Photograph by Anastasia Miseyko / Connected Archives
Words by Ruth H. Burns
June is National Oceans Month. Now, my people are Indigenous to the northern plains of the United States, and I was born and raised in our ancestral homelands, so growing up, the ocean was somewhat of a stranger to me. Still, I’ve always admired its raw power and enthralling beauty. Marine life especially, is so captivating—with deep sea creatures that seem more alien than Earth-bound.
While we didn’t interact with the ocean on a daily basis, my ancestors were aware of its existence. We traded with Native Nations all over the continent, adorning ourselves with seashells gleaned by allies living on distant shores.
I was an adult before my skin ever felt the warm embrace of the ocean. In that instant, awe washed over me like the bubbling seawater licking my chin. Water is life, indeed. Pulsing through seas, rivers, and streams, through lakes and underground aquifers, and finally, as we take it into our own bodies for nourishment and hydration, it truly is the lifeblood of our planet. The ocean must be protected. Today, more than ever.
Climate change is heating up Mother Earth, and 90% of that temperature increase is happening in our oceans. For the globe’s oceans, the warmest decade recorded since the 1800s occurred over the last 10 years. In fact, 2023 was the ocean’s warmest recorded year ever.
This oceanic warming comes with dangerous consequences. It causes up to half of sea level rise across the world, due to thermal expansion, leading to accelerated melting of glaciers and ice sheets at the poles. Higher ocean temps strengthen tropical storms and hurricanes to levels never before seen, and are leading to catastrophic die-offs across species, as well as coral bleaching.
In the United States, the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf coasts have seen sea level increases greater than eight inches. When the sea level rises, it floods wetlands and dry land, creating more open water. States like Florida and New York are actually losing land as a result. Wetlands are also fragile ecosystems that wetland species depend on for survival. As these wetlands disappear, the organisms that call them home have no place to go.
Climate change is heating up Mother Earth, and 90% of that temperature increase is happening in our oceans.
As ice melts in the Arctic circle and across Antarctica, animals like polar bears lose hunting grounds. Habitat necessary for penguins, seals, and other endangered animals to thrive is disappearing before our eyes. Glaciers holding increasingly rare deposits of fresh water that our bodies require to function are also vanishing into the salty sea.
Heat is a key component for fueling powerful hurricanes, too. Scientists are warning that higher ocean temps have doubled the likelihood of intense tropical storms in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. The most damaging kind of hurricanes that arise are three times more frequent than they were 100 years ago. They also intensify much faster.
Oceanic heat waves driven by climate change have been particularly destructive to marine life, killing off millions of fish, birds, mammals, plants, and coral reefs in the past five years. One billion marine creatures were estimated to have perished during a 2021 heat wave off the northwest coast of North America, according to one research project. Scientists who study marine life are saying that mass die-offs are completely off the charts and impossible to predict at this point. Regions previously believed to be untouched by oceanic heat waves, like deep within the continent of Antarctica, are experiencing mass extinctions as well.
Heat waves can create life, too, but in ways that are unbalanced. The oceanic heat causes dangerous algal blooms, like Florida’s red tide, which produce toxins that kill fish and birds. The algal smothers and suffocates everything in sight, using up all the oxygen in the ocean and causing dead zones where nothing else can survive.
A marked increase in ocean acidity is also occurring due to higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is dissolving in the water. This acidity is breaking down the exoskeletons and shells of some marine creatures.
Ironically, oceans are vital in the fight to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and stabilize the planet’s climate.
The ocean covers over 70% of the planet’s surface. It creates 50% of the oxygen here and absorbs 25% of emitted carbon dioxide. It has a high capacity for heat and has thus absorbed 90% of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The top few meters of ocean store as much heat as the entire atmosphere of Earth because of this. In other words, it is the largest buffer and carbon sink we have at our disposal. As oceans warm beyond their capacity to sequester, though, their ability to absorb carbon dioxide is diminished.
Ecosystems within the ocean, which hold mangroves and seagrasses, have the capacity to sequester carbon dioxide at a rate four times greater than any on land, including the rainforests. Mangroves are the most carbon rich biomes on the Earth, supporting fisheries and protecting coastlines from storms and flooding.
Mother Earth does not belong to us, rather, we are her children.
Coral reefs cover only an estimated 0.1% of the world’s oceans but support more than 25% of marine biodiversity and provide coastal protection to a billion people, promote fisheries, and serve as medicine. Sadly, these reefs are paying for their sacrifice to save the planet from climate change with their own survival—coral bleaching that often leads to death.
Aside from climate change, unsightly man-made pollution is also quite literally choking marine life. Approximately 5.25 trillion tons of plastic is already in our oceans. About 100,000 marine creatures are estimated to die due to entanglement with fishing nets and plastic items such as straws, bags, and even plastic wrap. Plastic garbage has even been discovered in crustaceans living in the Mariana Trench, the lowest point in the ocean, at an astonishing 36,201 feet deep. While the United Nations recently launched efforts to clean up our oceans, joined by various environmental groups and agencies all over the world, their work has only just begun.
We must save the ocean to save ourselves and all life on Earth, be it marine or terrestrial. Experts suggest that we expand the protection of marine protected ecosystems. Currently, only about 6% of oceans are protected, although that amount has increased 10 times since the year 2000. Long-term conservation of vast areas of ocean, notably zones containing mangroves and coral reefs, must be set aside.
As my ancestors taught for millennia, we are charged with conserving and protecting our world for the next seven generations to come. Mother Earth does not belong to us, rather, we are her children. She shares her wealth with us, and we are merely the living torch bearers within a long chain of life stemming from our origins and branching into a future that will continue on long after we return to the soil from whence we came.
The ocean is a part of us all. Delight in it and keep it well so our grandchildren may live.
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The Growing Threat of Oceanic Warming
