Rationale

Krista Singh
Ms. Melnick
ENG4U Online
Ocean Health and Our Options to Change Our Ways Rationale
The oceans on our planet are iconic. They represent how small we are in the world, compared
to their mass. Complete ecosystems that are millions of years older than humanity lay in liters of
water we havent even explored yet. Yet as one of the smartest species we have almost
destroyed the ecosystems around us to a point beyond repair, we believe it all seems well due
to the hue of the water and nothing else. There is a deeper issue than the human eye can see
and this is why I chose Ocean Health as my topic.
I personally believe that Ocean Health is one of the largest issues humanity will have to deal
with in the remote future if not accurately presented to the public now. In the early ninetynineties the attention of Global Warming was brought to the public, it was not welly accepted
until the mid-early 2000s. The topic of Global Warming can be broken down into different sub
topics: CO2 Emissions (Green Houses), Temperate Fluctuation, Changing Ecosystems and
finally Ocean Health.
Ocean Health is one of the less exposed issues due to climate change, and while rising ocean
levels are a high priority most do not realize the severe damage done by marine plastics,
commercial fishing and one of the most unprecedented topics of all: ocean acidity. These are
some of the many sub topics within a sub topic, exposing how deep the issue of Global
Warming. And while the broad topic of Global Warming could be tackled on a whole, it would be
too large to tackle in the midst of a semester.
I first discovered the issue of Ocean Acidity during the earlier years of high school in my
mandatory science classes, while I was never a science person I realized the importance of
knowing why these things were happening. For example Ocean Acidity is the level of acid that
contained in the water. On the acid and bases scale, water stands at the neutral point of seven
(The scale is from 0 to 14, 7 is directly in the middle, lemons stand at 2 on the side of acidity
and ammonia lays on the more basic side of the scale.), but the CO2 emissions are effecting the
chemistry of the acid and bases scale in the oceans, because the oceans absorb and recycle
about 70% of the CO2 emissions on the planet. Imagine in a world where the scale tips, going
farther or lower on the scale: the fish you eat would be living in the same level of acidity as wine
(4) or the basic levels of baking soda (9). This would change the world as we know it.
Currently there is plans, summits, conferences and laws being governed right now to depict the
future for humankind. To change and hopefully succeed. But the overall message that needs to
be heard is not how we can change the future, but how we shaped it in the first place and where
we can go from here.