Living Waters: Emphasising the need to protect life's breath on this planet
A virus has caused us to scramble for oxygen but our chokehold on the environment is slowly strangling the very waters that breathe life into us. The virus is a timely reminder: We are merely consumer
A fisheye view of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, AustraliaThe earliest known photosynthesising marine fossil we have record of goes back 3.5 billion years. The ocean was producing oxygen for billions of years before that. Early in our planet&rsquos history, the atmosphere had almost no oxygen. Oxygen generated as a byproduct by photosynthesising microbes eventually built up in the at
Image by Janelle Lugge / Shutterstock
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A kelp forest flanks a sea lion in the Pacific Ocean off San Benito Island, MexicoLand plants evolved from green marine algae, so we owe the ocean for all of the oxygen that comes from them as well. These submerged algae raised their heads above water once the atmospheric oxygen levels were high enough for the ozone layer to form, protecting them from lethal levels of UV radiation that pe
Image by Reinhard Dirscherl / Ullstein Bild via Getty Images
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A NASA satellite image shows heat radiating from the PacificOxygen is critical to the health of oceans. Their warming has caused a decline in phytoplankton levels by 40 percent since 1950. Ocean currents circulate cold water from depths, pushing nutrients to warmer surfaces, where planktons live, who feed on these nutrients and sunlight to grow. Warmer water disrupts the action of ocean
Image by AFP / NASA / Handout
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A layer of toxic foam from sewage and industrial waste on Yamuna river in New Delhi, IndiaThere are serious consequences to humans discharging nitrogen and phosphorus into our waterways through sewage, agriculture and industrial activity. The rise in the level of these nutrients in the water causes phytoplankton to multiply rapidly and create what&rsquos known as an algal blooms. These to
Image by Biplov Bhuyan / Hindustan Times via Getty Images
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Smoke billows from a large steel plant in Inner Mongolia, ChinaOceans are becoming more acidic as a result of absorbing excess carbon dioxide gas released in the atmosphere by human activity. Fossil fuel emissions and deforestation are the two major sources for carbon pollution. The rapid destruction of warm water coral reefs is evidence that ocean acidification will affect marine life. R
Image by Kevin Frayer / Getty Images
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Scores of dead fish surface on the banks of the Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, BrazilAs the planet&rsquos polluted atmosphere traps more heat, the oceans get warmer. Last year saw new highs of ocean temperature in the top 700 m and 2,000 m of water. Fish species known to hunt at depths are repeatedly floating to surface view today. The reason: Warm temperatures have knocked oxygen out o
Image by Ricardo Moraes / Reuters
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A fish farm in Maoer Lake, Jiangsu Province of ChinaThe percent of seafood supplied by the aquaculture industry has risen from a mere 7 percent in 1974 to over 52 percent of all seafood consumed today. Dense aquaculture contributes to deoxygenation. Not only do densely kept animals use oxygen as they respire, but microbial decomposition of excess fish food and fish faeces also consumes ox
Image by Zhou Haijun/ Visual China Group via Getty images
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Garbage floats in the Ganga river along the ghats of Varanasi, IndiaA toxic soup of marine debris that gets swept into sewers, storm drains and waterways and eventually out to sea via rivers, has turned our oceans into floating garbage patches. Eight of the 10 ten rivers that carry 90 percent of the plastic that ends up in the ocean are found to be in Asia. What these rivers had in common
Image by Avishek Das / Sopa Images/ Lightrocket via Getty Images
