Protect the Bering Sea’s Grand Canyons

Background

In 2007, Greenpeace launched a groundbreaking expedition to explore the two largest underwater canyons in the world, in the heart of the Bering Sea. It was the first time manned submersibles ever entered these canyons and human eyes gazed directly upon their treasures. Ocean Doctor president, Dr. David E. Guggenheim served as a sub pilot and scientific consultant during the 2007 expedition. The expedition revealed an extraordinary tapestry of life thousands of feet below the surface, including beautiful, brightly-colored deepwater corals, sponges, anemones, octopus and fish and resulted the discovery of new species and species ranges.

DeepWorker sub films a giant grenadier at 1,900 feet in the Bering sea (Photo: D. Guggenheim)

The expedition also revealed the terrible damage being done to these intricate ecosystems by trawling nets, even more than 1,000 feet below the surface. Coldwater corals are the oldest living animals on the planet, some of which are roughly 4,000 years old and still alive today. But what may take decades, centuries or millenia to grow can be wiped out in the blink of an eye by a factory trawler net.

In 2007 Greenpeace explored the two largest underwater canyons in the world, both of which are in the Bering Sea. In 2012, Greenpeace returned to the Bering Sea and is also exploring the Chukchi sea

In 2012, Greenpeace returned to the Bering Sea and also explored the Chukchi Sea with submersibles. Ocean Doctor compiled and published a special page to commemorate the five year anniversary of the 2007 expedition: Return to Arctic Depths.

The sublimely pink deepwater coral, Swiftia pacifica photographed at 1,000 feet below the Bering Sea (Photo: D. Guggenheim)

Greenpeace refers to the Bering Sea as “one of the wildest regions in the world.” It supplies fully half the seafood caught in the United States. It’s huge — more than 770,000 square miles — and stretches between Alaska and Russia. But its bounty is not unlimited and the impacts of fishing — especially trawling — can be devastating.

Ocean Doctor is proud to be part of a coalition of environmental organizations dedicated to protecting the Bering Sea Canyons. Now we are calling upon our supporters to take action to bring badly-needed protection to the Bering Sea.

The Bering Sea is home to millions of sea birds, whales, walrus, and fur seals and more. But, it’s also prime fishing grounds for our nation’s largest industrialized fishery, where more than a billion dollars of seafood is hauled from the water each year. Fish-eating predators in the region, including fur seals, endangered Steller sea lions and sea birds, are witnessing a steady decline in numbers, or no growth in their already depleted populations. After subsisting for thousands of years, tribal communities are facing food security issues today.

The world’s largest underwater canyons, even bigger than the Grand Canyon, exist here along the “Green Belt,” a highly productive continental shelf break. Out of sight in the canyon depths, corals and sponges that take thousands of years to develop into the complex structures that support this vibrant ecosystem, are being destroyed. They provide nurseries, shelter and protection that fish and wildlife can find no place else. A single pass of a trawl can destroy them, taking with it the very habitat that sustains our nation’s biggest fisheries.

An enormous scar on the bottom of the Bering Sea’s Pribolof Canyon at 1,000 feet left by a trawl net leaves a path of destruction miles long, having ripped corals, sponges and everything else in its path from the bottom. (Photo: D. Guggenheim)

Protected marine reserves are a proven management tool to help maintain biodiversity and rebuild fish stocks. The “Grand Canyons” of the Bering Sea deserve as much protection as their smaller counterpart in Arizona.

Help create protections for the Bering Sea Canyons. From California to Colorado to the Carolinas – we all have a stake in these waters. Let fishery managers know that we expect them to protect the canyons to ensure fish and fishing for the future.

Take Action

Write to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council

For your convenience, use our Action Alert email form below:

Additional Information

• Ocean Doctor Special Presentation: Return to the Arctic Depths
• BeringSeaCanyons.org (Greenpeace)

Support Our Work

Please consider helping us continue our efforts to protect the Bering Sea Canyons by making a tax-deductible donation to Ocean Doctor.

Your donation through our fiscal sponsor, The Ocean Foundation, is secure and tax-deductible in the U.S.

It was a battle cry in the ’60s and ’70s and the earliest Earth Days: “Save the Whales” bumper stickers reflected a burgeoning green movement and deep concern about the decimation of the world’s whale populations. But decades later, do the whales still need saving?

Antarctic fur sea pups play in front of the abandoned Stromness whaling station on South Georgia Island

For 50 years there has been an international moratorium on whaling. Two years ago, in South Georgia Island in the subantarctic I saw the remains of the Stromness whaling station — where Ernest Shackleton famously first reentered civilization and found rescue for his crew after his ship was lost in the Antarctic. Today, Antarctic fur seal pups frolic among the wreckage. What you can’t see are the immense mountains of whale bones still lying at the bottom of the inlets and bays around South Georgia. It’s a terrible legacy that we should be happy about leaving behind.

But today it’s a surprise to many that we still haven’t “saved the whales.” Today’s challenges, like ship strikes, entanglement with fishing gear, noise, and climate change are increasingly complex issues to solve, made more complex because of the way that we manage our oceans. Even though the salt water portion of the United States is actually 20% larger than our land mass, we have no “Department of the Oceans.” More than two dozen agencies, including NOAA, the U.S. Coast Guard, Interior, EPA among others, must navigate a confusing array of laws, regulations and responsibilities in order to solve problems.

Last week, the White House issued its final plan for managing the nation’s oceans, the National Ocean Policy,  outlining a strategy that strives to coordinate the work of these agencies and help reconcile the many different — and sometimes competing — interests, such as recreation, fishing,  and oil drilling.

It may sound a bit dry, boring, and bureaucratic, but it is exactly the kind of medicine our oceans need. I’ve become convinced by seeing a growing number of examples of how the National Ocean Policy can work by making it easier for federal agencies, state and local governments, NGOs and private industry to get around the table and work out solutions.

One of the best examples of how this can work is in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a rich stretch of ocean at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay,  home to several species of endangered whales including humpback whales and North Atlantic right whales. There are only an estimated 400 right whales remaining in the world. The shipping lanes of Boston Harbor traverse through directly the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, drawing large ships through whale feeding grounds, resulting in collisions with whales that are often fatal.

Using the latest research on the great whale’s travels and analyzing their sounds and songs, marine biologists, together with shipping executives, marine biologists, NOAA, the Port of Boston and an energy company came together and found a solution that worked for both commerce and whales.  In 2007 the Port of Boston became the first port in the nation  to move the shipping lanes to protect whales, reducing the risk of ship strikes to endangered right whales and other whales by more than 80 percent.

Whales along the California coast, including blue whales, face ongoing collisions from passing ships. (See Great Whales Face Grave Threats.)  If we can fix the problem in New England, we can do it in California. It’s critical and it’s clearly doable.

A full-sized inflatable Blue Whale sits proudly in Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza

Today, the Great Whale Conservancy celebrated Earth Day 2013 by bringing a life-sized 90-foot inflatable blue whale to Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue, in eyeshot of the Capitol dome to spread the message about the situation in California and the need for the Administration to take action. Her presence was a delight for hundreds who dropped by, snapped photos, and marveled at the sheer size of the largest animal ever to inhabit the earth.

On Earth Day our focus is on this wondrous planet and the rich and diverse plants and animals that inhabit its lands, waters and skies. But Earth Day is also every bit as much about our own species. Because in the end, how we treat our fellow non-human inhabitants — including the majestic great whales of the world — may be the best measure of our own humanity.

David E. Guggenheim is a member of the Board of Directors of the Great Whale Conservancy

New Orleans, LA, February 8, 2013 – Today, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council – the body that advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on fish and fishing in the Gulf – voted to push forward regulations that would permit industrial fish farming in the Gulf of Mexico. The Council did so in violation of a number of procedural laws, as well as in direct conflict with the members’ oath of office to conserve and manage the marine resources of the Gulf of Mexico for the benefit of the nation. Open water fish farming is well documented to be highly problematic for both people and our planet.

The original plan to be implemented by the new regulations was completed back in 2009, and many things have changed substantially from then to today, four years later. Existing operations based in Hawai`i, cited as examples in the plan, are now bankrupt and violated numerous safety laws beforehand. New studies shed light on the major damage that can be done by open water aquaculture, and we know well that dilution is not the solution to pollution. The plan does not even comply with the National Aquaculture Policy – guidelines finalized in 2011 by the National Marine Service itself.

Organizations representing more than 3 million people nationwide submitted a letter in opposition to allowing fish farming in the Gulf. Additionally, local fishermen came to the meeting and testified how horribly damaging fish farming would be in the already stressed Gulf, still recovering from various major hurricanes and the BP oil spill. These were ignored.

All of the discussion regarding the regulations was put forward by the Fisheries Service – both the regional administrator for the southeast region and the agency attorney – persuading the Council to move forward.

The entire process has been an expensive farce, funded by precious public dollars, for the Fisheries Service to push forward their long-time agenda of developing ocean aquaculture around the U.S. Because the agency has been unable to persuade Congress to pass national legislation due to overwhelming public opposition, the Fisheries Service now has turned to the regional fishery management process, because it is far less public and easier to manipulate. This is problematic under existing law, as the Fisheries Service has no express authority over aquaculture.  It is clear that the agency is tired of dealing with wild fisheries, and prefers instead to promote artificial production of seafood in the ocean, where it can overtake fishing.

If the regulations become final, between 5 and 20 new farms, that could raise up to 64 million pounds of fish annually, will compete with both recreational and commercial fishermen for space, lower the value of fishing quotas, and pollute the Gulf; all completely unnecessary harms as there are other more ecologically and economically sustainable methods of fish farming.

The Recirculating Farms Coalition came into being in opposition to dirty and dangerous open water fish farming. We promote sustainable aquaculture on land, in recirculating water systems. These farms can be all the things open water fish farming is not – they can be energy and water efficient, need not rely on public dollars or conflict with other uses for space, they can recycle waste and do not use natural waters for draining or sourcing.

If the Council and Fisheries Service want to support aquaculture – they should support the kind that will not, by its very nature, compete with local fishermen or harm the environment. They should promote the kind that is innovative and clean. Sadly, that is not what was voted for today.

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The Recirculating Farms Coalition is a collaborative group of farmers, educators, non-profit organizations and many others committed to building local sources of healthy, accessible food, through eco-efficient farms using clean, recycled water. We believe these recirculating farms can create stable green jobs and supply sustainably grown food — fruits, vegetables, herbs and humanely-raised seafood — in diverse communities nationwide, and someday, worldwide. The Recirculating Farms Coalition is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Media contact: Marianne Cufone — 813-785-8386 or info@recirculatingfarms.org

Statement by Recirculating Farms Coalition Executive Director, Marianne Cufone
Statement020813OOA.pdf

Original press release of statement by Recirculating Farms Coalition Executive Director, Marianne Cufone regarding Gulf of Mexico Council's decision on offshore aquaculture

Author:	Marianne Cufone
Platforms:	Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
Requirements:	PDF Reader
Category:	Resources
License:	Freeware
Date:	February 8, 2013

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Stop Offshore Factory Fish Farming in the Gulf of Mexico

Background

The Gulf of Mexico has been battered by hurricanes, covered in oil and then sprayed above and below with chemicals in an effort to mask the terrible effects of the spill. Now, the Gulf faces another serious threat that can harm the rest of our ocean waters, marine wildlife and people too.

Years ago, the people that make management decisions about the Gulf of Mexico approved a plan that would allow development of giant floating fish farms in Gulf waters, despite that tens of thousands of people clearly voiced opposition to it. Soon after that decision, the federal government announced they would create a national policy to guide the building of ocean fish farms in U.S. waters. That policy was finalized last year over many objections. Now, the plan for allowing fish farms in the Gulf is up for renewal so it matches the new federal policy – this means we have one last chance to stop this! Let the federal government know we have had enough damage in the Gulf!

And this is not only about the Gulf of Mexico – it is a back door way to promote ocean fish farming in all our oceans waters. For years, proponents and the federal government have been pushing to pass national laws that would allow development of ocean fish farms all around the country – but Congress listened to the thousands and thousands of people like you who spoke out against this – and last time they did not even get one supporter for the bill that was introduced in Washington, DC. So now, allowing ocean fish farms through the fisheries management process is how proponents hope to make this happen – and the Gulf of Mexico is first in line for where these giant dirty fish farms may be!

Ocean fish farming is dirty business:

• Fish waste and chemicals can flush straight into the open ocean.
• Fish can escape from farms and they can alter wild fish behavior, compete with wild fish and spread disease.
• Farmed fish usually eat food containing small wild fish. These small fish are an important food source for marine wildlife. An increase in factory fish farms can mean less food for marine wildlife.
• When fishmeal or oil isn’t used in fish feed, genetically modified soy is often substituted. Soy does not belong in the marine environment, and it can have various negative impacts.

Please use the form below to tell the Council we don’t want factory farmed fish in the Gulf of Mexico. At a minimum it needs to revise the Plan to be in line with the basic standards established in the National Aquaculture Policy and include the latest scientific findings. This means a meaningful open discussion with public input.

Finally, it is important to note that viable alternatives exist. Ocean Doctor has been promoting sustainable, next-generation aquaculture practices since its inception, including land-based, recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), a clean technology that uses no antibiotics or chemicals, can recirculate up to 99% of its water, and has no effluent. Such farms can be placed virtually anywhere, including city centers close to where fish are consumed. Sadly, the federal government has focused on advancing offshore aquaculture at the expense of this more sustainable alternative.

The Latest

Additional Information

Food and Water Watch

Recirculating Farms Coalition

Please Take 5 Minutes to Protect Alaska’s Waters from Cruise Ship Dumping

Background

Cruise ships are floating cities that produce and discharge large volumes of sewage and other harmful wastes.  In 2006, Alaska voters passed a statewide ballot initiative requiring cruise ships to reduce their pollution dumping in Alaskan waters (i.e., from the shoreline out to 3 miles).  In response, cruise ship lobbyists pushed through legislation in 2009 to establish an industry-dominated “Science Panel,” which immediately set out gathering information to weaken the 2006 citizen initiative (industry lobbyists excluded the most knowledgeable public interest voice in Alaska from the panel because they did not want any opposition to their pollution rollback plans).

The Problem

The Parnell Administration – on behalf of the cruise ship corporations – has introduced companion bills in the Alaska House (HB 80) and Senate (SB 29) – which will once again allow cruise ships to rely on pollution “mixing zones” to meet state water quality standards.  Mixing zones embrace the long-discounted notion that “dilution is the solution to pollution,” and they create sacrifice zones which violate the fishable and swimmable goals of the Clean Water Act.

The Latest

Check back for the latest updates. Look for our alerts on Twitter @OceanDoctor.

Take Action

Write to Alaska Governor Parnell

For your convenience, use our Action Alert email form below. Alternatively, you can send an email to Governor Parnell at: governor@alaska.gov

Call Alaska Governor Parnell’s Office

Call: +1 (907) 465-3982

• If you’re from Alaska, please explain how important a particular place in State marine waters is important to you (a bay, an inlet, a part of the coast, a diving reef, a sailing route, etc.) Ask the governor to call you back and ensure that your special place will be protected through holding the line with the current regulations (i.e.,  holding off on this bill for now), or ask him to make sure your favorite place for fishing, sightseeing, subsistence gathering, or your own beach is off limits to discharge of partially treated human waste from the nearly 1 million visitors on cruiseships.
• If you’re not from Alaska, please mention where you have been in Alaska or where you hope to go as a worker, tourist or other purpose and how important the health of Alaska’s waters are to you.

Talking Points

• Alaska should seek solutions to wastewater challenges using the best science and technology. Toward this end, rather than rushing this bill through, please support a time extension to meet water quality criteria AT THE POINT OF DISCHARGE, the only place discharge volume and content can be measured, tested and monitored.
• Cruise are huge floating cities and the technology exists to reduce cruise ship pollution
• Cruise ships corporations rake in huge profits and can afford not to use Alaskan waters as their dumping grounds
• Alaskans spoke in 2006 and Governor Parnell and the legislature should listen to the will of the people
• Alaskans rely on our coastal waters for recreational and business, and it makes no sense to pollute what makes Alaska special
• Dilution is not the solution to pollution and cruise ships should not use mixing zones
• If cruise ships are allowed to discharge in Alaskan waters, there should be exclusion zones around critical habitat areas, shellfish farm and important fisheries.

Media Stories

Alaska House passes cruise ship wastewater bill Anchorage Daily News (2/5/2013)

Tlingit, Haida tribes oppose cruise ship bill. San Francisco Chronicle (2/2/2013)

EPA fines Princess Cruise Lines for 2011 Clean Water Act violation in Glacier Bay  KTOO, Juneau (Referenced EPA Report) (1/29/2013)

Public, scientists disagree on cruise ship wastewater KCAW Radio, Stika (1/28/2013)

Cruise ship wastewater standards testimony heard JuneauEmpire.com (1/28/2013)

Additional Information

Statement from Campaign to Safeguard America’s Waters (1/1/13)

ADEC Cruise Ship Website

Cruise Ship Bill Action Alert (316.9 KiB; 56 downloads)

Cruise Ship Bill Information Sheet (17.1 KiB; 66 downloads)

A magnificent Blue Whale fluke (Image courtesy of Michael Fishbach, Great Whale Conservancy)

The Great Whales need our help.  They face multiple threats today in many parts of the world: “scientific whaling,” ship strikes, habitat encroachment, decreasing food supplies, ocean acidification, etc.; it is up to us to take on these threats and do what we can to protect these magnificent, sentient beings.

The Great Whale Conservancy was created in 2010 to answer this call, and the first problem we are focusing on is the ship strike issue that plagues whales in oceans around the planet –where great whales and cargo ships, oil tankers, and cruise ships try to occupy the same place at the same time.  The whales have no choice: they need to follow their food and consumes tons of protein every day to survive.  The ships have a choice: they can adjust their transits to minimize the time they spend in Great Whale habitat.

Case in point: Blue Whales are dying from ship strikes every year along the California coast.  From July through October, the world’s largest subpopulation of Blue Whales (about 2,500 individuals) migrate to the continental shelf edge offshore of California to feed on massive blooms of krill. Unfortunately for the whales, this critical feeding area overlaps with one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes leading to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.  Every year more whales are killed, rammed by the giant ships or cut to ribbons by their massive propellers.

Up close to a magnificent Blue Whale (Image courtesy of Michael Fishbach, Great Whale Conservancy)

The cost to the shipping industry of moving to new transit lanes further from this critical feeding habitat are minimal, and some members of the industry appear willing to move as long as there is somewhere to go.  Current voluntary efforts aimed at getting the vessels to slow down or leave the most densely used areas during these critical months, such as the Santa Barbara Channel, have been ineffective.

A new transit lane must be established through U.S. Navy controlled waters on the south side of the Northern Channel Islands.  The U.S. Coast Guard acknowledged the need to move the shipping lanes in this area to protect the whales in its Port Access Route Study of September 2011.  But recent efforts to move the transit lane far enough away from the continental shelf edge where the krill are most abundant are being blocked by the U.S. Navy, even though oil tankers have routinely transited nearby Navy-controlled waters for years and cargo ships have been using these waters the past two years to avoid California requirements to burn cleaner (more expensive) fuels.  The past and current “informal” use of these waters for commercial shipping demonstrates the Navy has no reasonable grounds to object.

The U.S. government must act to protect the endangered Blue Whales from the threat of extinction.  A century ago, Blue Whale numbers were reduced by commercial whalers from ~350,000 animals to the ~10,000 alive today. While an international moratorium on the hunting of Blue Whales has been in effect since 1966, death by ship strikes is no less lethal, and the number of Blue Whales has failed to rebound. Further losses and reduction in the genetic diversity of the species could be disastrous.

It took more than half a century to establish new transit lanes and speed reductions along the Atlantic Coast to protect the North Atlantic Right Whale.  Today, less than 500 North Atlantic Right Whales remain and the long-term chances for their survival are slim.  We must not wait until only hundreds of Blue Whales remain in the North Pacific before acting on their behalf.

Take Action: Stop Ship Strikes on Blue Whales

The Obama administration must open the Pt. Mugu Naval Air Station waters, south of the Northern Channel Islands, to commercial shipping traffic at minimum for the months of July-October.  Please take a moment to ask the Administration to protect Blue Whales. For your convenience, use our Action Alert email form below.

Learn More

Please visit our colleagues at The Great Whale Conservancy to learn more about this issue and much more about these magnificent animals!

Shell’s Kulluk platform aground at Sitkalidak Island, Alaska (USCG Photo)

Just a short time ago the world was mesmerized by a mile-deep live feed of an unstoppable tempest of brown crude and an unprecedented frenzy of human activity undertaking desperate, inadequate attempts to halt the flow and skim, burn, disperse, and boom the rest. In the countless hearings by Congress and the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling that would follow, talk of a cold, distant frontier was unavoidable:  The chilling thought of such a disaster occurring in the Arctic, where remoteness, vastness, heavy weather and unforgiving seas combine to make even simple tasks at sea profoundly more difficult. In the face of the largest oil spill in history, many of us found consolation in that we were finally paying attention to the perils of offshore drilling and these lessons would finally be learned.

What BP Deepwater Horizon illustrated vividly was that civilization’s striking advances in deepwater drilling have far outpaced its ability to clean up should a disaster occur. Perhaps the most chilling of all the Congressional testimony was the revelation by oil company CEOs that the essence of their plan for dealing with a catastrophic oil spill was to not have a catastrophic oil spill. A great idea on paper, but in the real world, an arrogant denial of the limits of technology, human error, and Mother Nature’s merciless power.

Now, as if on queue, Shell’s Kulluck platform has run aground on the the east side of Sitkalidak Island, roughly 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City. Fortunately, all 18 crew members have been rescued. However, matters could have been much worse had the platform broken away from its tug above the Arctic Circle where it would normally be operating, a location far from any Coast Guard base. As it turns out, Kulluck ran in to trouble close to the Coast Guard’s well-equipped Alaska headquarters at Kodiak .

If BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a wakeup call, then the grounding of Shell’s Kulluck platform grounding is the bucket of ice water poured over our heads — salty ice water. The implications are clear. The oil industry hasn’t proven itself ready to drill in Arctic waters. And there’s too much at stake, including human lives and a vibrant marine ecosystem.

Here in Washington, DC, it seems like every night for more than two years, BP ads flash on the television with happy faces and stunning images of an oil-free Gulf of Mexico and tasty Gulf seafood. The nice man from BP reassures us that the Gulf is open for business. On the one hand, I hope these ads succeed in encouraging Gulf tourism, something that can really make a difference for Gulf business owners who have suffered terribly. On the other hand, BP’s efforts are not likely to be purely altruistic. Their carefully-worded propaganda is giving the public the impression that the disaster is ancient history and it’s all better now, an echo of the Administration’s August 2010 oil budget report and then-White House advisor Carol Browner’s Today Show appearance where she comforted us with the words,  “three quarters of the oil is gone.”

But it’s not gone. It wasn’t gone then and it’s not gone now. And I’m afraid that outgoing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s legacy will be dominated by her sanction and oversight of what may well prove to stand among the worst environmental decisions in history: The unbridled use of chemical dispersants one mile beneath the Gulf, ensuring that countless gallons of oil would never reach the surface where it could be skimmed, and forcing the Gulf to eat a toxic soup of oil and dispersant.

Numerous studies show that oil remains in the Gulf, and is working its way into the food chain. We’ve seen images of vast beds of delicate deepwater corals smothered by dispersed oil and shrimpers I’ve spoken with are still finding oil when they trawl. Many of my scientist colleagues agree that we won’t fully know the impact of what we did to the Gulf for a decade or more.

Vessel “Oliva” breaking apart and spilling oil at Nightingale Island (Photo: D. Guggenheim)

Finally, I’ve read articles and posts dismissing the environmental threat posed by the Kulluck Platform which contains approximately 150,000 gallons of fuel aboard. Whether or not this particular accident has serious environmental consequences remains an open question. But I have witnessed firsthand that it doesn’t take a blowout or supertanker to create an oil spill disaster. In March 2011 I watched in horror as a bulk carrier with a load of soybeans, the M/S Oliva, sat helpless, pounded by waves, aground at Nightingale Island, part of the Tristan de Cunha archipelago in the South Atlantic. The archipelago holds the second largest concentration of seabirds in the world and is home to half of the world’s population of the Northern Rockhopper penguin, an endangered species that has declined nearly 90 percent since the 1950s. The crew was rescued just before the ship split in half, spilling its fuel at one of the worst possible locations on the planet. Earlier this week I learned from a colleague on Tristan de Cunha that the Rockhopper penguin population has been devastated and now stands at less than half its former size.  (For the full story, please see A Statistically Impossible Plea for Help.)

Most know Exxon Valdez as Alaska’s biggest marine oil spill, but how many know the name of the ship that caused Alaska’s second-largest spill? Eight years ago, the Selendang Ayu, a bulk carrier with a load of soybeans, Oliva, broke in half in the Aleutian Islands, its fuel killing thousands of seabirds. (See Arctic Shipping is a Disaster Waiting to Happen).

The American Land Conservancy explains that  Sitkalidak Island’s  “location and highly irregular coastline traps abundant food sources upwelling from the central Gulf of Alaska attracting large numbers of seabirds and marine mammals. Concentrations of herring around the island are among the highest in the [Kodiak] archipelago, and the largest flock of common murres ever recorded by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service was in Sitkalidak Strait. It is also home to sixteen wild salmon rivers.”

As I wrote in A Statistically Impossible Plea for Help, it’s becoming apparent that these statistically impossible events aren’t as impossible as we once thought. Many of us have long expressed grave concern about drilling in the Arctic and this accident demonstrates why. Despite our advanced technologies, we are still unprepared to deal with what Mother Nature can dish out. Our clean-up technologies are more than a generation out-of-date and BP Deepwater Horizon unambiguously demonstrated their utter lack of effectiveness. Human ingenuity advanced without humility dooms us to repeat the great disasters of the past, but with consequences that are potentially far more grave. We have an unique moment in history to develop clean energy alternatives, find new efficiencies in the energy we use, and consider the fate of our descendants in the process. We need to remember what we’ve forgotten so quickly…the haunting image of brown crude endlessly rising from the depths.