Alldredge, Alice (2/25/98)

Comments From Alice Alldredge

2. What are the major opportunities open to biological oceanography in the next two decades and what challenges need to be overcome to realize those opportunities?

I was very pleased to see that all of the white papers addressed the issue of "Change" and how the ocean ecosystem will respond to it. However, to my mind there is a sense of urgency about understanding, predicting and, if possible, mitigating change that goes far beyond our ingrained "business as usual" mindset as scientists.

In the next two decades the ocean will be experiencing very rapid change, primarily from anthropogenic sources. Most of this change will occur in developing nations, especially in coastal zones. The population of the earth is presently at almost 6 billion. At the present rate of growth it will be over 8 billion 20 years from now. The United Nations estimates that at the present rate of growth there will be 40 billion in the year 2100, although estimates based on projected reduced birth rates place it more hopefully at 11 billion, most of this in developing nations. This increased population translates into vastly larger stresses on marine ecosystems and marine resources and great challenges for us as scientists. These stresses are likely to impact the ocean on a much shorter time fuse than global climate change and thus are much more urgent, to my mind. Here are just a few examples:

1. Marine Mammals - Fisheries biologists estimate that marine mammals presently remove 3 times as much fish from the sea as human populations. In the next two decades starving people in many places on the globe will propose to eliminate marine mammals from local ecosystems in order to increase fish harvest. Will we have a scientific answer as to whether or not that will, indeed, have an impact on their food resources?? The food web may respond in unpredictable ways. We need to know and soon!! A whole group of important animals is at stake.

2. Removal of top predators - I am sure you all saw the recent paper in Science by Pauly et al.(Science 279:860-863). The average trophic level of fish harvested from the ocean has been decreasing steadily decade by decade and is now about 3.0. Are we performing a massive top down control experiment on the scale of the global ocean? This impact is likely to increase in the next 2 decades as we discover, exploit, destroy, and move on from one commercially valuable fish species to the next. Moreover, while commercial fisherman have a stake in sustainable fisheries, a starving man will take the last fish from the ocean to feed his family for one more night. Fisheries are severely exploited or already collapsed in much of Asia, Africa, and parts of South America. While the white papers address this issue, the Pauly paper puts its urgency into perspective.

3. Loss of critical marine habitats - Loss of marine habitat, do to pollution, sedimentation, runoff, conversion etc. etc. has already made a major impact on mangrove and coral reef habitats worldwide. For example, its estimated that only 100,000 hectares of the original 500,000 hectares of mangrove swamp remain in the Philippines. Clive Wilkinson, at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, estimates that 10 % of the worlds coral reefs are now degraded beyond recognition; 30% are in critical condition and will be lost completely in the next 10 to 20 years, while another 30% are threatened and could be lost in 20-40 years.

The threat to the coastal zones, including our own is considerable. It is estimated that within three decades 75% of the worlds population (over 6 billion people) will reside in coastal areas. By 2025, 75% of all Americans will live in coastal counties with areas such as southern California and Florida expected to double in population size.

OUEVRE needs to consider prioritizing research needs for the future based on these projections. The next two decades will bring the biggest changes to coastal ecosystems, both benthic and pelagic. It is my opinion that we need to be emphasizing coastal zones over open ocean research in order to provide information to understand and protect these highly threatened systems. This does not mean that we should not be doing some open ocean research. But we need to balance the research in a way that accurately reflects the real future and the types of information we need to provide in order to sustain the ocean in that future.

I am aware that all of this is rather negative but many, many people are deeply concerned. We cannot afford to have OUEVRE think in "business as usual" terms. Challenging times call for challenging ideas, difficult priorities, and clear visions of the kinds of information we as scientist will most urgently need to provide to policy makers and to the public in the next two decades. You are truly facing a Grand Challenge!

alldredg@lifesci.ucsb.edu