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
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
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Scores of dead fish surface on the banks of the Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, BrazilAs the planet’s 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 of wat
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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
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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
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