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By the same author<br />
THE BLUE PLANET<br />
An Universe in Extinction<br />
Debate<br />
Barcelona, 2011<br />
400 pages · 16 pages with b/w photos<br />
Are the oceans dying? This is the question that many people have been asking<br />
every more insistently. The answer is that none are actually dying, but they are<br />
being transformed.<br />
And deeply transformed. The changes that man has brought throughout the planet<br />
affect the marine ecosystems more than terrestrial ones. But we have a problem<br />
with the oceans, which is that it that it is not easy to see what is happening in them,<br />
because they are not our medium.<br />
The disappearance of large consumers (whales, tuna, turtles, seals, swordfish and<br />
similar species) and a drastic reduction of much of the living structures of the sea<br />
bed (reefs, algae prairies and higher plants, deep corals, etc.) has brought on a<br />
change of entire ecosystems as they seek a re-equilibrium based more on the<br />
abundance of small organisms with accelerated lives.<br />
But there is more besides. Persistent pollution, both chemical and biological, and<br />
the uncertain but very sure effects of climate change, may be delivering a final<br />
coup de grâce to the oceans as we as a species have known them.<br />
And there is the aggravating factor that we still do not know for sure the true<br />
repercussion that these changes may be having on the system as a whole, the<br />
functioning of the planet and our own very survival.
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