How bad of an impact do we really have?

This is something that I've always thought about growing, how many things do we do that harms the ocean & its marine environments. You always hear talks, be it passing or directly, that we're actively harming the ocean with our actions but its never really fully talked about how bad we're harming the ocean. As I mentioned this is something I never really thought about growing up, sure I knew what harmful things we were doing to the ocean, but never hearing the extent of the damages.

During our studies on SLO-4 we would end up watching the 2017 movie "Chasing Coral" that would end up hitting me dead on with the extent of our impact. To quickly explain before moving on Coral reefs bleaching is the basic equivalent of those corals dying out and turning pale white, this practically impedes their feeding habits which causes their deaths. Coral bleaching's are due to the oceans change in both its temperature and its PH, this then causes the coral to reject the nutrients from their algae on them which eventually causes them to starve as I mentioned. So to put it bluntly during 2016 there was a mass bleaching event that bleached 51% of coral reefs globally. As of 2017 80-90% of Florida's coral reefs were lost, but as of 2020 that number rose to 98% lost. Seeing all of these reefs go from vibrant colors, exploding with life everywhere, go to all white and lifeless really was eye opening. seeing something loose all of its beauty and life so fast was really shocking because as I mentioned earlier I never really knew how bad it was until I saw this movie. Let that part there sink in, Out of all my 18 years of being alive, not once did I ever find out about the damages done to the ocean until I took this class.

Way/s to help in addressing these problems

As I mentioned in the previous text block, the full extent of what we've done was something I never really knew about until I grew up. I personally think that one of the biggest things that can help in this problem is addressing the direct effects of what we have done head on, teach the younger generation what's going on in the ocean and how bad it is, not just saying what's happening. I strongly feel as if we can address these problems head on we can at least help in shifting the wider publics thoughts on what's really going on down there, appeal to their emotions and show them what they're really doing indirectly.

Reduce. This ones more obvious but if we want any chance at saving oceans we drastically need to reduce our carbon footprints. After all the top 3 countries with the biggest global carbon foot prints are China with more than 10.065 million tons of CO2 released, United States, with 5.416 million tons of CO2, and India, with 2.654 million tons of CO2.

Watch what you buy. This ones a more minor way to help but any help is good help, be cautious of what you buy as some items you buy can end up harming the beach's. One of the bigger items you should be careful in using is sun screen, some chemicals found within sunscreen & other health care items can end up being a threat to coral reefs and other creatures in the ocean.

there are so many ways we can help turn the tides around and save our oceans, the biggest ways to help is simply be mindful. think about the environment before making choices that could potentially harm it.