Title: Enriching the Sea to Death Author/Source: Scott W.

Nixon Major Ideas: Various methods failed to extract the elements nitrogen and phosphorus, nutrients indispensable to human life and abundant in human waste. An excess of nutrients flowing from the land into the sea has created serious environmental problems in many coastal waters. Only recently have measures been taken to forestall the worst effects. Phytoplankton is short lived- they continually die off and sink, leaving new generations growing in their place. The more abundant the blooms, the heavier the fallout to the lower depthsbottom living bacteria that digest this dead plant matter consume oxygen. The wastewater-treatment technologies put into place between about 1880 and 1940 removed visible debris and pathogenic organisms from sewer effluent, effectively eliminating the distasteful reminders that had once washed up on the shore. Sunlight does not penetrate deeply into water clouded by blooms. When organic material is abundant in a lake and where surface and bottom waters seldom mix, oxygen rapidly becomes scarce below the surface. Coastal areas are especially vulnerable to oxygen depletion because freshwater draining into the ocean from rivers and streams- often laden with nutrients- tends to float on top of denser saltwater. In response to fertilization, phytoplankton multiplies explosively, coloring water shades of green, brown and red with their photosynthetic pigments. These blooms increase supply of organic matter to aquatic ecosystems, eutrophication. Farmers have been applying exponentially increasing amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. Rain washes these nutrients off the land and into rivers and streams, which then carry them to lakes and oceans. Phosphorus is chemically sticky and binds easily to other substances.

Summary of the Main Idea: Human waste has caused many problems in the oceans. Our waste has nitrogen and phosphorus and it is released in sewers and finds it finds its way into our ocean. These nutrients are needed by phytoplankton. As more and more of our waste are released into the ocean the more phytoplankton grow and block the deep ocean from the light of the sun- eutrophication. As the population of phytoplankton increases, more die off and sink to the deep and bacteria consume the nutrients (including oxygen) from the dead. Because oxygen doesn't circulate as well in the ocean as in the air, the more bacteria consumes the oxygen from the phytoplankton, the more oxygen levels in ocean will decrease causing organisms to suffocate and create dead zones. With the increase in human population, the more nitrogen and phosphorus will be dumped into the ocean.

My thoughts: I think that their needs to be different ways for us to dispose our waste. Our waste can be used in composting and fertilizers. As more waste gets put into the ocean the more it causes process of eutrophication. Just because Eutrophication is good for phytoplankton does not mean it is good for the rest of the living organisms in our ocean. So what? Fertilizing the sea may be beneficial to phytoplankton, but it is not beneficial to the other marine organisms. What If? What if there was different ways to dispose of our waste, would it make a difference to our ocean? Says Who? Scott W. Nixon

This Reminds Me of..? This reminds me of how sustainability is important to our bodies because having too much and too little amount of nutrients in our body can be harmful.