Part one of
(Photo: Thierry Meirer Pkepaemboiu/Unsplash)
April 7, 2021
For millennia, people have perceived the ocean as endlessly bountiful. Owned by none. Teeming with life. Ours for the taking.
But during the past couple of decades, that narrative of inexhaustibility has been upended. The biggest fish are fished out. Sharks are becoming rare. Many marine mammals are on the brink. Even plankton populations are shifting and thinning out.
And at the same time, the very chemistry of the global ocean is changing, driven by the growing carbon load in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The ocean is warming up, losing its oxygen and acidifying.