May 25, 2016
When I was very young, I read a book about how a wise old elephant called a meeting of all the animals to discuss how to respond to a crime committed by the local human tribe. I remember how I imagined that meeting.
It is harder to imagine such a meeting among the fish and mammals of the sea since they cannot sit together. But the dolphins and the whales are smart. They know what is going on, and they know who is responsible. They are all suffering from the invasion of 100,000 commercial ships everyday in the watery world that once belonged to them. If they could, they would unite in a protest against the enormous increase in international shipping in the last ten years. They would be aghast at the possibility of a trade agreement that would increase shipping by 11 percent in the next fifteen years.
It is an unprecedented invasion. We think of ships as floating on top of the water and occupying only that space, but the sound of their engines penetrates to the final depth of the ocean and miles in every direction. It is an assault that disrupts the animal’s communication systems, orientation, feeding, and breeding success. Noise stress makes them more vulnerable to predation. Large ships make a penetrating noise even when they are dropping an anchor. Shipping has created a cacophony that can tear apart the social networks of whales because they do not rely on sight. They rely on hearing. Water diminishes visibility to the point that oceanic life has replaced distant seeing with song. Song is a major presence in the ocean. Shipping noise eradicates that song.
Worse, there is a new torture to be implemented soon. The Obama administration reversed an earlier decision to allow oil drilling off the U.S. East Coast. This is no victory for whales and fish since it does not prohibit exploratory seismic air gun surveys used to locate oil and gas reserves in rock layers under the seabed. The noise from these powerful explosions will detonate every ten seconds for weeks.
Fish are sensitive to the smallest release of oil, chemicals and various operational discharges that are a normal part of shipping. Tribulyltin or TBT is used in the paint for ship’s hulls. It is violently toxic for fish in small quantities and causes hearing loss and other problems. Although banned in the United States, it is not rigorously regulated in Asian nations. Another invasion occurs when ballast water from another part of the world is discharged bringing invasive and exotic plants, animals, viruses, and bacteria to the area. It can turn an ecosystem upside-down and devastated.
Sea animals did not evolve to compete with immense ships for space. Collisions with ships are a regular hazard maiming or killing them. Most corals are shallow and vulnerable. The richest fish diversity in the world is found in the corals of the Pacific and Indian oceans where there are 6,000 to 8,000 species in population concentrations much greater than in the sea around them. More coral reefs are located in the Pacific Ocean than anywhere else in the world, and occupy about 14 million square miles. Yet this is the arena of the 12 member nations of the TPP. It is likely that shipping will increase accordingly. This territorial invasion into vital marine habitat spells danger for the entire oceanic ecosystem.
As cargo ships proliferate year by year, their contribution to worldwide pollution is mounting and significant. The major pollutants are sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide that then start chain reactions resulting in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) surface ozone, poisonous at sea level and a Green House Gas in the atmosphere, and nitrogen compounds that contribute to ocean acidification. Acidification of ocean water, has already reached a crisis point for marine life. We could call it the chemical invasion of oceans by humans.
“Few places on Earth are as free from legal oversight as the high seas.” This is what Ian Urbina revealed in his series of articles for the New York Times. The oceans are vast lonely spaces. Out of sight of any government, we find shipping companies behaving in unethical self-interest. In the privacy of isolation, the ships can do whatever they want.
What they want, and do, is intentionally dump more engine oil and sludge into oceans in the span of 3 years than the combined oil spills of the Deepwater Horizon and the Exxon Valdez accidents. When they dump their oil/sludge, the ships leave a visible trail for miles. They emit huge amounts of air pollution, far more than all the world’s cars. Shipping pollution is responsible for enough methyl mercury to make canned tuna the single largest source of mercury in the American diet. This is horrific pollution.
It has been said that the oceans are the foundation of all planetary life, but industrial shipping treats it as a waste-disposal system. This is why the TPP contradicts the Clean Power Plan. The latter could never compensate for this level of pollution. The shipping industry is proven to be environmentally lawless exactly when all the peoples of the world must devote themselves to environmental restoration. For oceanic health, we need a treaty to diminish shipping as quickly as feasible. Increasing it substantially with the TPP should be out of the question.
If we are serious about confronting the steep numerical decline of fish in the oceans, we must give its creatures a fair chance at survival. Keep in mind that in 2000, the biggest container ship carried 8,000 containers. In 2013, the biggest ships carried 18,000 containers. This is grotesque. But the Trans Pacific Partnership would encourage this grotesque invasion of the sea. It is, after all, the whole point of the proposed treaty. These huge ships magnify every environmental problem of noise, collision, acid, chemical pollution, territorial takeover, ballast discharge of invasive species, and overwhelming amounts of oil and sludge.
The planet itself cannot afford the TPP. In one decade, 1992-2002, shipping traffic increased 60 percent. What can we expect from the TPP? We need an alternative proposal to incrementally reduce trade while nations rebuild their former capacities. We need to live within the bounds of our geography, and laws of nature.
Martin Luther hated trade because of its interruption of social and ecological harmony. Martin Luther King would agree. For marine life, the TPP is the ultimate nightmare. It is time for the whales and dolphins to nail their demands to the doors of all nations, especially the doors of the 12 member nations of the Trans Pacific Partnership. Since they cannot do it, we have a moral obligation to support marine life by renouncing the TPP. We have the same moral obligation to support each other for the same reasons by killing the TPP.
M. K. Blechman
Some information came from the New York Times Series, Sailing Beyond the Rule of Law by Ian Urbina and from Environment 360. (e360.yale.edu, ocean_noise_pollution)