Atty. Gloria Estenzo-Ramos
People talk about climate change (“pag-usab sa klima,” in Cebuano) more often now than ten years ago. The extreme weather aberrations are getting “normal” and “recurring” — from stronger typhoons, changing rain and snow patterns, to raging wildfires and more droughts.
Climate change impacts everything and everyone, especially the most vulnerable of us – the fisherfolk, the farmers, children, women, elderly, those with disability and the poor, the wildlife.
Ironically, they, who have the least carbon footprint on our home planet, stand to suffer most from our carbon-emitting way of life. Ever wonder how our subsistence fisherfolks are managing with the frequent typhoons hitting our islands?
For us, living in an archipelago, it pays to know that as the temperature rises, the ocean absorbs some of the heat and becomes warmer.
It is actually a “massive amount of heat”, in a quote attributed to Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab in Seattle. Johnson says that “It’s about 350 terawatts, which is more than five times the energy released by the type of atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, per second — continuously.” https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/wjpm7m/the-oceans-have-never-been-hotter-than-they-are-now
According to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, our oceans have absorbed over 90 percent of the excess heat produced by anthropogenic global warming in the last 50 years.
“The change is most obvious in the top layer of the ocean, which has grown much warmer since the late 1800s. This top layer is now getting warmer at a rate of 0.2°F per decade.”
“Oceans are expected to continue getting warmer — both in the top layer and in deeper waters.
Even if people stop adding extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere now, oceans will continue to get warmer for many years as they slowly absorb extra heat from the atmosphere.” https://archive.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/impacts/signs/oceans.html
2017 was considered as the second hottest year on record, with 2016, the hottest.
But for the ocean, which is faced with so many pressures from us, humans, 2017 registered the hottest.
What are the implications? So many.
When water warms, it expands. The researchers in a study found that “the increase in temperature between 2016 and 2017 alone caused the oceans to rise nearly two millimeters — and that’s independent of any ice or glacial melt, two of the most significant factors that contribute to global sea level rise.” https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/wjpm7m/the-oceans-have-never-been-hotter-than-they-are-now
Apart from the rising sea level, warmer oceans cause more powerful storms, affect marine ecosystems such as corals with increased coral bleaching, fish and of course, livelihoods and settlements.
Fish will migrate to cooler temperatures, and that’s bad news for us living in tropical places.
Climate impacts will exacerbate the effects of overfishing, illegal fishing, pollution and over-all weak management of our coasts and oceans that we have to address.
Action is urgently needed to stem the impacts of all these issues that we inflict upon our oceans.
One thing going is there is a high awareness of our citizens on the issues plaguing our seas. In a survey done by Social Weather Stations in September last year, commissioned by Oceana Philippines, three of five (61%) Filipino adults nationwide mentioned pollution /waste management, 42% illegal and destructive fishing, and 38% climate change or noticeable changes in weather patterns, as the three most important problems of our oceans today.
The same survey revealed that 71% rely on fish as source of animal protein diet, 54% said fish are smaller now, and 55% said there is less variety of fish in the market.
These are clear perceptions of our people affirming scientific study of serious overfishing in the country. Our artisanal fisherfolk are likewise one in saying that they have noticed the decline of the fisheries population in Cebu and in our country in the 1990s.
Our key decision-makers and stakeholders should also watch the film, “An Ocean Mystery’, now available online, to look at the real state of our global fisheries.
The film follows the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator, Daniel Pauly, one of the most famous fisheries specialists in the world, who was in town recently, as he and his colleagues piece together a true picture of the fish catch and the speed at which we are running out of fish.
The data set they’ve put together can be freely accessed at https://www.seaaroundus.org/data/#/eez.
It is high time for our government agencies to step up, and citizens, as well.
You and I should now push vigorously for the creation of a Department of Oceans and Fisheries to mainstream effective fisheries management in this “center of the center of marine biodiversity in the world.”
We cannot wait for our fisheries to collapse. We need to have the resilient marine ecosystems and the fragile habitats to sustain us — that is a duty we owe to the future generations. We cannot fail them.