How Badly Is Fukushima Radiation Damaging the Pacific Ocean?
Copyright Richard Wilcox 2014 |
Activist Post
Although its heart is rich in pearls and ores
The Sea complains upon a thousand shores
– Alexander Smith (1)
I watched some wonderful movies over the summer with “ocean” themes and one was with Robert Redford called All is Lost. The entertainment value was good but it also made a statement about Man’s interference with Nature and how nature can strike back. I love films like All is Lost, Master and Commander, in which the imperial navy visits the Galapagos Islands and “Kon Tiki,” a story about a 4,000 mile trek across the ocean, because they show the unspeakable beauty and power of the world’s great oceans. Can humans actually destroy them?
Over the past year we’ve read many news stories about mass die-offs of marine species in the Pacific Ocean and other regions. One hypothesis in the alternative media is that the massive radiation released from the Fukushima nuclear disaster is the cause. Others blame over-fishing, pollution or climatic events.
My opinion is that if the die-offs are unusual and “man made” then it is a combination of factors, but Fukushima is probably one of them. The Earth is under many human threats — we are an industrious species — Fukushima is doing the ocean only harm, and following that logic, at a minimum the health of local species and perhaps wider ecosystems are being affected in a reverse synergy whereby organisms have surpassed the limits they can endure.