Ocean Catastrophe Narratives: Something Fishy Going On

“[A]n analysis of some of the calamities reported in doom and gloom media accounts shows some—at times, severe—disconnect with actual observations. For instance, there is no evidence that ocean acidification has killed jellyfish predators, nor that jellyfish are taking over the ocean, and predictions that the killer algae, Caulerpa taxifolia, was going to devastate the Mediterranean ecosystem have not been realized, despite claims to the contrary from the media.”

– Carlos Duarte et al., “Reconsidering Ocean Calamities,” BioScience, December 31, 2014.

“Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says” stated a recent headline in the New York Times. Is it true? Has a “groundbreaking” analysis “from hundreds of sources” of the world’s oceans unearthed signs of human-caused global catastrophe, as claimed? Or is this just another alarmist narrative that’s all wet?

A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them. [NY Times source]

The world’s oceans cover seventy percent of the Earth. Those looking for problems along coastlines and out on the Great Big Sea are likely to find them. But doom-and-gloom stories claiming general decline across ocean ecosystems are overstated according to a December 31, 2014, study, “Reconsidering Ocean Calamities, “published in the Oxford journal BioScience, 

The study lists popular articles and contrasts ocean calamities claims with empirical research on marine ecosystem health. The abstract begins:

The proliferation of a number of pressures affecting the ocean is leading to a growing concern that the state of the ocean is compromised, which is driving society into pessimism. Ocean calamities are disruptive changes to ocean ecosystems that have profound impacts and that are widespread or global in scope. However, scrutiny of ocean calamities to ensure that they can be confidently attributed to human drivers, operate at widespread or global scales, and cause severe disruptions of marine social-ecosystems shows that some of the problems fail to meet these requirements or that the evidence is equivocal. 

This piece usefully cites research undermining the media’s steady drumbeat narrative of ocean catastrophes:

However, an analysis of some of the calamities reported in doom and gloom media accounts (e.g., table 1) shows some—at times, severe—disconnect with actual observations. For instance, there is no evidence that ocean acidification has killed jellyfish predators, nor that jellyfish are taking over the ocean, and predictions that the killer algae, Caulerpa taxifolia, was going to devastate the Mediterranean ecosystem have not been realized, despite claims to the contrary from the media (table 1). It may be, therefore, that some of the calamities composing the syndrome of collapse of coastal ecosystems may not be as severe as is portrayed in some accounts.

The authors argue that good science requires skeptical analysis of claims that ocean ecosystems are being harmed by human activity:

Therefore, skeptical scrutiny of ocean calamities must involve an analysis to ensure that the following elements be met: their attribution to pressures associated with human drivers, their global or widespread nature, and their disruption of linked social-ecological systems. We illustrate this process of skeptical scrutiny by providing, for each of these components, succinct examples of cases supported by strong, equivocal, or weak evidence. We then discuss the processes that may lead to perpetuating the perception of ocean calamities even in cases in which the evidence may be equivocal or weak.

Look before you intellectually leap to alarmism. To this end, Oxford’s BioScience article, “Reconsidering Ocean Calamities,” is a good place to start–and to have another good day.