Our Oceans Are In Trouble: Here's How To Take Action Beyond The Outrage
Pollution is another threat, killing animals and damaging habitats. Climate change is also affecting the ocean. Excess carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean is making them more acidic, harming marine animals and plants. The ocean is getting warmer, coral reefs are dying and sea levels are rising.
The ocean is also enjoying the most attention it has ever received. The United Nations declared this the decade of the ocean, a time to produce all the research and policy needed to inform actions and generate funding for global projects to protect and restore the oceans. Sir David Attenborough produced a new documentary called Ocean, and World Ocean Day is celebrated every year.
But how does this translate into action? There is a clear disconnect between what leaders say in public forums such as United Nations conferences and what happens on the water in practice. While awareness has been raised, not enough has been done to create ways for people to take action.
I've researched the ocean for 30 years, investigating how to change people's behaviour towards nature and how they learn about the ocean.
I have identified key research-based interventions that would help mobilise interest and action around saving the world's seas.
Humans are the cause of the oceans' problems – but humans are also the only solution. These key areas would help close the gap between understanding the problem and taking action to solve it:
arming people with knowledge about the ocean
community engagement with people most affected by the degradation of the ocean: people living along the coast and in small island countries and Indigenous ocean communities who rely on the oceans for their livelihoods and culture
inspiring people to care for the ocean. Many people are unaware of the role of the ocean in their daily lives. From the air we breathe to the food we eat and the relatively stable climate we have enjoyed, human survival depends on a healthy ocean. Helping people to experience the ocean – in person along the coast, under the waves, in an aquarium or by watching documentary films – can ignite a spark of wonder and care for the ocean.
For most of history, the ocean was regarded as a common resource from which everyone could benefit. Now it needs to be looked at as a common responsibility. We all need to care for it for our very survival.
What Needs To Be Done
Knowledge: Opportunities for everyone to learn about the ocean across formal and informal channels.
Formal education in schools and informal communication efforts must include direct linkages between inland and the ocean. South Africa is one of the few countries in Africa to have a marine science curriculum for senior school learners to study the ocean. But this is not offered in most schools.
Building an ocean literacy network made up of communication experts, educators, the media, aquariums and museums, scientists, science communicators, Indigenous leaders, communities, conservation agencies, non-profit organisations, artists and others would help generate interest and build groups of people who can come up with the best ways to talk about saving the oceans.
Expertise: Enhancing ocean protection requires expertise from multiple disciplines. These include the natural sciences, marine social sciences, behavioural science, education, science communication, social-based marketing and Indigenous knowledge systems.
Working together across different disciplines to develop effective strategies, researchers and communicators can work to ensure that the multiple values and services of the ocean for human well-being are widely understood.
Sharing research with people through effective science communication is a vital step that is often missed. Encouragingly, more and more young scientists are eager to share their work widely.
Deep community engagement: Recognising traditional and Indigenous knowledge, respecting local leadership and hearing community voices are all critical. For example, in the Western Indian Ocean, community led projects support thousands of communities and protect large areas of the coast. They work closely with fishers, empowering them to manage their own ocean resources.
Individual choices matter: It is easy to blame politicians and huge corporations for many of the crises we face, and they both have a massive role to play. However, individuals also have the power to support campaigns that lobby for more marine protected areas. Reducing consumption of unsustainable seafood, single use plastics, electricity and fuel also protects the oceans.
Innovative social research can reveal answers to questions about what people value and need, and find ways to increase motivation, capability, and opportunity for people to behave in ways that ensure a healthy ocean.
Government action: The governments of island nations are at the forefront of the ocean crisis. They are experiencing problems caused by rising sea levels and a warming ocean and are taking action to protect oceans.
Collaboration between government authorities responsible for ocean protection in the rest of the world and non-profit organisations, scientists and community members needs to be strengthened. This will ensure better cooperation and coordinated decision-making and management.
For example, community supported marine protected areas benefit local people and marine life. These benefits range from improved catches from the spillover of fish into adjacent exploited areas to employment opportunities.
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A strategy that targeted the leaders of a handful of powerful cartels led to a splintering of organized crime and the multiplication of violence to control territory. With near complete impunity, owing to the complicity or inaction of the authorities, cartels found that making anyone they think is in their way disappear was better than leaving bodies in the street. Mexican administrations have sometimes been unwilling to recognize the problem and at other times are staggered by the scale of violence their justice system is unprepared to address. Mexico's disappeared could populate a small city. Official data in 2013 tallied 26,000 missing, but the count now surpasses 130,000 - more than any other Latin American nation. The United Nations has said there are indications that the disappearances are "generalized or systematic." If the missing people are found - dead or alive - it is usually by their loved ones. Guided by information from witnesses, parents and siblings search for graves by walking through cartel territory, plunging a metal rod into the earth and sniffing for the scent of death. Around 6,000 clandestine graves have been found since 2007, and new discoveries are made all the time. Tens of thousands of remains have yet to be identified. Jalisco, which is home to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, has the largest number of people reported missing in Mexico: 15,500. In March, human bone fragments and hundreds of items of clothing were discovered at a cartel ranch in the state. Authorities denied it was the site of a mass grave. Jose Luis Silvan, a coordinator of the mapping project and scientist at CentroGeo, a federal research institute focused on geospacial information, said Jalisco's disappeared are "why we're here." The mapping project, launched in 2023, is a collaboration by Guadalajara University, Mexico's National Autonomous University and the University of Oxford in England, alongside the Jalisco Search Commission, a state agency that organizes local searches with relatives. "No other country is pushing so strongly, so creatively" to test and combine new techniques, said Derek Congram, a Canadian forensic anthropologist, whose expertise in geographic information systems inspired the Mexican project. Still, Congram warns, technology "is not a panacea." "Ninety percent of searches are resolved with a good witness and digging," he said. Silvan walks by a site where scientists buried 14 pigs about two years ago. He says they may not know how well the technology works, where and when it can be used, or under what conditions, for at least three years. "Flowers came up because of the phosphorous at the surface, we didn't see that last year," he said as he took measurements at one of the gravesites. "The mothers who search say that that little yellow flower always blooms over the tombs and they use them as a guide." Pigs and humans are closely related, famously sharing about 98% of DNA. But for the mapping project, the physical similarities also matter. According to the US National Library of Medicine, pigs resemble humans in size, fat distribution and the structure and thickness of skin. A big Colombian drone mounted with a hyperspectral camera flies over the pig burial site. Generally used by mining companies, the camera measures light reflected by substances in the soil, including nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and shows how they vary as the pigs decompose. The colorful image it produces offers clues of what to look for in the hunt for graves. "This isn't pure science," Silvan said. "It is science and action. Everything learned has to be applied immediately, rather than wait for it to mature, because there's urgency." Researchers also employ thermal drones, laser scanners and other gadgets to register anomalies, underground movements and electrical currents. One set of graves is encased behind a pane of transparent acrylic, providing a window for scientists to observe the pigs' decomposition in real time. The Jalisco commission compares and analyzes flies, beetles, plants and soil recovered from the human and pig graves. Each grave is a living "micro ecosystem," said Tunuari Chavez, the commission's director of context analysis. Triggered by the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, Silvan and his colleagues started gathering information about ground-penetrating radar, electric resistivity and satellite imagery from around the world. They studied University of Tennessee research on human corpses buried at a "body farm." They looked at grave-mapping techniques used in the Balkans, Colombia and Ukraine. "What good is science or technology if it doesn't solve problems?" he said. They learned new applications of satellite analysis, then began their first experiments burying pigs and studying the substances criminals use to dispose of bodies. They found lime is easily detected, but hydrocarbons, hydrochloric acid and burned flesh are not. Chavez's team worked to combine the science with what they knew about how the cartels operate. For example, they determined that disappearances in Jalisco commonly happened along cartel routes between Pacific ports, drug manufacturing facilities and the US border, and that most of the missing are found in the same municipality where they disappeared. The experience of the families of the missing also informs the research. Some observed that graves are often found under trees whose roots grow vertically, so those digging the graves can remain in the shade. Mothers of missing loved ones invited by researchers to visit one of the pig burial sites were able to identify most of the unmarked graves by sight alone, because of the plants and soil placement, Silvan said. "The knowledge flows in both directions," he said. Maribel Cedeno, who has been looking for her missing brother for four years, said she believes the drones and other technology will be helpful. "I never imagined being in this situation, finding bodies, becoming such an expert," she said of her quest. Hector Flores has been searching for his son since 2021. He questions why so much time and effort has been invested in methods that have not led to concrete discoveries, when the families have proven track records with little official support. Although the research has not yet concluded, the Jalisco Search Commission is already using a thermal drone, a laser scanner and a multispectral camera to help families look for their missing relatives in some cases. But it is unclear whether authorities across Mexico will ever be willing to use, or able to afford, the high-tech aides. Congram, the forensic scientist, said researchers are aware of the limitations of technology, but that "you always have to try, fail, fail again and keep trying." (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
