Investigating the World's Oceans, Pole to Pole and Deep Below the Bottom

With their vast resources and raw materials, the world’s oceans are one of the cornerstones of the quality of human life. According to World Bank figures, 350 million jobs are estimated to be linked to the oceans globally, and 1 billion people in developing countries depend on fish for their primary source of protein.
 
However, the oceans are increasingly endangered by unfettered exploitation and ecological damage from overfishing, noise, pollution, and acidification. Only 2 percent of the oceans are protected areas. Ninety percent of big predators are gone. Thirty-eight percent of coral reefs have been destroyed since 1980, according to the latest figures published by the United Nations Environment Program.
 
Over the next three days, the Earth Institute will host a conference on the use and protection of the world’s oceans. The conference is the second in a series of European-U.S. gatherings organized by the Dräger Foundation, based in Lübeck, Germany.
 
The slide show below features some of the ongoing research by scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Earth Institute, whose work is key to understanding past changes in the oceans and what is going on today.
 
The conference series, “Sustainable Oceans: Reconciling Economic Use and Protection,” began last year in Hamburg, exploring “The Use of the Ocean’s Energy Resources, Risk Management and the Need for Regulation.”

The second gathering this week, “Developing a New International Architecture for Maritime Policy,” will continue the debate from the first conference on the value of the oceans’ ecosystems and biodiversity, and will focus on economic gains and damage from fishing and shipping. The conference aims at reaffirming the need for the international community to take collective action and appropriate steps in order to prevent further damage to the oceans from fishing and shipping.
 
A third session, to be held in Lisbon in 2013, hopes to foster international cooperation towards good governance and sound maritime policies for sustainable marine development. (For more on the details of the conference this week, visit the Dräger Foundation’s website.)
 
The conferences bring together experts and stakeholders from Europe as well as the American continent to discuss these challenges and identify practical solutions to facilitate future sustainable development. One of the key objectives of this conference series is to help establish the European Ocean Commission of the European Commission, and to link it with the U.S. Ocean Commission.
 
The organizers want to help initiate a joint EU-U.S. white paper on the state of the oceans and coasts for politics as well as business, and finally encourage an “Ocean Blueprint” for good governance for the 21st century, which is meant to propose a remedial action plan towards sustainable oceans to our governments.
 
As the photos below illustrate, researchers at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Earth Institute, do pioneering work all over the globe in many areas of ocean research. These include studies of climate change, ice, earthquakes, sea-level rise, water chemistry and more.

Provided by Columbia University