'This is not pie in the sky...'
2007-11-26 11:32
Oslo - Marine scientists called on Sunday
for a $2-3bn study of threats such as overfishing and
climate change to the oceans, saying they were as little
understood as the moon.
A better network of satellites, tsunami monitors, drifting
robotic probes or electronic tags on fish within a decade could
also help lessen the impact of natural disasters, pollution or
damaging algal blooms, they said.
"This is not pie in the sky ... it can be done," said Tony
Haymet, director of the US Scripps Institution of Oceanography
and chairperson of the Partnership for Observation of the Global
Oceans (POGO).
He told Reuters that a further $2-3bn would roughly
match amounts already invested in ocean research, excluding more
costly satellites. New technologies were cheaper and meant
worldwide monitoring could now be possible.
"Silicon Valley has come to the oceans," said Jesse Ausubel,
a director of the Census of Marine Life that is trying to
describe life in the seas.
"Lots of cheap disposable devices can now be distributed
throughout the oceans, in some cases on animals, in some cases
on the sea floor, others drifting about," he told Reuters.
POGO wants the 72-nation Group on Earth Observations (GEO),
meeting in Cape Town from November 28-30, to consider its appeal for
a $2-3bn study of the oceans as part of a wider effort to
improve understanding of the planet by 2015.
GEO is seeking to link up scientific observations of the
planet to find benefits for society in areas including energy,
climate, agriculture, biodiversity, water supplies and weather.
Ocean has been ignored
The ocean "has been relatively ignored" compared to land or
the atmosphere, said Howard Roe, a director emeritus of the
British National Oceanography Centre and former chairman of
POGO.
"It's a hoary phrase that we know more about the surface of
the moon than the deep ocean. It's true. The oceans are
virtually unexplored," he told Reuters.
Among ocean projects, POGO wants to raise the number of
drifting robotic probes, know as "Argos" and which measure
conditions driving climate change, to 30 000 from 3 000 now.
And the scientists said they wanted to expand a network of
electronic tagging of fish to understand migrations and give
clues to over-fishing.
"By my estimates for $50-60m a year the world could
have a global system, an ocean tracking network that could
follow sharks from Cape Town to Perth or follow tuna from Miami
to Southampton, Ausubel said.
And better monitoring of the oceans could give more advance
warnings of storms, such as a November 15 cyclone that struck
Bangladesh and killed 3 500 people. It could also send tsunami
alerts - the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed up to 230 000
people.
"2012 will be the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic. I
think Captain Smith would be disappointed by the continuing
hesitation to firm up our ocean observing system," Ausubel said.