California Coast & Ocean

A warmer atmosphere is also more energetic, and that affects wind patterns. Wind is one key to the California Current, which carries ocean water from north to south, down the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and northern California. As the rotating earth spins the shoreline eastward, away from that current, the water moves away from the coast. Nearshore surface water is then replaced from the depths (upwelling), and that brings upward nutrients that fertilize phytoplankton. The result has been a highly productive life zone off our coast as the increased productivity passed up the food chain. But the warmer climate is causing troubling changes to the beneficial upwelling process. Scientists report that stronger and more persistent winds, linked to global warming, are promoting more upwelling and for longer periods. The result in recent years has been too much of a good thing: massive phytoplankton production, way more than can be consumed by feeding animals. When that plankton floating near the ocean surface dies, it sinks to the ocean floor and decomposes. Decomposition sucks oxygen from the water, resulting in dead zones.

A study by the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, published in Science in February, found oxygen levels much lower than in the previous 50 years during each of the last six summers off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and parts of northern California. In 2006, the study found nearly complete mortality among sea floor creatures such as crabs, which could not escape the dead zones. Finding no correlation with other ocean temperature variables such as El Niño cycles, the study pointed to climate change as the driving force. What was a beneficial, life-sustaining process, in the right balance, has been thrown off balance, with deadly consequences.

There are messages in these events that Californians need to appreciate: It really is possible to have too much of a good thing; more is not always better.

Just as it is hard to connect damaged mollusk shells and acidic ocean water with our individual greenhouse gas emissions, it is difficult to appreciate our complicity in these ocean dead zone events. Yet, the atmospheric changes affecting the ocean can be traced back to “people fumes,” and that means you and me, our cars, houses, office buildings, factories, and ports.

Southern California’s port complex at San Pedro and neighboring Long Beach serves over 3,000 vessels each year. It is the third-largest port complex in the world, and (why is this not a surprise?) both the ports have plans for massive expansion.

Cargo ships burn dirty, high-sulfur diesel fuel, an asphalt-like material that generates 1,800 times as many particulates as does the fuel for diesel trucks, including ultra-fine particulates that are considered especially serious health hazards. Emissions from ocean vessels have gone almost unregulated, primarily because 90 percent of the ships using U.S. ports sail into them under foreign flags. United Nations efforts to reduce emissions from vessels have dragged on for years without resolution.