Poison in the Water: The Ocean Is the Cradle of Life
We depend on the sea to survive; in abusing it, we're destroying ourselves.
I was born on the ocean shore.
Not literally — but you could see the bay from the window of my mother’s hospital room. The scent of sea salt is heavy on the air in my hometown, and the gentle slope of the mountainside we lived on ensured that we were never far from a view of the waves.
I spent my childhood there, romping up and down the beach with my friends. We collected shells, examined crabs and jellyfish in the shallows, and built lean-to shelters out of driftwood and seagrass.
The beaches of my childhood were full of kelp and dulse, and great piles of rocks worn smooth by the churning sand and waves. The cry of gulls overhead was music to me, even if the little devils made a habit of stealing my snacks.
I have never lived more than an hour’s drive away from the sea, and even now, when I return to the shore I am filled with a sense of peace I can’t find anywhere else.
But the last time I returned to the water's edge, I was filled with dismay. I tried to hunt for shells, but what I found wasn’t the natural beauty I remembered.
All I found was plastic, worn as smooth as the pebbles of my childhood after years of being in the water.
Water is the lifeblood of our planet. About 71% of Earth’s surface is covered with it, and that’s only counting the liquid form. A substantial volume of the air we breathe is made up of water vapour, and the clouds overhead are simply condensation that hasn’t fallen yet.
97% of the water on Earth is found in our oceans. The rest is found in a combination of polar ice caps and freshwater sources like rivers and lakes. Given how large some inland lakes and rivers can be, that gives you an idea of exactly how expansive the ocean really is.
The human mind simply can’t fathom the size of it. Neither the all-encompassing breadth of the surface that stretches far beyond the horizon, nor the depth of the abyss below.
It is the Earth’s largest ecosystem, and we have barely scratched the surface of it. We still have no idea what life looks like at its most remote reaches, far below the pressures that we can survive.
People have always lived off of the sea; we’ve found archaeological evidence of sea-based Neanderthal cultures in Gibraltar going back over 39,000 years.
We have evidence of seashell jewelry, early artwork and midden heaps full of shellfish and marine life going back even further.
Up to the modern day, people continue to make a living off of the ocean and even live on it full-time. We have coastal communities that exist by the grace of their fishing industries, and there’s even an entire nomadic culture that never leaves the water.
The Bajau people have even evolved to better suit their aquatic landscape. Imagine freediving for 10 minutes on a single breath!
Our existence as a species is intricately tied to the ebb and flow of the tides. We owe our lives, our cultures and our prosperity to the endless dance of the waves.
While it’s difficult to be certain of events so far in the past, we have some idea of when humanity’s first seafaring culture came into existence.
We know that the Polynesian peoples have a strong tradition of sailing and starting colonies on remote islands, and they’ve been going strong for thousands of years.
But in terms of what we would recognize as a standard navy today, we have to look at the Aegean Sea.
Archaeologists believe that the Minoan culture from the island of Crete was the first truly nautical nation. Other civilizations had sea trade and were quite knowledgeable sailors, but the Minoans turned the concept into an art.
It’s also quite likely that the volcanic catastrophe that scattered the Minoans from the modern-day island of Santorini was the inspiration for Plato’s Atlantis. Just a fun historical fact!
The idea of an entire nation being destroyed by the sea was a notion that echoed through human history and has never been forgotten.
In fact, many of our most enduring myths and legends come from the waters of Earth’s oceans. It’s hardly surprising; we’ve explored so very little of it that it provides a constant source of intrigue and mystery.
We know almost nothing about what’s going on down there, so it’s only natural that it would inspire our creativity. Mermaids and sea dragons certainly sound fantastical, but can we say for certain that they aren’t real?
Our species has had a love affair with the ocean for as long as we’ve lived, from the ancient Neanderthals to the Minoans of Crete, all the way up to the Venetians of Italy and the coastal First Nations here in Canada.
Even today, every nation with a coastline has a collection of subcultures that revere the shore. From surfers to sailors, people find joy and fulfillment in their craft.
And when we want to enjoy a summer vacation, most of us crave the sun and sand of a beautiful beach. I can say for certain that my heart will always belong to the water.
The ocean is the cradle of life on Earth, and as the largest ecosystem we have, its biodiversity is unmatched.
We’re not just talking about animals, either. Sure, there are millions of species of fish, crustaceans, whales and dolphins, skates and rays — everything that swims or crawls.
There are even more species of mollusks and other forms of shellfish, critters like limpets and oysters that cling to rocks along the ocean floor. And we can’t ignore coral, which is an abundant living structure that creates a habitat for everything else.
And of course, there are the plants! Not just within the ocean itself, although there are plenty of species of kelp and grass that line the shoals. But all around the globe, there are plants that have adapted to the salt spray of the sea and grow only along the edge of the beach.
From sea buckthorn to sea kale, from dulse to sea clubrush — many of these plants are edible and even medicinal. So much of our food and medicine comes from the ocean that it’s difficult to overstate its importance to humanity’s survival.
Marine life abounds, from the fish in the waves to the seabirds that fly above. Every day, scientists discover new forms of life in the deepest trenches we’ve plumbed.
I must also stress that the ocean does not only support the creatures that live in it.
Life on Earth would not exist in its current form without it. The ocean produces more oxygen than all of the tropical rainforests combined, thanks to the various forms of phytoplankton that bloom on the surface.
Without this contribution, our air would be significantly less breathable.
Which is why I do not understand why we keep pouring so much poison into it. It seems like a suicidal venture.
We are killing the ocean. This beautiful tapestry of life and mystery, this breathtaking system of interconnected species. This majestic, inhospitable wilderness full of danger and uncompromising glory.
We have been living along its shores since the dawn of humanity’s time on Earth, and we are showing our gratitude for its wonders by destroying it.
There’s so much to cover that I almost didn’t know where to begin, but then I remembered the plastic.
There are many different forms of plastic in the ocean.
There are whole bottles and containers, there are the six-pack rings that we’re sternly told to cut into pieces before we discard them. There are plastic straws, children’s toys that got lost at the beach, and too many snack and candy wrappers to count.
As I said before, it’s easier to find little pieces of broken-up plastic than shells on most of our beaches these days. The current estimates state that at least 33 billion pounds of plastic enters Earth’s oceans every year.
This is lethal to sea life in many ways. Some animals that are tangled in fishing nets or six-pack rings simply drown. Some animals ingest the pieces of plastic, choking themselves or obstructing their digestive systems.
In some cases, the older pieces of plastic have disintegrated to the point that they’ve splintered into tiny bits, roughly 5mm across. This is what’s known as ‘microplastic’, and due to its prevalence in both salt and fresh water, almost every human being on earth is contaminated with it.
It’s in our blood, and our stomachs, and it has even been found in breast milk. Newborn babies are coming into the world and ingesting cell-damaging plastics with their very first meal.
What we pour into the ocean always finds its way back to us.
Plastics are one form of pollution that we’ve dumped into the ocean, but it’s hardly the only sort.
We’re quite literally pouring poison into it every day, with no ambiguity. Toxic chemicals and waste products find their way into the sea from industrial processes all around the globe.
Sometimes it’s chemical contamination from shipment and transport mishaps, and sometimes it’s heavy metals and poisons from mining operations. Most of the damage is coming from land-based mining, but recent proposals for deep-sea harvesting have a lot of scientists very concerned.
In our battles against climate change, there is a serious appetite for metals and minerals that are used in the production of solar panels and batteries for electric vehicles. Unfortunately, that poses a catch-22.
The process of collecting the materials we need to help fight climate change winds up contributing to the pollution that causes it.
The toxins that find their way into the ocean kill off marine life, including the phytoplankton we depend on for oxygen. A lack of oxygen in the ocean kills marine life. Loss of sea life like plankton and algae means a huge source of carbon sequestration goes away.
The seas warm, and more marine life dies.
We are trapped in a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle of our own design. It’s going to get a lot worse before we manage to turn the corner and start making things better.
And in the meantime, we’re still letting the fossil fuel industry do its thing.
This is all happening in the present, ongoing problems that we’re going to have to deal with sooner or later.
I don’t know if we’ll solve them before the screw-ups of the past catch up with us.
However bad the current state of affairs is, I promise it can get worse. It’s actively worsening right now. An old mistake of the bygone era of radioactive experimentation is crawling its way out of its cage as we speak.
Sea level rise from climate change is breaking up the Runit Island Tomb. A dose of potent radiation is about to be unleashed.
The nuclear waste at Runit Island is already sickening the local inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, although the United States government likes to pretend that there’s no problem and everything is fine.
It’s hardly the only source of radioactive contamination, either. The ocean has been used as a nuclear dumping ground for decades.
We mustn’t forget about the field of abandoned waste barrels off the coast of Los Angeles, to provide just one example.
That was discovered alongside a high concentration of DDT, a seriously harmful pesticide that has long been banned due to its proven health impacts on human and animal populations.
The past is catching up to us and we haven’t even figured out how to fix what we’re doing right now.
I mentioned that the Marshall Islanders are suffering from sickness due to radiation exposure.
I didn’t mention that a lot of the local people are facing a future of grief and pain, knowing that sea level rise means that their homes will soon be gone.
This echoes the pain that they’ve already felt when they were first forced to relocate so that the nuclear tests could be performed.
They aren’t the only ones. The Bajau people that I mentioned in passing, the ones with unique evolutionary traits, are beginning to be forced off of their beloved home on the waves.
The problem of ocean collapse is being felt all over the globe. Coastal cities like Venice are struggling to come up with sustainable solutions to prevent sea level rise from destroying their way of life.
The increasing intensity and duration of hurricanes and other storms pose a real problem for anyone living on or near the coastlines, and we’ve been seeing a steady rise in catastrophes over the past few years.
Industries that depend on thriving marine ecosystems are also falling apart, driving fishery workers to seek work in other industries. Small seaside-town economies are feeling the strain.
No matter where in the world you are, the sicker the ocean becomes, the more you suffer with it.
I was born by the side of the ocean. I crave the scent of sea salt on the breeze the way a drowning woman craves air.
But as much as I want to return to living by the side of my beloved Atlantic, seeing the waves come up to the end of the lane outside of my front door, it just isn’t feasible anymore.
It’s too dangerous in the long term, for one thing. And for another, it breaks my heart.
I miss those carefree days of childhood, hunting seashells, chasing gulls and building shelters with my friends. I miss chasing fish through the shallows, and listening to my parents talk about the great white shark that came into the bay that one year.
I was innocent back then. That was before I knew what I know now.
I would love for us to turn all of this around so that if I have children of my own someday, I might lead them down to the seashore where I was born. I want them to know her majesty, the glory of the sun shining off the cresting surf.
Until then, I’ll continue to mourn. I’ll continue to wait with bated breath, praying that my worst nightmare will never come to pass.
An empty, dead ocean would be the end of our world. The cradle of life on Earth must not be allowed to crumble.
Solidarity wins.
You are right. We're killing the planet in pursuit of personal comfort. By that, I mean acquiring personal wealth at the expense of everything else. Until that is turned around in the human psyche, we will continue down this path of destruction we're on. I think it will take a major global disaster to wake the humans up someday, and until it happens, things will continue as they are.
I, too, have spent a lot of my younger days near or on the oceans of the world and I would sorely miss them if they became uninhabitable.
The one thing us humans are really good at is shitting in our own nest.
New Zealand has miles of rugged coastline and when I was younger and much more mobile than I am today I wandered all over the North Island beaches. I love the sound of the sea, but with global warming and climate change living within the sound of the sea has become a dangerous place to be here in my country. The after effects of Cyclone Gabrielle (Feb 2023) are still being felt in our East Coast communities.