Page 80 - AlertDiver_Spring2013

78 | SPRING 2013
fish crowded the branches of elkhorn and
staghorn coral. Long, bristly antennae
marked the presence of lobsters under
ledges and crevices, and elegantly striped
and irrepressibly curious Nassau grouper
followed me on most dives and likely
would have continued onto the beach but
for the limitations of fins and gills.
Six decades later, I note the difference.
Globally, about half of the coral reefs
that existed when I was a child are gone
or are in a state of serious decay. The
waters of the reefs where I made some
of my earliest dives are not nearly so
clear as they are in my recollections.
The great forests of branching corals
are largely gone. The pink conchs and
Nassau grouper are mostly memories —
the remaining few are protected in U.S.
waters because of their rarity.
With care, there is a chance that these
and many other species may recover, but
some losses are irrecoverable. I missed
meeting, for instance, one of Florida’s
most charismatic animals, the Caribbean
monk seal, a playful St. Bernard-sized
creature that once lolled on beaches
throughout the region, sometimes
ranging as far north as Galveston, Texas.
The last one was sighted in 1952. The
species is now officially listed as extinct.
The World Below
Our exploration of the ocean has
increased significantly over these six
decades as well. Unknown until the late
1970s was the existence of deep-water
hydrothermal vents that gush a hot soup
of water, minerals and microbes. They
foster complex communities of creatures,
including a previously unknown kingdom
of microbes that synthesize food in the
absence of sunlight and photosynthesis.
No one attained access to the deepest
sea until 1960, when two men descended
to 35,797 feet (greater than the height
of Mount Everest) in the submersible
bathyscaphe Trieste for a brief glimpse
of the deepest point on Earth — the
Challenger Deep — in the Mariana
Trench near Guam. No one returned to
those depths until March 2012, when
Canadian explorer and film director
James Cameron ventured there in his
personal one-man submersible.
Technologies that enabled humans
to go to the moon and send robots to
Mars have given us a vitally important
view from afar of Earth: a living blue
jewel in a vast universe of unreachable,
uninhabitable planets and stars,
suspended in apparent emptiness. On a
cell phone, iPad or computer, 10-year-
old children can now view Google Earth,
zoom from space to their own backyards,
fly the Grand Canyon, and, since 2009,
dive into “Google Ocean” to vicariously
explore the depths of the sea.
New methods of gathering, connecting,
evaluating and communicating data,
of measuring change over time and
projecting future outcomes based on
knowledge that no other species has
the capacity to acquire are all causes
for hope. But these gains must be
approached with a healthy dose of
caution. Even now, with all our advances,
less than 5 percent of the ocean has been
seen, let alone explored or mapped with
the same precision and detail available
for the moon, Mars or Jupiter.
The great conservationist Rachel
Carson, who summed up what was
known about the blue part of the planet
in her 1951 book, The Sea Around Us,
was unaware that continents move
around at a stately, geological pace,
or that the greatest mountain chains,
deepest valleys, broadest plains and
majority of life on Earth are in the ocean.
“Eventually man … found his way back
to the sea,” she wrote. “And yet he has
returned to his mother sea only on her
terms. He cannot control or change the
ocean as, in his brief tenancy of earth, he
has subdued and plundered the continents.”
In Carson’s lifetime (1907 to 1964) she
did not — could not — know about the
most significant discovery concerning the
ocean: It is not too big to fail.
This page, from top: Sylvia Earle in 2010. The Napoleon wrasse is overfished solely for the
pseudo-value of its lips. The Great Barrier Reef is so immense it can be seen from space.
Opposite, from left: Caribbean monk seals were hunted to extinction by the early 1950s.
Vast fields of elkhorn coral like this were once common in the Florida Keys.
COURTESY NASA
STEPHEN FRINK
STEPHEN FRINK