40% of oceans fouled by pollution, fishing, and climate change

Andrew Calhoun, Jr. / 2-15-08 / 4:26PM / Current Event #5 / Pollution

While I was searching for articles on world pollution, there were quite a few news sources that featured this study of the world's oceans and the human created conditions within them. Since my topic is pollution, for my blog post I'm going to focus directly on the portions of this article that highlight how pollution has changed the make up of the ocean and how climate change (some of which is directly related to issues involving air pollution) has fouled the world's oceans.

Research estimate that every "single square kilometer has been affected by something man-made" and out of all that, 41% of what has been touched by men has been affected either in a high impact way or medium-high impact way. For the study, reseachers at University of California in Santa Barbara examined 17 possible ways humans have affected the world's oceans and, contrary to what past studies have done, combined all the different ways to come up with a figure to determine how much ocean has been altered. They believe, out of all the affects, the climate change worldwide has the most long reaching symptoms because it raises the general temperature, as well as acid levels and ultra-violet radiation. In coastal regions, the oceans were subject to more land pollution problems and oil & gas development issues.

Even though this study is recent, it goes well to illustrate how some man-made activities have really changed the landscape of Earth. Typical things we take for granted are revealed here to have long term and lasting issues associated with them and really makes you think about how we carry on with our lives from day to day.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=auDRUGBYlFf0&refer=australia