  Well, it's not just about overfishing or marine pollution or even climate change, though those are the ones I will talk about. It's all of those destructive factors working together and much more rapidly than scientists had expected, that have put us into a real crisis mode.

First, pollution:  Our oceans have become a dumping ground for every kind of human waste. More than 80% of marine pollution comes from such things as untreated sewage, plastic, urban and agricultural runoff like herbicides, pesticides, and chemicals. Those things have helped to create a giant ocean garbage patch, marine dead zones, and algae blooms. The “garbage patch” has accumulated plastic from around the world and become nature’s giant garbage dump. Dead zones are places in the ocean where nothing can live because chemicals promote the growth of plants that suck up oxygen (there’s a huge one in the Gulf of Mexico). Algal blooms, places where algae flourish, kill fish, mammals, and birds, and may cause human illness. Even nontoxic algae can clog the gills of fish, smother coral reefs and submerged aquatic plant life. Others discolor water to red, brown, yellow, green or white. They form huge, smelly piles on beaches; and can cause drinking water and fish to taste bad.

Scientists estimate that nearly 8 million items of marine litter enter the sea every day, threatening the health of marine mammals by poison, ensnarement, and destruction of their habitat. Tons of garbage find their way to shores every day, and what doesn’t wash up wind up on beaches ends up in the sea and in the fish.  Though coral reefs cover less than half a percent of the oceans' area, they host more than 25 percent of the oceans’ fish species. The first worldwide assessment of coral reefs, released in 2008, showed that a third of them faced extinction due to climate change, disease, pollution and overfishing.

Overfishing:  In the documentary Sea the Truth, marine biologists suggest that if we continue to catch and eat fish at our current rate that our waters will be vacant within 40 years!  Harmful fishing practices like bottom trawling drag heavy fishing net along the sea floor, clearing out ocean ecosystems, destroying marine habitats, and damaging the sea beds. Bottom trawling also destroys ocean plants like kelp, as well as coastal wetlands and mangroves. It can be likened to the kind of damage that was caused by strip mining in the coal fields of Kentucky, where topsoil was completely removed during the process of mining coal.  That damage was easily seen and caused the type of outrage that changed strip mining and required land reclamation. It also can be compared to the destruction of the rainforest, where the destruction is clear cut by the loss of trees. The destruction of the ocean isn’t as easily seen; maybe if it were, we would be more spurred to action.  

The oceans provide more than 2.6 billion people with at least 20% of their protein intake. Though the ocean might seem like an endless source of food, it too has its limits. A single trawling tow can catch over 100,000 pounds of fish. Long-line fishing is just as bad, deploying miles of line and thousands of hooks. In addition to the fish a trawling tow or a long line can bring in, they also bring in unintended species like sea turtles, seals, and sea birds.  Most of the world’s catch species – the ones you find on menus – are exploited beyond their capacity.

Climate change:  When it comes to climate change, it’s not just the air temperatures that are increasing. According to the United Nations Environment Program, more than 90% of the earth’s warming over the last 50 years have occurred in the ocean. Our oceans also serve as a major carbon sink, causing the ocean waters to become more acidic as carbon levels increase. These two things are causing more extreme weather events, changes in sea levels, coral bleaching, damage to shell organisms and coral reefs, and changes in marine life distribution.

In 1980, Jacques Cousteau said, “The very survival of the human species depends upon the maintenance of an ocean clean and alive, spreading all around the world. The ocean is our planet's life belt.” The United Nations Environment Program now warns that without significant changes our ocean ecosystems are in danger of collapsing! So what are we to do?

The documentary film Hawaii: Message in the Waves looks specifically at environmental challenges facing the people and wildlife of the Hawaii Islands, but its message can be much more globally applied.  The Hawaiian Islands are a unique microcosm of the planet and can provide a perspective on what we are doing wrong and how we can make things better. This documentary shows how scientists, surfers, environmentalists, and local Hawaiians are pulling together to address the environmental issues facing Hawaii as they try to clean up the oceans and save the marine life that are native to Hawaii.

From a surfing perspective, ocean preservation began in the 1960s with the Save Our Surf (SOS) organization in Hawaii. SOS created a grassroots movement that united surfers to protect not only their surf spots and waves but also the oceans, beaches, reefs, and marine life. The successes of SOS led to the formation of other ocean preservation groups, such as the Ocean Conservancy, the Cousteau Society, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the Surfrider Foundation, and others.

An example of a problem affecting the Hawaiian waters is human pollution, like plastic bags in the oceans that can get clogged in a dolphin or other animals’ throat. Something that is being done to prevent this are Hawaiian regulations that require all paper products instead of plastic in grocery stores like Walmart and fast food chains like McDonalds.  When we go shopping at the grocery store, you have to bring your own cloth or vinyl totes to put your groceries in.  That’s just the way it is!  It’s not hard once you get used to it.

This summer, President Barrack Obama announced at an ocean preservation conference that he wants to create the world's largest ocean preserve southwest of Hawaii. He hopes to expand a national monument that George W. Bush established in 2009. “Protecting the world's oceans …. is a task that's bigger than any one country but the U.S. must take the lead,” Obama said.  

We have presidents, scientists, and governments that are beginning to take notice and that are trying to do something to reverse the damage that have already been done to our oceans. With that being said, there are still things we can do as individuals, things that the everyday person can do to have a positive effect on preserving the ocean and its inhabitants. National Geographic suggests a plethora of solutions: making sustainable seafood choices and only going to restaurants and grocery stores that primarily provide sustainable seafood choices, using as few plastic products that end up as ocean debris as possible, taking your own reusable bags to the grocery, taking care of the beach and waterways by picking up after yourself and not throwing things overboard when boating, reducing energy consumption, not buying things like coral jewelry or tortoise shell hair accessories, not flushing things like cat litter down the toilet, and above all else educating yourself about the ocean and marine life.

My Hawaiian ancestors had a principal called ‘kuleana’, which means “privilege and responsibility.” If you have the privilege of enjoying something you also have the responsibility of protecting it. What we do now is vital not only to the preservation of the Hawaiian ecosystem, but is necessary to preserve all our oceans and save all our marine life.  Hawaiian history has shown us that sustainable living is not impossible. If it has been done before, it can be done again, and we just need to work out what is important to us.

WORK CITED:

ð       Edgar GJ, Stuart-Smith RD, Willis TJ, Kininmonth S, Baker SC, Banks S, Barrett NS, Becerro MA, Bernard ATF, Berkhout J, Buxton CD, Campbell SJ, Cooper AT, Davey M, Edgar SC, Försterra G, Galván DE, Irigoyen AJ, Kushner DJ, Moura R, Parnell PE, Shears NT, Soler G, Strain EMA, Thomson RJ. “Global conservation outcomes depend on marine protected areas with five key features.” Nature, Feb 13, 2014; 506(7487):216-220. DOI: 10.1038/nature13022

ð       Hawaii: Message in the Waves. Prod. Tim Green and Rebecca Hosking. Perf. Iokepa Naeole and Morgan Hoesterey. BBC, 2007. Top Documentary Films: Environment. TDF, 2 May 2007. Web. 17 June 2014.

ð       Lederman, Josh.  “Obama setting aside massive Pacific Ocean preserve.” Honolulu Star Advertiser, 17 June, 2014.

ð       “Ocean preservation: a historical perspective.” Beachapedia website, sponsored by the Surfrider Foundation. Available at: http://www.beachapedia.org/Ocean_Preservation:_A_Historical_Perspective Accessed June 22, 2014.

ð       Sea the Truth. Prod. Alalena Mediaproductions, Linda Broersen, and Monique Van D. Armor. Dir. Karen Soeters and Claudine Everaert. Adapt. Dennis Van Kouterik. Perf. Marianne Thieme and Marianne Van Mierlo and Barbara Van Genne. Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation, 2011. Top Documentary Films RSS. TDF, 19 May 2011. Web. 25 June 2014.

ð       “Ten things you can do to save the ocean.” National Geographic website.  Available at: http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/take-action/10-things-you-can-do-to-save-the-ocean/  Accessed 20 June, 2014.