In a message dated 7/16/01 11:11:31 PM, brian@posthuman.com writes:
>> When your friend talks about polluted oceans, does he specify
>> what exactly it is that the ocean is besmirched by? Does he note
>> that he is coated with some foreign matter when emerging from
>> a swim in the sea?
>>
>
>No specifics, I bet if I asked him he wouldn't have any facts to back
>it up.
There are certainly very polluted areas in the ocean (only a few worms
can live in Santa Monica bay sediments) but the ocean as a whole isn't
particularly polluted. The local areas are following the usual global
pollution rule of getting cleaner in developed areas and dirtier in
developing ones.
The ecologists have concerns with the amount of fertilizer we're dumping
in the oceans. While not exactly pollution, it tends to eutrophize the
water (ie make it full of algae) and this could zap a lot of coastal
communities. Jeremy Jackson claims, based on sediment cores,
that our concept of bays a eutrophic is wrong; they weren't that
way before farming.
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