CHASING DOWN THE MUSE: Oceans are sending a message

Imagine as you walk down one of our sandy beaches, you spy, caught in the eddies of a tide pool, a worn and moss-covered bottle. As you stoop to pick it up, you notice through the etched surface, a rolled piece of paper.

Your heart races. Is this it? The famed message in a bottle, right in your very own hands?

Where did it come from? What seas has it traversed? What storms and doldrums has it weathered?

With great glee, you pull the stopper and shake the paper through the bottles narrow neck. Carefully, you unroll the yellowed parchment and slowly read the faded letters.

“Help,” is the only word printed on the sheet.

Immediately your mind races. Who sent the message? Where are they? What is the problem? If you knew where to look, would it be too late to help?

What if the message, were from the ocean itself? A trick of the starfish, the eel and the octopus. A cunning plot by the whales, dolphin, tuna and their brethren to shake up human apathy — a not so silent cry for humans to take a closer look at the state of the seas and begin to pay attention?

When I was a kid, my family spent several summers in Catalina moored in the harbor. There was a trash boat that came by daily to remove our refuse, but on our trips back and forth to the mainland, we would regularly throw our trash overboard. I was told, and it was thought, that the ocean would process the waste. Paper products would disintegrate and bottles would sink. Never mind where they would sink or what the bottom might look like with piles of trash. Those thoughts never really crossed our minds.

We believed that the ocean would clean herself. She would forever dilute what we tossed into her vast liquid currents.

How could we know? Now I ask — how could we not know?

Once upon a time, the better folks of England (and elsewhere) threw the offal of their chamber pots into the streets. If it rained, then the fecal matter ran into the fields and rivers. If it didn’t, then it mashed down to stench laden piles.

How could they know? Scientists had not yet discovered the relationships between sanitation and air or water borne diseases.

We have taken the oceans for granted, and that time has run out. We continue to dump trash, toxic wastes, and agricultural run-off, and the oceans are wearing out.

Our own off-shore sewage pipes immediately come to mind. We don’t allow sewage to be dumped close to shore, but if we just move the pipe a mile or so out — does that make it okay? What about the debacle at Huntington Beach?

We’ve witnessed the ocean’s recent inability to function when overwhelmed by urban run-off and fertilizer concentrations. Algae blooms choke off all life and leave the ocean – and us – with dead zones. We know so little about the larger effects of these events, or even the possibility of a cataclysmic die-off.

Jane Goodall uses an analogy of a jigsaw puzzle in her discussion of the importance of speciation. She says that each piece represents one component of life, and that the integrity of the puzzle depends on all of the pieces. We can survive, somewhat intact, with the disappearance of one piece. But when the adjoining pieces also go missing, the puzzle begins to crumble. The chain of life is endangered. And all of this is happening while we watch.

We do live a period of tremendous greed, and environmental sanctions or regulations are greeted with anger and arguments of economic tampering. The big tuna boats want ALL the big tuna. They need them for this years’ bottom line. But what about next year? Or the year after, when there aren’t any big tuna left, but only tiny ones.

I pick on the ocean because she is right outside my door. The city I live in thrives because of her beachfront location, because we all love the water. We are graced by her modulation of temperature, her bounty, her beauty. The message in the bottle isn’t a joke. The oceans are in trouble, and we are the cause … and we can be the cure.

Think about your own actions, every single one of them. And get involved in seeking and implementing solutions.

CATHARINE COOPER loves wild places – especially oceans. She can be reached at [email protected]