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Bearing
bad tides and bad tidings
Environmental writers focus on imperiled oceans
By Tim Stoddard
It’s been 13 years since images of oil-stricken birds in Prince
William Sound inspired a heroic cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
This week, a tanker split in two off the coast of Spain, spilling twice
as much oil as the Valdez catastrophe. Enviromental disasters like these
stir public outrage fairly easily; an oil spill is not a difficult concept
to grasp, and its remedy is straightforward. But the layperson is less
likely to understand or care about larger environmental threats to the
world’s oceans.
For journalists and scientists concerned about collapsing fisheries, melting
polar ice caps, and the wholesale destruction of oceanic ecosystems, the
challenge is to communicate dire issues without alienating a public already
numbed by doom-and-gloom headlines. That challenge will be at the heart
of an environmental writers conference cosponsored by COM’s Knight
Center for Science and Medical Journalism and the New England Aquarium
November 23 and 24. Tomorrow’s Ocean will be a platform for leading
marine scientists to address the threats to ocean ecosystems and a forum
for environmental writers of all ilks to discuss the future of their craft.
The first day of the Tomorrow’s Ocean conference will be similar
to earlier festivals at the aquarium, featuring poetry workshops led by
David Barber, a staff editor at The Atlantic Monthly, and Andrea Cohen,
communications director at MIT Sea Grant. Nature essayist Robert Finch
and science photographer Felice Frankel will join Barber and Cohen on
a panel later in the afternoon to critique the aquarium’s new Living
Lakes exhibit. Among other things, the panelists will debate the effectiveness
of the exhibit, discussing whether it communicates the importance of biodiversity
to a larger audience.
On Saturday evening, renowned deep-sea researcher Sylvia Earle will present
never-before-seen underwater footage at the aquarium’s IMAX theater
(note: the footage was shot on standard film, not IMAX format). An oceanographer,
diver, and developer of deep submersibles, Earle has been surveying U.S.
marine-protected areas as part of the Sustainable Seas program that she
runs as a National Geographic Society explorer in residence. An outspoken
advocate of protecting the world’s oceans for over 30 years, Earle
was cited in the November 2002 Discover magazine article “The 50
Most Important Women in Science.”
Oceans of issues
On the second day, the conference will shift venues from Central Wharf
to BU’s Charles River Campus, and will delve into the journalistic
side of nature writing. “There are different ways to write about
the environment,” says Doug Starr, codirector of the Knight Center
and a COM associate professor of journalism. “One approach is journalistic,
teasing apart an issue or event and exposing the deeper social causes
of the problem. The other, in the style of Barry Lopez and other great
nature writers, is a more naturalistic approach. There’s no reason
that one should exclude the other. At the center, we’re trying to
break down every barrier that we see in terms of keeping good journalism
from being great writing.”
The agenda for November 24 includes four panel discussions profiling threats
to ocean ecosystems and the best strategies to writing about these problems.
Les Kaufman, a CAS associate professor of marine biology, moderates the
opening panel, an overview discussion entitled Saving the Ocean -- Turning
Back a Noxious Tide. Kaufman’s research is in the evolutionary biology
of marine organisms, but he has also been deeply involved in conservation
and public advocacy. “Historically, humans have assumed the ocean’s
resources to be limitless and the ocean itself to be incorruptible because
we’re so puny,” Kaufman says. “That’s not true
anymore.”
The demise of coral reefs worldwide is a case in point. “Coral reefs
are the first vast ecosystem in the oceans to have been massively pummeled
by human impacts,” Kaufman says. The assault has come on several
fronts. In the Caribbean, where over three quarters of the reefs have
been severely damaged, people have already overfished the large predatory
species and are now “moving in on the horses and cows of the reef
-- the herbivorous species such as parrot fish and surgeon fish.”
When you remove them, Kaufman says, there is little left to graze on the
algae that normally grows rampant in clear shallow water. “If you
take the herbivores away, it’s harder for the coral to keep the
algae out. Coral reefs all over the world are being transformed from the
fairylands we’re used to seeing on Channel 2 to monotonous stretches
of seaweed.”
To compound the problem, deforestation and misguided land use on shore
are causing topsoil to wash down into the ocean, resulting in turbidity
that further cripples coral reefs. In murky water, only the phytoplankton
at the surface can thrive. When they bloom, Kaufman says, they further
shade out the coral, giving the algae another advantage. Biological waste
from sewage outfall pipes fertilizes coastal waters in a process called
eutrophication. “To survive,” Kaufman says, “coral reefs
depend on water being relatively nutrient-poor because they don’t
grow as quickly as the large seaweeds.”
Beach writes
A separate panel discussion will address the problem of coastal sprawl.
Seafront real estate is extremely valuable, but overdevelopment of shorelines
is creating environmental and socioeconomic problems. “What’s
interesting about coastal sprawl,” Starr says, “is that it’s
not just about the physical barriers to going to the beach. It can accentuate
economic problems, but it also brings in questions of social equity. Why
should the rich have all of this real estate when middle-class people
can’t anymore? This is a heavily loaded issue that journalists can
look at.”
Other panels will address the multifaceted issues of fisheries management
and the impact of global warming on the Arctic and Antarctic. “We
don’t have to resort to any exotic or fuzzy concepts to deal with
these issues,” says Kaufman. “The evidence is extremely concrete.
It essentially comes down to having lots of money now, or money forever.”
At the end of the conference, Starr and Ellen Ruppel Shell, codirector
of the Knight Center and a COM associate professor of journalism, will
encourage the journalists to discuss ways of improving their coverage
of the environment. “Environmental journalists need to develop a
language for educating the public about ocean environment issues without
totally depressing them,” Kaufman says. “In this conference,
I’d like to convey how hopeful things are and how easy it would
be to solve some of these problems compared to others that we’ve
tackled with some success. It’s a message of despair, perhaps, because
things are even worse than we realize. But it’s also a message of
tremendous hope, because it speaks to the extraordinary resilience of
the oceans.”
Tomorrow’s Ocean is free and open to the public, but advance registration is suggested. For more information, please visit www.bu.edu/com/jo/science/conference_oceans.htm or call Maureen Clark at 617-353-4239.
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22 November 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations