Legacy Magazine

by Paul Caputo

In the late Douglas Adams’s novel, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, two women walk along the beach, having finally realized their lifelong dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean. One turns to the other and says, “You know, it’s not as big as I expected.”

This sort of absurdist humor is typical of Douglas Adams’s work, but in a real sense, the oceans are not as big as we think. The statistics that led Jacques-Yves Cousteau to call the Earth a “water planet” tell us that our five oceans and three seas are enormous. Oceans cover nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface, 90 percent of which is accounted for by three oceans, the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian.

However, increasing demands on our marine habitats, as well as the immediate and tangential impacts of human activity, have forced us to realize that this seemingly immense and impenetrable resource is not only vulnerable, but vitally important to the global environment. The oceans may look big, but they are finite and their good health is essential to maintaining a delicate natural balance that affects us all.

As the human population increases, so too does the demand on resources in and near the ocean. More than half of the world’s population lives within 120 miles of the nearest coast, an area that represents only 10 percent of the planet’s land. Even those who don’t live near a coastline affect the aquatic environment, as pollutants drain to the ocean via creeks and rivers.

The so-called “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico fluctuates in size, sometimes growing almost as large as the state of New Jersey. This nearly lifeless area is caused largely by fertilizers that drain from rivers in the interior United States. Algae that consume the nutrients in the fertilizers flourish, then are consumed by bacteria that absorb the oxygen in the water, leaving none for fish or shellfish in the gulf. Along the Louisiana coast and in other parts of the world, dead zones have not only impacted the environment, but crippled communities that depend on the fishing and shrimping industries.

It has long been understood that each individual ocean or sea is a unique and delicate ecosystem, susceptible to collapsing or drastically changing upon the most subtle imbalance. What is becoming increasingly clear is that the oceans and seas are part of a larger, global ecosystem, just as delicate and just as susceptible.

Some of the articles in this issue tell the stories of how specific species like walruses, sea horses, turtles, and albatross have been affected by human activity. Each of these animals is a cog in a wheel, a piece of the environmental puzzle that should matter to all of us, not just in an abstract “Wouldn’t it be sad if there were no walruses?” way, but in a real, “What happens to the whole system if one of these important pieces is removed from the equation?” sort of way.

There was a time when thinking about the environment seemed like an exercise in abstraction—even more so if you were asking a person who may never see the ocean to think about the marine environment. The health of the oceans didn’t matter to someone in Wakeeney, Kansas, unless they were planning a beach vacation. Now we know not only that our actions affect the oceans no matter where we live, but that we are directly affected by the health of the oceans.

As I sit in my office in Fort Collins, Colorado, roughly 800 miles from the nearest ocean, I know that the decisions I make in my daily life have consequences that affect the seas, either directly or indirectly. The fates of the animals whose stories are told in the pages to follow matter—they are part of an ocean habitat that is the foundation of our global ecosystem—and we can make choices to help protect them.