The Effects of Ocean Pollution on Marine Mammals

The impact of humans has now reached every square mile of Earth's oceans, and the news is not good. In a study released in the February 2008 journal Science, researchers found that human activity -- from over-fishing to greenhouse gases and global warming to the introduction of toxins -- has affected every square mile of ocean on the planet, compromising roughly 40 percent of the marine ecosystems.

What the study didn't cover directly may be even more disturbing: marine mammals are suffering dramatic rises in devastating illnesses, such as nervous and digestive system problems, liver disease, contaminant-induced immunosuppression, endocrine system damage, reproductive malformations, and growth and development issues. Worse yet is the alarming growth in cancer cases. Because marine mammals are at the top of their food chain, the toxins in food sources beneath them ends up accumulating in their bodies, especially in their blubber and breast milk.

This bioaccumulation is what causes high levels in dolphins and whales, and other marine mammals. Nine of the 10 species with the highest polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) levels are marine mammals. PCBs, banned in the United States in 1977, are the most common contaminant in the environment.

The declining health of ocean-going mammals, especially the increase in various cancers, sends an undeniable message to humans. Because dolphins and other marine mammals metabolize contaminants more quickly than do humans, they are, in a sense, showing us our future - unless we change our ways. (continues)

Fire ants

Under a typical winter sky in Florida -- an upside down bowl of cerulean sky sprinkled with puffs of white cumulus -- I crouched to get my face close to the ground. The vacant lot near Tallahassee remained summertime green, covered with crabgrass, dollar weed and other opportunistic flora I couldn't begin to name. The lot was generously pimpled with six-inch high mounds of brown soil. It was warm.

Beneath me, inches from my nose, a roiling mass of angry, reddish ants jittered and tumbled over one another. They rushed around what was left of their mound, which had just been shoveled open by my companion to give me a whiff of the ants' peculiar odor. Some of the frenzied ants were gathering their rice-kernel larva to haul deeper into the safe earth and others certainly were trying to locate and attack the intruder. If they could find a way to reach me, the whole bunch would have happily grabbed onto me with their mandibles and twisted their rears around to sting me repeatedly, their scented attack pheromone communicating that idea to every ant. I could see hundreds of them.

Worst case scenario was that I would die from anaphylactic shock, were I allergic to the venom. Best case was that each sting would burn like fire. A lot of them stinging me at once would be an inferno of pain. These highly agitated and quick arthropods - including the handful now working their way up my camera strap that I hadn't noticed touching the ground -- were indeed fire ants, the bane of being outdoors in the South. I didn't know it, but I was about to find out how aptly named they are.

I inhaled deeply. The odor was weak to my mostly dysfunctional nose, but it was a waxy, oily kind of smell, something you wouldn't expect to get from the dry, sandy soil of Florida's Panhandle. "Well?" Walter Tschinkel asked as I stood up. One of the country's foremost experts on the fire ant, Tschinkel was grinning from ear to ear in anticipation, like someone who had just shared a prized personal treasure with a new friend. "Do you smell it?"

I couldn't answer because I suddenly began the initial steps of the Famous Fire Ant Dance, a popular jig in the Southeast, Texas, and most recently, California and New Mexico. The ants on the camera strap had found me. My own version of this special dance consisted of rapidly hopping from one foot to the other while trying desperately to keep both feet off the ground at the same time. My flailing arms brushed both the seen and unseen from all reachable body parts. Tschinkel just stood with shovel in hand, chuckling. He had witnessed this dance before. (continues)

Column example

Fall is in the air here in Northeast Florida. For most of us that means no longer having to pry our thighs from the car seat to make a dash from our air-conditioned car to our air-conditioned office, house, strip mall or portable classroom.

It also means that elections are around the comer -- yet one more thing to feel guilty about ignoring, sort of like diets, flossing and the official rules of golf.

Why are citizens ignoring elections more and more? In recent run-offs, the turnouts were in the sub-abysmal range. Heck, most of the time you could have named everybody who wandered into the polling place looking for a place to cool off. I think the rampant apathy is because of another sign of autumn: political campaign advertising.

Along with the ubiquitous signs carrying vaguely familiar names littering the roadways, we get the Chinese water torture of the same mindless television commercials that are nothing but spin, spin, spin. We also get journalistic pundits pretending to know what is really going on, but who deal with spin like the rest of us.

Pay attention now, because here is what you need to know about political campaigns: NOBODY KNOWS THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING INVOLVED WITH POLITICS. POLITICS IS ALL ABOUT SPIN, NOT FACTS.

First, the ad agencies bend the truth and try to come up with catchy music and slogans because they know that if they can plant some mustard seed of a thought about the election, people will rely on that when they go to vote instead of thinking of the Issues.

Campaign strategists study music, they study slogans, typefaces and color, and they study how people react to all these. But they don't study fact, they don't deal in the Truth. Then they create their message (Sping! Poing! Spin-n-n-n!) and the public is shortchanged once again.

The current Jeb Bush campaign has had a television commercial on for awhile that hammers us with folks supposedly "just like us" saying "He's Not My Buddy" about opponent Buddy MacKay. Gads!

I don't know a thing about Bush from these commercials, except maybe he likes plaid shirts and hair spray and by golly, he shore does look like his Daddy, but I can hardly talk to someone named Buddy any more without thinking of that stupid, mindless line.

Then there are the journalists trying to cut through the crap, but roadblocks exist there as well, no matter how good they may be. Locally, there is not enough money given to news staffs to really dig into the problem. Here in Jacksonville we have to rely on an out-of-town newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, to break stories about local politicians. The television stations? Forget it. Who cares about the constitutional revision commission and the muddled work they accomplished this year when we need to market our talking heads as people we trust?

No, the Truth cannot be known where politics is involved. Politics is about my Truth, not Yours, my friend. And it's my Spin that is important, not the facts. Don't pay attention to any of the ads or columns trying to explain things (except this one). Read widely, take the average of those spun-out facts, and make up your own minds on the issues, not the ads.

More samples available on request. Also, check out my design and writing blog. There are numerous article-sized posts.