Uh oh.
One of the hardest things about working for an environmental cause is that there’s so much scary news…
Some of you who attended the 2009 Solar-Powered Film Series probably remember the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the infamous collection of tiny plastic particles in the Pacific ocean that’s twice the size of Texas (featured in the film Addicted to Plastic). Others may have been alarmed at the sharp rise in the ocean acidification and its deleterious effect on marine wildlife- including wildlife in our own food supply!- depicted in A Sea Change. But this story from Yahoo! is somehow even more terrifying: the oceans have now been found to be losing oxygen.
According to the article, there are some areas of the Pacific, particularly off the coasts of Oregon and Washington, that have become completely oxygen-depleted, or hypoxic. Although areas of hypoxia in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans have long been observed, the new trends show the hypoxic areas growing, and greater overall hypoxia all over the globe seems to have become the norm. While Southern California’s levels of oceanic oxygen have declined 20% over the last 25 years, in some places deoxygenation is happening even faster- up to 33% over 50 years!
Hypoxia is a serious problem, killing sea life that our food chain depends on; also, the process of decomposition requires oxygen (decomposition is basically oxygenation), so the dying creatures are speeding up the process in much the same way that melting permafrost releases even more sequestered carbon dioxide, exacerbating the problem of global warming. You can also look at a graph of ocean hypoxia over the decades HERE! And read about the likely results of hypoxia and its link to global climate change HERE!
