Ocean Pollution: Problems and Solutions

For many Americans, the first hints that we were seriously polluting the sea came during a few summers in the late 1980s. Medical waste (including used hypodermic needles), raw sewage, and tons of plain old trash washed up along the Atlantic coast, forcing beach closings and generating plenty of bad publicity. A headline in one New York City newspaper--"SUMMER BUMMER --BEACH POLLUTION POISONS VACATIONS" --summed up unhappy feelings.

But evidence of ocean pollution had been turning up elsewhere. For example, autopsies on North Atlantic beluga whales had revealed cancers, lung infections, and other diseases. In some cases, there is evidence that these illnesses may have been brought on by exposure to mercury, PCBs, and other poisons in the fish the whales eat. A 1991 survey of supermarket fish in the United States revealed that 43 percent of salmon and 25 percent of swordfish contained PCBs. Some clams tested in the survey were contaminated with lead or arsenic.

People, as well as plants and animals, are suffering. The number of humans is increasing. The world's oceans and the fish they contain are expected to be a major source of food and other resources for future generations of people. Ocean pollution is really a poisoning of the global commons--an area of the planet used by everyone but owned by no one. It is difficult to control the use--and misuse--of such a common resource.

Developing Policies for the Oceans
The global ocean system is interconnected, and pollution travels worldwide on the currents. Therefore, nations have to work together to control marine pollution. Some international agreements already exist, and there are hopeful signs that people can act to reduce pressures on the sea. For example, the London Dumping Convention (LDC), which came into effect in 1975, prohibits deliberate ocean dumping (from ships and airplanes) of some kinds of wastes, including toxic and radioactive wastes. By 1990, this agreement had been signed by 63 countries. Also in 1990, the LDC agreed to ban ocean dumping of all industrial wastes in international waters, beginning in 1995. This agreement was reached despite opposition by several powerful industrial countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the former Soviet Union. The LDC hopes eventually to develop a ban on land-based ocean dumping, which is responsible for 80 percent of ocean wastes. (Land-based dumping means wastes dumped into the oceans from homes, businesses, industries, and waste-disposal sites located on land.) In addition to the nations involved in the LDC, several regional international groups also have made agreements aimed at controlling ocean pollution in their areas.

On a smaller scale, governments, researchers, and individuals, too, are taking action to head off at least some of the damage to oceans and bays. Here are some examples:
· Laws to reduce lead in motor vehicle and factory emissions have reduced the amount of lead in the ocean.
· The United States halted all ocean dumping of sewage sludge in 1992; the United Kingdom plans to stop sewage dumping by 1998.
· Researchers from six countries have begun a study of radioactive-
waste-dumping in the Arctic seas.
· Biotechnologists have developed a bacterium that changes polluting petroleum into carbon dioxide and water.
· In California, surfers successfully sued two paper mills. The mills had
been dumping toxic waste into Humboldt Bay. The suit forced the mills to come into compliance with the Clean Water Act.

An Investment of Money
Just having a policy doesn't always solve the problems. Cleaning polluted areas and even preventing pollution costs money. The high expense is one of the reasons communities are sometimes slow to launch cleanup efforts.

Sewage is one form of pollution that still plagues some oceanas, despite efforts to control it. For 50 years New York City dumped sewage sludge (the thick, sometimes toxic liquid resulting from treatment of sewage wastewater) at an ocean site 19 kilometers (12 mi) offshore. The result, according to an Environmental Protection Agency administrator, was the creation of a dead sea.

In 1988, the U.S. Congress banned ocean disposal of sewage sludge. Obeying the law was expected to be good for the ocean but hard on New Yorkers. Dumping sludge at sea had cost city taxpayers about $20 million a year. Disposing of sludge on land was predicted to cost city taxpayers perhaps 10 times that.

For big cities like New York- -already struggling to dispose of other kinds of garbage--finding new ways to get rid of mountains of sludge on land was a painful burden. New York was not the only place with problems. Similar ocean-pollution problems are repeated around the world. In Antarctica, scientific stations established to study the extremely clean environment on that cold continent have polluted their surroundings. At the U.S. Antarctic base at McMurdo Sound, even surplus bulldozers ended up in the sea. Forced to clean up their mess, those who manage Antarctic outposts are "discovering how expensive and inconvenient it is having to ship out hundreds of barrels of frozen feces and urine in addition to the other refuse" they produce, writes James Hamilton-Paterson in The Great Deep: The Sea and Its Thresholds.

The Investment Pays Off
Yet keeping oceans as pollution-free as possible still seems like a wise policy. One reason is that marine plant life, which processes carbon during photosynthesis, reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the surface ocean and in the air. The masses of phytoplankton (tiny drifting plants that serve as food for larger marine organisms) that cover the oceans probably absorb about
half of the six billion tons of carbon dioxide generated each year by humans' cars, factories, and other pollution sources. If that carbon dioxide were not being absorbed by ocean plants, it might contribute to the greenhouse effect. Many scientists now think that ocean plankton may have a greater impact on the world's climate than even the great tropical rainforests. Some scientists estimate that as much as 90 percent of the photosynthesis on earth may take
place in the oceans. Oceans are thus helping to protect humans from human-created pollution problems. But whether the sea can keep providing that service or not may depend on the overall cleanliness and health of oceans. And that will depend on how well
we humans keep up our end of the pollution- prevention bargain.