State of the Oceans — Log 71
YOUR WEEKLY BRIEFING FROM PARLEY
This image from a Parley Maldives cleanup, header image by Caroline Power
PLASTIC POLLUTION
All across the United States, many “recyclable” products are not recycled but instead ending up in landfills, oceans, and the wider environment. Researchers for Greenpeace investigated 367 facilities and found that none recycled coffee pods and fewer than 15% processed tough plastic clamshell packaging. While most plants can still handle bottles and jugs, the industry is overrun with ‘mixed plastics’.
The good news: these findings have fueled conversations about who should be responsible for single-use plastics. “Turning to cities and residents to pay is not the way it should be going,” one expert said, “If manufacturers are going to make these products, they should be buying them back.”
WHALES
As background noise in the ocean intensifies, minke whales may lose their ability to communicate. From 2012 to 2017, Navy scientists detected over 42,000 minke whale “boings” across 1200 square miles of Hawaiian waters. In louder conditions, the whales upped their volume but not enough to compensate for the noise. Because of commercial shipping and other human activities, ambient ocean noise has been increasing by three decibels per decade since the 1960s. While further research is needed, experts believe that louder seas could prevent minke whales from hearing each other over long distances, finding mates, and maintaining other social structures. “Sound is the primary way whales sense and understand their environment,” said one marine acoustician.
CORAL REEFS
At the 2020 Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Diego, researchers presented new evidence predicting that climate change could kill all coral reefs by 2100. In just the next twenty years, the scientists say, warming and acidifying oceans could cause 70-to-90% of these habitats to disappear. While experts have proposed innovative mitigation efforts – such as transplanting healthy, lab-grown corals onto declining reefs – the bottom line is that the coral crisis and the climate crisis are one and the same. “Trying to clean up the beaches is great, and trying to combat pollution is fantastic. We need to continue those efforts,” one researcher said, “But at the end of the day, fighting climate change is really what we need in order to protect corals and avoid compounded stressors.”
INNOVATION
Mexico City has proposed what would be one of the world’s largest urban parks and a stunning example of climate resilience. Pending a successful legal battle against a canceled airport, the park would stretch ten miles across and cover a total area of 12,300 hectares: the size of thirty-six Central Parks or two Manhattans. The architects hope to create green public spaces, sequester carbon, and restore the region’s lakes to pristine conditions last experienced before Spain conquered the Aztec Empire.“Very few times, you are offered the possibility to have an impact that can really change things,” the project’s director said, “If we manage to do this, it changes the direction of the history of the city and the valley.”
MARINE LIFE
Cassiopea jellyfish swim upside down, and new research suggests that this could make them the “ecosystem engineers” behind mangrove forests. Cassiopea swim tentacles-up to expose their symbiont algae to sunlight, and in the process the jellyfish cause a surprising amount of turbulence. With one pulse, an average-sized Cassiopea can send a stream of water meters upward. A group of the jellyfish can mix a one-meter water column every fifteen minutes, which is ten times more than other filter-feeders like oysters and mussels. In stagnant waters, this mixing could circulate nutrients and help to fertilize mangrove ecosystems – which protect shorelines, sequester carbon, and provide habitat for countless marine species.
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