By Shawn Larkin
The state of Costa Rica’s oceans is such that an international summit on the topic has been dubbed SOS. Save Our Souls is the very old international maritime emergency distress signal. The simplicity and quickness of sending SOS by Morse code, … --- … ensured the term made it easy to remember the all-important call to make when your ship is gonna be sinking soon. Costa Rica’s oceans are going down and there couldn’t be a better time to send the SOS. Hopefully the summit will be a code that helps the people to understand the dire plight of our seas quickly and simply.
The state of Costa Rica’s marine environment, sustainable ecotourism and the economy, sharks, plastic pollution, youth and the need for controlled environmental policy to save Costa Rica’s sustainable tourism are some of the crucial and urgent topics to be covered at the State Of The Oceans Summit, SOS, to be held at 1,000 meters above sea level in San José, Aug. 12-14.
The event is part of Eco Week Costa Rica, a “week-long celebration of the environment and culture,” that includes a celebrity golf game, a “green lifestyles fair and market” and an “eco-sustainable forum.” Their website lists four adventure tours, a National Geographic eco-snorkel treasure hunt, an eco-photo challenge, a yoga and wellness retreat and dharmi practice retreat, and an acupuncture package. For me, the acupuncture would be the biggest adventure. If the puncturing is being done with, say, black palm spines, it would be eco-acupuncture.
If you are stressed by the idea of eco-acupuncture, scuba diving for photos in Pacific Guanacaste’s Catalinas Islands and Flamingo Reef, or snorkeling in the Caribbean at Cahuita National Park to search underwater for treasure, then maybe playing golf with Cheech Martin (of Cheech and Chong fame) would be a more relaxing way to help save our seas. Believe it or not, the yoga, wellness and dharmi retreats would probably be more relaxing still. It is not clear if Cheech will be available for dharmi meditations.
Hopefully meditations and prayers will focus on saving our seas and heeding the SOS. The soul of planet Earth – the ocean – needs help right here in Costa Rica. There are many assaults on the seas, and without people intervening the ocean outcome is dubious at best. Some experts think it is already too late to save our seas.
The burning of carbon-based fuels, no matter if it causes global warming or not, turns the oceans more acidic. There is no doubt about that. Dosing the oceans with acid is already altering marine life around the world, but not everything loses. Acidic oceans seem to be good for jellyfish and they are blooming like never before. Jellyfish explosions will likely continue to take over great areas of the world ocean if we keep burning carbon.
Drastically changing the makeup of the entire world ocean is probably not a good idea because, among other things, the current services our ocean ecosystem is rendering is production of most of the oxygen we breathe. And we get a lot of food from the current marine ecosystem status quo.
Next up for saving our seas might be cutting back a little on the astounding amount of myriad things that we throw in our rivers. When the state of many rivers is pathetic, then pathetic is flowing to the sea. Healthy rivers nourish local seas, and contaminated rivers smother the sea and create dead zones or alga zones.
Hotels and other tourism businesses should be leading the charge for healthy rivers, but instead they are leading the contamination. Guidebooks and other reviewers need to check wastewater treatment, not ignore it. You might ask about wastewater treatment at each hotel or business that you give your money too. Then again, when vast areas of Chinese ocean, beaches and rivers recently filled with bright green algae – waist high on some beaches – some tourists still came.
Drilling in the ocean also seems to be very good for algae, if not so good for dolphin superpods, humpback whales, sportfishing or eco-tourists. No matter if the drilling is for science, natural gas or oil, environmental impact studies, full local scientific participation and independent monitoring might be a good idea if the incredible sea life, big money and major jobs already provided by marine tourism are worth saving.
Saving the seas would also involve asking if the current forms of purse-seine netting for tuna and shrimp trawling are worth the slaughter of dolphins and the destruction of deep reefs. Is long-lining worth locally exterminating sharks and billfish? That seems like another good question to ask if we want to save our seas.
These crucial issues and a lot more will be swirling around in the currents of the Save Our Seas Summit.
Shawn Larkin is a diving guide on the Osa Peninsula and a longtime Tico Times columnist. See his website at www.costacetacea.com.
