Professor CARLOS DUARTE, Oceanographer-extraordinaire, environmental hero of
mega-proportions and part-Malagueno, has good news. Amid all the depressing talk of degradation of the oceans, it is hugely encouraging to read that this scientist, who is widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest experts on oceans and climate, believes the situation can be fixed.
Professor Duarte describes himself as a ‘Marine ecologist convinced that we can rebuild marine life by 2050’. Are we up to the challenge?, he asks on his Twitter account.
SURinEnglish recently (August 8th 2019) published an interview with Professor Duarte.
Some of the key take-away quotations from the SURinEnglish article:
On the relationship between Man and the Oceans:
‘Man needs the sea. The sea can do without Man altogether, and it did for millions of years. On the other hand, we depend on it, from breathing to eating. The sea is beneficial for our health and even for our psychological wellbeing. We depend on our oceans being healthy.’
‘Every degradation of the oceans is a degradation of our quality of life and our potential for the future. The good news is that it is not irreversible. We have already made some progress and that should cheer us up. The sea hasn't been lost yet. Absolutely not.’
Q: Is plastic the biggest threat to our seas right now?
CD: ‘It's the most visible problem but it isn't the most important one. Plastic is the tip of the iceberg of marine contamination. An iceberg has a point sticking up above the surface, but an enormous mass below. Plastic is the point we can see. It's something we can touch and understand, but marine contamination is invisible. I'm talking about chemical components here. That's why plastic makes us aware of marine contamination. If we only concentrate on plastic, we are losing a golden opportunity to act on the problem of marine contamination which is a much bigger one than plastic.’
Q:What exactly do you mean by marine contamination? Sewage being released into the sea, for example?
CD: ‘I'm referring to all the chemical elements that enter the oceans as a result of human activity. Fertilisers we use in our fields, for example the ones which are used massively in many of the tropical orchards in Malaga. Yes, it also includes organic material released into the sea because of a lack of treatment plants. In Malaga that is a chronic problem. I'm also talking about the detergents we use in our homes, which have toxic components. Nowadays more than 50,000 chemical components are used by different industrial sectors.’
Q: Does the sea have the ability to regenerate itself?
CD: ‘It has an impressive ability to regenerate, as long as we give it a breathing space to do so. If we give it a break, we can practically recover it completely. The only thing we have to do is adapt a series of rules, and those are easy.’
His advice to the public? Information is key. They need to be posted in public places for all to see, read, digest. In reply to the comment that total strangers are prepared to talk about weather at bus stops, but not climate, he says we need to be better informed...
CD: ‘ There are figures about climate change which are evident. We need to put those at the bus stops.’
​Prof Duarte currently holds the Chair in Marine Ecology at the Red Sea Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. Follow him on his Twitter account at https://twitter.com/duarteoceans?lang=en