WiLD Blog

WiLDCOAST Volunteers

Domenique Buchanan, High School Volunteer

By Kenneth R. Weiss
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 2, 2008

Oxygen-starved waters are expanding in the Pacific and Atlantic as ocean temperatures increase with global warming, threatening fisheries and other marine life, a study published today concludes.

Most of these zones remain hundreds of feet below the surface, but they are beginning to spill onto the relatively shallow continental shelf off the coast of California and are nearing the surface off Peru, driving away fish from commercially important fishing grounds, researchers have found.

The low-oxygen, or hypoxic, zones may also be connected to the Pacific coast invasion of the Humboldt, or jumbo, squid. These voracious predators, which can grow 6 feet long, appear to be taking advantage of their tolerance for oxygen-poor waters to escape predators and devour local fish, another team of scientists theorizes.

Researchers believe these phenomena are linked to subsurface layers of hypoxic water in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans that have been thickening over the last 50 years, according to the analysis published today in the journal Science.

The study, led by Lothar Stramma at the University of Kiel in Germany, warns that the spread of hypoxic waters that suffocate marine life is consistent with climate models forecasting what would happen as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere.

The trend, the study points out, eerily echoes a scenario that unfolded about 250 million years ago, when 95% of life on Earth went extinct after heat-trapping carbon dioxide spewing from volcanoes warmed the planet and the oceans became stripped of oxygen.

“If you warm waters, they hold much less oxygen,” said coauthor Gregory C. Johnson, an oceanographer with the federal Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. “That’s the same as a bottle of soda water. If you open it warm, it’ll fizz all over the place. If you open it cold, it will slowly fizz out as it warms.”

More importantly, Johnson said, the lighter warm water creates a cap over the colder depths, making it less likely that oxygen-enriched surface water will mix with colder water. Other biogeochemical processes also rob oxygen from deeper waters, such as the decomposition and re-mineralization of dead plankton as it settles to the seafloor.

These vast low-oxygen zones that stretch far out to sea differ from the “dead zones” at the mouth of the Mississippi River and in near-shore waters around the world. These localized low-oxygen waters typically form after fertilizer-rich river discharges produce thick blooms of algae that suck the oxygen out of water after they die and decompose.

This past year has been an interesting one for the planet. While it is still hipper than ever to be green, the three main presidential candidates are busy pandering to voters (Hillary downing shots, McCain repealing gas taxes, and Obama bowling) with scad mention of the environmental crisis. Even our own green guvernator blew his environ credentials big-time by supporting the construction of a private toll road through a beloved California State Park.

But despite how lame most of our elected officials have been on the environment, the new rise of China as the world’s biggest contributor of greenhouse gasses there are a few folks in San Diego and in California who organized to save two state parks in San Diego County over the past year, reminding that the reason we live here is to enjoy the natural environment, not stare at ugly toll roads and power lines.

The Save Trestles Team
February 6, 2008, will go down as one of the greatest days in history of surfing and the California environmental movement. And it came down to this: there is no defensible position when it comes down to proposals that favor destroying our state parks.

Toll roads do not belong in state parks. Period.

And the people who got that were the amazing and passionate defenders of San Onofre State Beach Park involved in the Save Trestles Coalition from throughout San Diego and Orange Counties, California and the United States. If you were part of the organizing coalition www.savetrestles.org (you all know who you were) I salute your passion, dedication, organizing skill and understanding that protecting open space is the most important way of defending our planet and the natural resources that make California worth living in.

And if you attended the Big Wednesday meeting in Del Mar or wrote letters, made phone calls, signed petitions and did whatever it took to stop the TCA (they are still out there trying — lying it up as usual) pat yourself on the back and get back out there and remember the fight is far from over.

Last week on my way to Ensenada, I drove by the newest symbol of the Bush administration’s quest for freedom and democracy–a triple border barrier on Spooner’s Mesa just across from southwestern Tijuana that is reminiscent of the Berlin Wall. The newest anti-democracy fortification, built by National Guard units with no regard for federal or state environmental laws and basic engineering principles, will not improve our homeland security. It only weakens it.

This new wall that tramples the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law and the very foundation of our democracy, represents the worst of the national security state that President Bush and his handlers have imposed on our great nation. With no due process and no public participation, they have allowed incompetent government planners to implement policies based on 1950s era national security hysteria. Meanwhile these political appointees ignore the root causes of terrorism, leaving our security vulnerable through a weakened economy, unnecessary war and the establishment of an incompetent, ideologically driven, contractor-based bureaucracy.

So while Michael Chertoff makes plans to obliterate protected parkland and private property along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and disappear Border Field State Park at the southwestern corner of San Diego County, the United States does nothing to stop the flow of polluted air and water across the international border that imperils the health of hundreds of thousands of people who live on both sides of the newest Berlin Wall and border patrol agents tasked with defending our security.

National Guard units build Chertoff’s illegal wall without any consideration of even the most basic erosion control practices (a key feature of authoritarian government planning is faulty engineering), while their supervisors in Washington D.C. ignore the fact that the wall will actually exacerbate the pollution problems that make so many border patrol agents ill. Ideology trumps democracy along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The biggest defender of Chertoff’s Wall, Congressman Brian Bilbray, fled his U.S.-Mexico border hometown of Imperial Beach for the safety of the country club enclaves of North San Diego County. Luckily for the residents of Rancho Santa Fe, threatened by terrorist moles disguised as gardeners, construction workers and maids, Bilbray believes that the Chertoff Wall will improve the domestic security of his constituents despite the inconveniences of dirty dishes and un-manicured lawns. Such is the price of war.

For those of us who are residents of the U.S.-Mexico border, our families, friendships and communities and nations are made stronger by connecting us through a trans-boundary culture of democracy. I can only hope that our next president, despite his or her party affiliation, will recognize that we can only protect our homeland security through respect for the rule of law rather than by erecting a 2,000-mile gulag of fear.

Serge Dedina
Originally Published in the Voice of San Diego

A pressing issue that has recently been brought to the attention of city planners is the affects global warming will have on roads, rail and other transportation infrastructure of coastal cities.  For instance, where will San Diego airport be if sea level rises the predicted two feet over the next century?  The relocation plan for the city’s bustling airport will need to be put on the fast track, not only because of the unstable fill it’s built on, but the fact that it will essentially be under water, making it a perfect landing strip for sea planes, but commercial airlines…I think not.  Other airports that will be at risk for tidal inundation are New York’s LaGuardia airport and New Jersey’s Newark airport, some of the most highly trafficked places in our country. 

Presently, more than 60,000 miles of coastal highway in the United States are already subject to intermittent flooding due to rising water levels.  While a sea level increase averaging a foot per fifty years may seem inconsequential, it will exponentially increase the mileage of roads, rails, bridges, and entire cities at risk of flooding.  But man made transportation marvels aren’t the only thing that are at risk of being destroyed by an influx of sea water.  Salt sensitive habitats such as wetlands and fresh water lakes could be irreversibly damaged.  Species which thrive in the fresh or partly brackish water of marshes and other coastal ecosystems could essentially be wiped out, unable to adapt to the increased concentrations of salt. 

Officials at the National Academy of Sciences and the EPA are urging city planners to take into account the threats of global warming.  As the years go by and we begin to experience more fully the effects of rising temperatures and sea level, it is essential that we become a proactive society rather than a reactive one. 

Julie Novak

We are continuously seeing global warming becoming a more pressing issue and sea levels are rising which is believed by many to be in direct correlation with global warming. Recent reports from the U.S. government are warning planners that they should be rethinking threatened roads, rail lines, airports and other infrastructure along the U.S. coasts.
The greatest and most immediate impact of the increased heat, sea levels and precipitation rates is coastal flooding. The EPA has done similar studies that also found natural features such as beaches, wetlands and freshwater supplies also being at risk of destruction.
The new reports note that coastal areas are “thickly populated, economically important and gaining people and investment by the day, even as scientific knowledge of the risks they face increases.” The use of such knowledge by policy makers and planners is clearly insufficient. Planners need to now begin to come up with plans that will reinforce, move or replace on safer ground. “We need to think about it now,” said Dr. Schwartz, a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

The multiagency reports, draft assessments are intended to help policy makers start thinking and planning now. The report offers three different estimates for sea level rise by 2100: about 16 inches a century, a rate it said had already been exceeded about two feet.
As a first step for policy makers, the report said that transportation officials need to realize that climate patterns that prevailed in the past “may no longer be reliable guide for future plans.” Instead they should “incorporate climate change into their plans for capital improvements, maintenance schedules, emergency preparedness and so on.”

Despite this report being developed by the U.S. government, it still provides additional evidence as to why further coastal development throughout the Baja California Peninsula needs to be prevented or at least regulated. Our coastal region and ecosystem is completely connected and will face similar if not the same repercussions if major coastal flooding was to occur. The majority of growth and infrastructure throughout Baja’s coastal regions is very unplanned and developers are able to avoid regulation building standards that they would face in the U.S. If the U.S. government is suggesting the reinforcement or even the relocation of infrastructure that was professionally and comprehensively planned, what is the fate of present and future coastal development throughout the B.C. Peninsula?

Cory Keen

The Kyoto protocol bit the dust when President Bush withdrew the US’s signature from it in 2001. In this landmark agreement the EU, US, and Japan had committed themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2012(John Baylis and Steve Smith, The Globalization of World Politics: an Introduction to International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 471. ) The US withdrawal was one of the first events in Bush’s legacy of disregard for the environment. It comes as no surprise, perhaps, that, almost eight years into his presidency, the US is ranked last among the G-8 nations (US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, U.K.) and 39th out of 149 in a new study on environmental performance from scientists at Yale and Columbia Universities.

The chief culprits in the US are greenhouse gas emissions and smog. In the climate change category, the US ranked in the bottom 25 nations, along with India and China. The White House responded with a claim that it is implementing new rules which will address the ozone problem “in the next ten years…in a really big way.” However, they first recognized the problem “five years ago.” Five years? Why have they waited so long to take action? Could it be some sort of delay tactic?

Judging from the state of the union address, it looks like Bush is now concerned about climate change as well:

“And let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases. This agreement will be effective only if it includes commitments by every major economy and gives none a free ride. The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more efficient technology.

He has a point. Exempting developing countries such as China and India from emissions reductions is not right, considering their major emissions outputs. However, Bush’s actions, for example, the EPA’s recent opposition to California’s innovative emissions reductions laws show that this is all talk and no action. What remains after sifting through the doublespeak, his verbal acceptance that global warming exists, is very little concern for the environment indeed.

Thomas Holder

Seasonal dead zones threaten wildlife from the Washington coast down to California. “The undersea plague appears to be the symptom of global warming…low oxygen waters have extended north into Washington and crept south as far as the California state line…they appear to be as regular as the tides, a lethal cycle that has repeated itself every summer and fall since 2002” (Weiss, 2008).  Dead zones are areas of the ocean where the oxygen has been so depleted, that all life has essentially been suffocated.  The seasonal dead zones that have been forming off our coasts are thought to be caused, again, by global warming.  The atmospheric conditions which produce the nutrient rich California Current are changing.  The California Current’s productivity is driven by the upwelling of nutrient rich waters from the deep, a phenomena made possible by wind. As soon as this nutrient rich water hits the surface and is exposed to sunlight and oxygen, phytoplankton bloom, which is the main food source for many of the world’s small fish and shellfish, which are in turn food for larger marine life, thereby creating a healthy oceanic food web.

The dead zones are produced through the alteration of this natural process.  In increasing the ambient air temperature, “warm, rising air over the land makes the upwelling more frequent and more intense” (Bakun, 2008)   The upwelling is therefore prolonged and phytoplankton populations are in surplus.  Because of this prolonged phytoplankton production, access phytoplankton which are not consumed by fish die and float down to the sea floor where they rot, thereby producing noxious gases such as hydrogen sulfide.  This problem is further exacerbated by the affects of over fishing which cuts down on the natural number of fish who would be potentially feeding on this surplus of phytoplankton.  These anoxic zones are found from June through September and in 2006 covered an area the size of Rhode Island. 

Julie Novak

With rising pressures of global warming, many of the regions that are far from the equator are starting to feel more like deserts. Scientists have measured a rapid recent expansion of desert-like barrenness in the subtropical ocean areas. Here surface water temperatures are also steadily warming, which scientists cannot directly prove a link to human-driven climate change yet most strongly believe there is.

Roughly 20 percent of the globes ocean surface is relatively plankton-free throughout stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1998 only about 15 percent was found to be plankton free. A significant drop in the number of plankton in these regions essentially means a loss of many marine species. This change could be and likely is because the hotter surface waters or the changes in winds. Either of these factors could prevent deeper, nutrient-rich water from rising to nourish the plankton.

Some are claiming that this change could be temporary, due to the short span of observation that has been done. However it’s hard to ignore the fact that the change matches a slight but steady warming trend and also matches a pattern that scientists have predicted would occur under human-inflicted global warming. For now, there’s no way to link the atmospheric and oceanic changes, said Jeffrey J. Polovina, an oceanographer with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Honolulu.

Responding to Polovina’s claim, Isaac Held, a climate modeler at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., displayed caution about seeking relationships between the ocean and atmospheric changes around the tropics, and also drawing conclusions about their relationship to global warming. He also states that “it is clear that in the coming few decades we are going to be continually confronted with observations of trends or events of just this type — relatively short records; much larger magnitudes than our models suggest.”

Despite these trends being considered as short records by some, it still seems necessary to treat these trends in oceanic surface temperatures and decrease in plankton as hints for future troubles that human-caused global warming will entail.

Cory Keen

The proposed 241 private toll road that would have destroyed 60% of San Onofre State Beach Park was the subject of a very monumental hearing February 14. As the California Coastal Commission anticipated a colossal turnout at the very critical toll road hearing, the usual Oceanside City Council Chamber location was substituted for the huge space of the Del Mar fairgrounds. Just after 11pm and nearly 14 hours of presentations from members of the Save Trestles campaign, the TCA and personal testimonies from the public, the California Coastal Commission voted 8-2 against the proposed 241 Toll Road extension deciding that certain aspects of the project failed to meet California’s coastal regulations. Their vote prohibited transportation officials from creating the first toll-way to run through a state park.

It is estimated that more than 3,500 people rallied to defend the park. It was the largest turnout for any meeting in the commission’s 36-year history for what we are calling the Woodstock of our Save Our Coast movement. People of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds swarmed in and around the hall decked out with slogan-riddled t-shirts and rally signs.

Surfline quoted former world champ Pete Townend stating that it was great to see “these real people who recognize San Onfore State Park’s true value in their lives, not just a bunch of paid sign holders in orange shirts who look like they’ve never seen the beach.” Here Townend was referring to the small number of road workers that were forced to support the 241-extension by their union. Similar surf celebrities could be found scattered throughout the crowds showing their support to the park such as Greg and Rusty Long, CJ and Damien Hobgood, and Evan Slater just to name a few.

This victory is deserving of huge thanks to the Save San Onofre Coalition for doing such an awesome job in this long-time building movement to defend San Onofre’s scenic views, endangered species and world-class breaks. Partners involved include: the Surfrider Foundation, Sierra Club, Wildcoast, Natural Resources Defense Council, Endangered Habitats League and countless other magnificent organizations.

Thomas Margo, the TCA’s chief executive officer, said he will appeal the commission’s decision to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. However, this is definitely the greatest victory we have seen yet, which has provided a great deal of hope for making the park’s protection permanent.

Cory Keen