August 1, 2018 — This is why we can’t have nice things. Because we’re human and we tend, over time, to spoil most of the wondrous things we touch. You need only look at big league baseball, which, despite the historic season unfolding for the local nine, has become a soulless slog through the barren desert of analytics, home runs, strikeouts and pitching changes.
And then there are the oceans. We’ve really left our smudgy fingerprints all over them.
According to a new study that offers the most exhaustive mapping of the Earth’s ocean wilds, there is virtually no corner of the planet’s oceans that has not suffered human disruptions or the ill effects of human-created climate change.
“Nowhere is safe,” James Watson, an author on the study published in the journal, Current Biology, told The Washington Post via a video abstract of the study.
Perhaps more alarming, the study calculates that only 13 percent of the planet’s oceans could still be classified as “wilderness” because of the unceasing onslaught of humans trekking around the planet.
Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Times