Generation Z: Those Who Must Care About The Sea

By Uloop Guest Writer on August 4, 2015

Orange may be the New Black, but Blue is the new Green.

We, “Generation Z,” born after 1990, have more reason than any other age group to care about the fate of the world’s oceans.

What happens at sea is out of sight and out of mind. The problems in that far-off space rarely capture our attention. But the oceans could not be more important to the future of the planet and to the quality of our lives.

The oceans are a source of 50-70 percent of the oxygen we breathe, and they provide the path across continents, transporting 90 percent of the products that come to us. They are home to untold and untapped biodiversity – far more than the Amazon or any other final frontier — and a likely source of tomorrow’s most important wonder drugs.

Image via Pixabay

But aside from being a source of beauty, utility and promise, the oceans are also a place of violence beyond fathom. People are enslaved on fishing boats, sometimes for years. Murders on sea occur and sink unacknowledged into the background of news. Rules go unenforced. The New York Times series, The Outlaw Ocean, recently showed this reality with unusual clarity and scope.

The world economy has depended on the sea for several centuries. But, never to the extent it does today. As the Times pointed out, “without ships, half of the world would freeze and the other half would starve.” America’s ocean and coast alone provide jobs for 2.3 million people. On a broader spectrum, according to the Economist, about 3 billion of the Earth’s inhabitants get a fifth or more of their protein from fish. Consequently, fish are a bigger source of protein than beef is.

If the ocean is not handled properly NOW, our generation faces the loss of $500 billion in the world’s global economy, and a decrease in the planet’s health and human health.

It’s up to Generation Z to do something about these problems. Although we are the generation of realism, we seem to easily tuck these figures away. I mean who can blame us? Prior generations routinely dump their unfinished business onto us. However, this effort is not just some environmentalist call for cleaner oceans (it is that also). The problems are far broader.

Sea slaves are trafficked every day (The Times recounted illegal migrant workers from Cambodia trucked into Thailand, sold into bondage on boats, then dispatched far out to sea to catch the fish that goes in our cat and dog food). Even willing seafarers work in the most deadly industry on the planet.

Life at sea is cheap. And conditions out there keep getting worse,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, told the Times.

The environmental abuses are also acute and widespread. Hospitals in the U.S. annually flush millions of pounds of pharmaceuticals into the ocean. Millions of gallons of oil are leaked or dumped from ships. The ocean absorbs 50 percent of carbon dioxide from our carbon emissions — which plays a key role in the acidification of these waters. Your waste and your car’s gas emissions contaminate that beach you and your family visit.

Image by Michael Baird via Unsplash

We’ve heard these depressing facts before. They are overwhelming. Ironically, though, we have the technology and the awareness to turn things around. Our generation has the necessary hope and pragmatism.

Already, there are pockets of inventiveness. A teenager has built a vacuum cleaner to suck up the ocean’s plastic. Safety nets have been studded with LED rings to guide juvenile fish to an escape. The University of Florida has developed a handheld device that verifies seafood. Our generation has popularized crowdsourcing. Drones and satellites hold incredible potential for policing the seas and this technology will likely become even more advanced in our lifetime.

Our generation will and must think blue as much as we do green.

By: Holly Speck, University of Richmond, Intern for The Institute on Political Journalism 

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