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It's not just BP's Oil in the Gulf that Threatens World's Oceans

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK - DECEMBER 15: Ned Gardin...

Image by Getty Images
via @daylif

By Les Blumenthal
McClatchy Newspapers
July 4, 2010

WASHINGTON — A sobering new report warns that the oceans face a "fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation" not seen in millions of years as greenhouse gases and climate change already have affected temperature, acidity, sea and oxygen levels, the food chain and possibly major currents that could alter global weather.

The report, in Science magazine, brings together dozens of studies that collectively paint a dismal picture of deteriorating ocean health.

"This is further evidence we are well on our way to the next great extinction event," said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia and a co-author of the report.

Kaminoseki vs. Big Nuclear: The Battle to Save "Japan's Galapagos"

A Kaminoseki report by Masako Sawai
cnic.jp
Rare finless porpoises of Kaminoseki

Excerpts: Chugoku Electric Power Company operates two nuclear power plants and is currently constructing a third on the Japan Sea coast in Matsue City...On the other side of Honshu (Japan's main island), it plans to build two nuclear power plants on the Seto Inland Sea coast in Kaminoseki Town, Yamaguchi Prefecture... The proposed construction site is on Nagashima Island. Iwaishima Island, which has a population of 500 people who are almost all opposed to the nuclear power plant, is just 3.5 km across the sea from the construction site.

Nagashima: a biodiversity treasure house
The region around Nagashima and Iwaishima is isolated and under-populated. Because it has largely escaped development, the Seto Inland Sea of fifty years ago has been preserved. People call it "Japan's Galapagos". The Ecological Society of Japan, the Ornithological Society of Japan and the Japanese Association of Benthology have called for the cancellation of the nuclear power plant project.

As if to prove the point, one after another protected and endangered species which are unique to Japan, such as Japanese murrelet and Japanese wood-pigeon, and various other rare species such as the finless porpoise (sunameri) have been confirmed to be living or breeding in the area.