ENVIRONMENT: Planetary Check-Up Starts With the Oceans

BROOKLIN, Canada, Nov 27 (IPS) - If continents are the Earth's sturdy bones and the atmosphere its thin skin, then the oceans are its heart, circulatory system and blood. And despite the crucial role played by the oceans in the health of the planet, and to our own health and well-being, there is little monitoring of ocean health.

Once the oceans were too big and too deep to probe, measure and observe, but between satellites, undersea robots, electronically tagged fish and deep sea sensors, scientists now have the tools.

On Tuesday, high-level officials began meeting in Cape Town, South Africa to see if governments have the will to create a Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO) - a 10-year project to create a comprehensive monitoring system of what has been described as the last frontier.

"We have pathetically few measurements of the oceans relative to their importance to life on Earth and the extent to which we rely on them for energy, weather, food and recreation," said D. James Baker, former administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Humans are creatures of the land and do not fully understand that the seas create the conditions that make life possible. Seawater covers 71 percent of the planet, and we often think of oceans only in terms of beaches and fish, said Howard Roe, director emeritus of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, and past POGO chair.

"The oceans control the global climate and our weather," Roe told IPS.

Direct ocean temperature measurements from an array of 3,000 free-drifting "Argo buoys" provides crucial information that enables weather forecasters to make long range predictions, he said.

"Every successful El Nino prediction saves at least a billion dollars by allowing people to react in time," he noted.

Advance warnings of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 would have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars. A new system of 32 additional Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami stations are to be deployed in the Indian, Caribbean and Atlantic Oceans and would be part of POGO.

"A system for ocean observing and forecasting that covers the world's oceans and their major uses can reduce growing risks, protect human interests and monitor the health of our precious oceans," said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego and chair of POGO’s executive committee.

It would cost an estimated two to three billion dollars to create a stable network of satellites surveying vast extents of the surface of the oceans, along with fixed stations taking continuous measurements on the seafloor or as floats and buoys moored in the water column and at the surface. To supplement this, POGO would employ a fleet of small robot submarine ocean monitors and marine animals outfitted with tiny electronic tags that capture and transmit data about the environments they visit.

This marine data would be analysed and integrated with observations from the atmosphere and other sources, and then used in models to produce forecasts useful to the public and policy makers.

Over-fishing, pollution and climate change have spurred major scientific efforts to study oceans and marine life, resulting in enormous amounts of data from hundreds of different research centres. Even though there are clear connections, the fisheries experts aren't always talking to each other, let alone with the climate experts, said Jesse Ausubel, director of the Census of Marine Life Programme at the Sloan Foundation in New York.

"It's time for integrated ocean management," Ausubel said in an interview.

POGO doesn't require a new international institution, it can be a network of institutions that United Nations agencies coordinate, he said.

However, it will require long-term government financial support.

The proposed system is akin to monitoring equipment in the atmosphere that allowed the detection of the thinning ozone layer and the build-up of carbon dioxide. When complete, POGO will authoritatively diagnose and anticipate changing global ocean conditions.

"A continuous, integrated ocean observing system will return the investment many times over in safer maritime operations, storm damage mitigation, and conservation of living marine resources, as well as collecting the vital signs of the ocean that are needed to monitor climate change," said Haymet.

POGO is a major component of a 10-year effort by 71 nations in the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations to create a ground-based, ocean-drifting, air-borne and space-based Global Earth Observation System of Systems to monitor all of Earth’s environmental conditions.

"Government ministers can really make a difference in Cape Town by supporting POGO," said Ausubel.

There are massive changes happening in the oceans from the effects of over-fishing and climate change. And these have and will continue to have impacts on the land.

"A global ocean observing system with timely reports and forecasts can help us be prepared and adapt to these changes," he said.

(END/2007)

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