EARTH CHANGES

Oceans in deep trouble

The oceans remain a mystery, but increasingly, the deep sea is coming under intense scrutiny. The US Congress would like to locate, size and claim untapped sources of fuel beneath the sea floor, their Department of Energy is exploring the potential for forestalling global warming by injecting captured carbon dioxide into the seabed or deep in ocean waters, and the US Navy is hoping to employ low frequency sonar throughout vast swaths of ocean to detect stealth submarines.
But for all the possibilities inherent in the poorly explored and understood deep seas, major risks and uncertainties lie in the ocean depths as well. The science surrounding these proposals for incursions into the sea is not fully developed. Aggressive efforts to exploit ocean resources threaten to alter, perhaps irrevocably, the finely-tuned chemical balances of the deep sea, with grave peril to animal and plant populations that dwell within it.