Sea•thos Foundation

For the past couple of weeks Sea•thos has been buzzing about World Water Day 2012! Many people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water. It turns out that protecting the health of our oceans can actually help conserve water and ensure that the whole world will have enough to drink! Here is how:

Water Scarcity

WWD celebrates water and aims to spread awareness about water scarcity

- 884 million (approx. one in eight) people around the world lack access to safe drinking water

-At least 400 million people worldwide live in areas with severe water shortages

-In Africa alone, people (mainly women and children) spend 40 billion hours per year walking to the nearest source of water

Reduce Pollution
By reducing pollution, we can limit the amount of waste entering our marine systems (oceans, rivers, lakes etc.) and ensure the availability of clean drinking water for the whole world:

-3.575 million people, including 1.4 million children, die each year from water-related disease

-About 33% of the toxic contaminants in the ocean are a result of air pollution; 44% are a result of runoff from rivers and streams

-90% of waste water in developing countries is discharged into rivers and streams without any treatment eventually leading to the ocean

Get a reusable water bottle
 By ditching plastic we can reduce marine pollution and conserve water.

-80 to 90% of marine pollution is plastic debris

-It takes about 1.5 gallons of water to make a plastic bottle

-$100 billion is spent on bottled water annually. Just a quarter of that amount would provide access to safe drinking water to the whole planet! (onedrop.org)

Join in the celebration! Visit our World Water Day page to participate, watch videos, and enter to win a free Lifefactory water bottle!

World Wetlands Day (WWD) marks the date when the Iranian city of Ramsar adopted the Convention on Wetlands on February 2, 1971. WWD has been celebrated each year on February 2 since 1997.

 The Ramsar secretariat provides materials to all interested groups including government agencies, conservation organizations, non-governmental organizations, and groups of citizens in order to celebrate and promote awareness of the importance of wetlands.

WWD activities include lectures and seminars, nature walks, community clean up days, children’s art contests, radio and television interviews, the launch of new wetland policies, and much more.

What is a wetland?
A wetland is an area of land that is covered or touched by water either permanently or seasonally. Examples of wetlands are bogs, marshes, and swamps.

The Ramsar Convention defines wetlands as “…areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.”

There are two types of Wetlands: Coastal (Tidal) and Inland (Non-tidal)
-Tidal wetlands are found near our coasts. plants are unlikely to grow in tidal wetlands due to the mixing of fresh water with salt water in nearby estuaries.
-Non-tidal wetlands are found inland next to rivers, lakes, ponds and streams. Non-tidal wetlands have fresh water and are therefore ideal habitat for plants to grow healthily such as brush-filled marshes and wooded swamps.

Why are Wetlands Important?
Wetlands benefit people and ecosystems by providing  ecosysem services  such as flood control, ground water replenishment, shoreline and storm protection, water purification, climate change regulation, wetland products, biodiversity, and cultural values.

Sustainable Tourism
The theme of this year’s WWD is sustainable tourism which is also the theme of Ramsar Convention’s next meeting with the Conference of the Parties, COP11: Wetlands, Tourism and Recreation in June 2012.

Sustainable tourism encourages people to enjoy natural beauty while protecting the enviornment through conservation and respect of biodiversity and culture.

To achieve sustainable tourism, Ramsar is working closely with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), an agency within the United Nations. Thanks to this partnership, tourism is now reported in 35% of Ramsar sites (wetlands that are listed under the Ramsar convention) which includes wetlands in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceana and the Neurotropics.

In previous years, the Ramasar has focused on such themes as “Wetlands and Forests,” “Healthy Wetlands, Healthy People”, and ”Caring for Wetlands- An Answer to Climate Change”- these themes focus on the health and wellbeing of wetlands and the communities that depend on them.

Fun Fact: Wetlands are found on every continent except Antarctica

Who knew that wetlands are so crucial to the wellbeing of you, me, and the entire planet?! Happy World Wetlands Day!

For more information and materials visit ramsar.org

This hammerhead shark was caught in a gill net in Mexico’s Gulf of California.  Hammerheads do not seek out human prey but will attack if provoked. 

This rare 23 feet long whale shark was caught in a fishing net off the coast of Maylasia in 2009.  It was towed to shore but died shortly after from serious injuries. 

An estimated 50 million sharks are caught every year as bycatch - the unintended catch of a species in a fishing operation.  Sharks are easily caught in nets because of their large size. Shark populations are dwindling due to bycatch because sharks are slow growing animals and do not reproduce as fast as other fish species. 

Thanks National Geographic for the pictures!

Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) are a tool used to protect the world’s oceans by designating certain areas of water as off limits to human activity. MPA’s consist of coastal areas, estuaries, the open ocean, inter-tidal zones, and the Great Lakes. Mangement of MPAs includes design and enforcement of restrictions on human activity by  local, state, territorial, native, regional, or national authorities.

There are 8,600 MPAs in the world and several are in U.S. waters.  Every MPA is different and limitations on human activity vary. Restricted human activity in MPAs include limitations on development, fishing, fishing season, and size of catch. While some MPAs are completely off limits to people, others allow access for recreational, educational, or research purposes. Marine Reserves, also known as no-take zones, are MPAs in which no one is allowed to remove cultural or natural resources from that specific area. Only 1.2% of the world’s oceans are currently protected. 

MPAs provide many benefits to marine ecosystems as well as to the public. Through MPAs endangered fish populations are allowed to replenish, damaged ecosystems can recover, and historical and cultural artifacts are preserved. MPAs also provide recreational, educational and economic benefits, as well as preserving the culture and livelihood of people who directly depend on marine environments. 

This map shows MPAs in the Southern California region.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a massive collection of  floating plastic that has accumulated in the northern Pacific gyre. A gyre is a naturally occuring system of rotating currents and there are five gyres in the ocean. The rotation of the gyres attract plastic garbage that has entered into the ocean through human activity such as pollution from urban runoff. All five of the gyres contain concentrations of plastic debris, but the north Pacific gyre has the most intense amount and is therefore known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The northern Pacific gyre is located between San Francisco and Hawaii and is made up of  four ocean currents: the North Pacific Current from the north, the California Current from the east, the North Equatorial Current from the south, and the Kuroshio Current from the west.  The size of the gyre reaches over most of the northern Pacific ocean and has been described as being twice the size of the state of Texas.  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a huge problem, not only because our ocean has become a massive trash can, but also because marine life including sea birds digest the plastic debris and eventually platic-contaminated seafood becomes a part of our own diet.  Here is a video that helps illustrate the magnitude of the plastic debris gyre

Dead zones are a very unfortunate oceanic occurrence.  They form in hypoxic (very low-oxygen) areas in the ocean near coast lines where aquatic life is abundant. Dead zones are caused by an increase of chemical nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen in the water, a process known as eutrophication. These chemicals enter into the ocean through runoff from human activities such as agriculture and urban development.  One of the main chemical sources is fertilizer used in agriculture. 

These chemicals are the nutrients that help form phytoplankton- plant like organisms that swim freely near the surface of the ocean. An increase of these chemicals in the water lead to excessive growth of phytoplankton, particularly algae, a process known as algal bloom. Algae depletes oxygen from the water at night when it under goes a process known as cellular respiration.

When algae dies, it sinks to the ocean bottom and is decomposed by bacteria which uses up oxygen in the water and further depletes oxygen levels.  These two processes, excessive algae growth and algae decomposition, result in areas with very low oxygen (hypoxic areas). Fish and other marine organisms need oxygen to survive. Starved of oxygen, marine life either leave to other areas or die, and the hypoxic area becomes a dead zone.  

 As you can see in the pictures, dead zones can be seen from the surface of the ocean and they are not a pretty sight. There is no fishing in these areas because there is literally no marine life to fish! Sadly, the incidences of dead zones have become more numerous since they were first discovered in the 1970′s.

A major dead zone near the U.S. is in the Gulf of Mexico (pictured to the right) which formed from chemical runoff that enters the gulf from the Mississippi river. Check out this website about the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, it has a lot of cool interactive information including maps and videos! Let’s stop dead zones from forming by reducing the amount of chemicals released into the ocean!