https://archive.li/rJlLO
"Enric Sala—marine ecologist, conservationist, and ocean advocate—is standing
under a life-size replica of a Northern Atlantic Right Whale at the natural
history museum in Washington, D.C., and the air outside is smudged with
wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada. It’s not surprising that Sala wants
to talk about the smoke, or about whales. Their poop, however, is an unexpected
twist. According to Sala, whale excrement, or, more precisely, the lack of it,
has a role to play in the choking miasma that has forced my interview with one
of the world’s foremost ocean explorers indoors instead of out on a boat.
It may seem like a stretch, the kind that relegates environmentalists deep into
woo-woo territory, but as our conversation unfolds, it starts making sense.
Whale poop fertilizes ocean plankton. The plankton reproduces rapidly,
absorbing carbon dioxide as it photosynthesizes sunlight. Eventually it sinks
to the seafloor, trapping the planet-warming gas in layers of sediment. Fewer
whales means less plankton sequestering CO, leaving more in the atmosphere.
That means more of the heat driving the wildfires that have smoked out much of
North America.
“Suddenly, we’re seeing that the impacts of climate change are not something
that is going to be suffered by somebody else,” says Sala. “It’s here.” And so
it is, in the wildfires, heat waves, and floods that have made the weather of
summer 2023 some of the most extreme on record. Greater biodiversity, whether
it is found in the ocean’s whale populations or the old-growth forests that
also store carbon, can help mitigate the effect of burning fossil fuels much
more cheaply than any new technology, he says. “The more nature we have, the
more nature will be able to absorb our impacts.”
Sala’s links between healthy ocean ecosystems and human benefits like carbon
sequestration are backed up by science that he has either committed to memory
or conducted himself. But it’s the ability to break scientific complexity into
simple concepts that even landlubbers can comprehend that makes him so
effective as an ocean advocate, helping rally global governments to commit to
protecting 30% of their coastlines and ocean territories by 2030. His Pristine
Seas project, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, has identified
dozens of the ocean’s most biodiverse hot spots in an effort to call for their
protection. Already he has managed to get 2.5 million sq. mi. (6.5 million sq
km) of coastline and ocean set aside in 26 marine protected areas (MPAs)—an
expanse twice the size of India—where fishing, dumping, mining, and other
destructive industries are prohibited."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-child-poverty-leprosy-conservation-california/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
