Marine Conservation
Photographs and Words Nick Sidle
Photograph – Dark Banded Fusiliers, Pterocaesio, Similan Islands, Thailand
So finally, the problem of inter-stellar travel had been solved. The spaceship hung in orbit over the new planet and the crew marvelled at the green and blue jewelled surface of the world below. Long before this day, advanced astronomy had confirmed that three quarters of the planet’s surface was fluid and composed of the elements hydrogen and oxygen. Once the spaceship had been in orbit for two weeks, their observations had established that this great mass of water was vital to the stability of the planet’s climate and was a rich ecosystem in its own right, supporting a fantastically intricate web of life. Not only with regard to the oceans, the crew had also been able to disprove the previously long held theory that the presence of so much water (there was very little in their own solar system) represented a danger that would mean that there was no life on this world. In fact, the space travellers would be returning home with a vast amount of data on species that lived on the land as well, including one that was particularly numerous and seemed to represent the dominant biological civilisation. So much for the academic treatises of the past hundred years that had confidently explained that since large amounts of fluid were spatially unstable, in lay terms they slopped around a lot, planetary movement would mean that there would be too much turbulence in the water to permit life and any solid land would be constantly washed over, precluding any hope of life getting established there either. Of course, all of this had had to be the result of substantial extrapolation from experimental results, since even the richest universities on their home planet could only afford one bucket of water to conduct experiments on, but the academics had been certain that they were right. It was simply ludicrous to them that a world where the majority of the surface was fluid could support life.
Photograph – Bluestripe Snapper, Lutjanus kasmira, Similan Islands, Thailand
Whilst they were looking forward to presenting these results on their return, the spaceship’s crew were troubled. They had detected that the biologically dominant species they had observed on the solid surfaces of the planet was active in many ways that threatened the stability of their world’s physical, biological and climate systems, mechanisms and balances on which they depended. What was more surprising was that the spaceship’s sensors had detected activity from admittedly primitive but effective monitoring systems operated by the species that would have given them the data to understand the significance of their actions. It was all genuinely puzzling and a little frightening as well. As often happens in many galaxies, apprehension eventually gave birth to humour and a whole series of jokes developed about how by accident or design you could destroy something that was keeping you alive. It was in the telling of a particularly hilarious variant of these that one of the engineers got the idea of embellishing his performance by waving a particularly deadly neutron spanner over the ship’s main life support system during his delivery. Unfortunately, he found his own joke so funny that he lost control, dropped the spanner on the system, destroyed the spaceship and deprived conspiracy theorists everywhere of possible proof that the X Files really was a documentary series after all, since the planned landing the following day could of course no longer happen. All of which left one planet still convinced that life could not exist anywhere where there was a lot of water and another cheerfully abusing and destroying something on which they depended.
Photograph – Scalefin Anthers, Anthers squamipinnis, Shark Reef, Ras Mohammed, Red Sea, Egypt
We have all had the evidence for many years that human activity threatens the oceans and from them all of life on the earth. There have been conferences, treaties, studies, resolutions and mass media coverage of the issues. Accords, conventions and protocols have been duly debated, occasionally even signed and more rarely still adhered to. Some things have been done and genuine progress has been made but so far, however good, it has been not enough and not fast enough to leave the seas and the whole planet in anything like the same state they were in a hundred years ago to be enjoyed by future generations on a stable basis. Pollution, climate change, over fishing, tourism and other human activities have all taken their toll. No one can fully predict or control and shape the future of earth which always has been in a state of change. One forecast is that eventually Australia will collide with Indonesia (think of the insurance claim on that one) whilst most of California ends up somewhere round Alaska, which could be a set back for the surfing industry. These and other global and continental changes will shift the climate to a very hot and humid environment, which will mean that most mammals will die out and the dominantly successful species will be insects. Fortunately, this is only a prediction and if correct, it is for 65 million years’ time. So even if the bugs are going to take over, there is no need to speed things up and help them along by precipitating a disastrous collapse in the environment in the much shorter term.
Photograph – Ras Um Sid Reef, Red Sea, Egypt
Marine conservation is one of the most vital environmental concerns in the world today. It can only be addressed through international agreement and cooperation. Failure to do so will not only result in large scale damage to one of the natural wonders of the world, the ecosystem of the seas, but will also have a genuinely and directly detrimental outcome for the life of everyone on the earth. If none of this moves you, reflect on two other things. Seals and sea-lions are very cute and surely they have enough to worry about already with huge sharks chasing them, and don’t we owe it to visiting aliens not to make them so nervous that they retreat into humour and needlessly destroy their spacecraft in tragic accidents. It is time for everyone to care about the seas before it is too late and any reason will do. The oceans are a unique actual link between the nations of the world, physically and in future interests. Such a link needs to be strengthened, not undermined, and the oceans are for all the people and peoples on the earth and need to be cared about and cared for by everyone.
Photograph – Grey Seal, Halichoerus grypus, Seal Island, St Ives Bay, Cornwall
Maybe, just maybe the world was listening…
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/un-ocean-treaty-global-biodiversity-b2294370.html
Illustration
Photographs and text ©Nick Sidle, all rights reserved