SciFri
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Last week's topic: ocean diseases.

We asked if you were more concerned about ocean diseases as a symptom of
environmental damage, or as a possible human health risk.

Here's what some of you had to say...


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Really, aren't they the same? If the oceans 'get sick' then we all get sick.

This globe is so entwined with itself, and so dependent on the ocean, that there's really no difference.

Makes the idea of an apocalypse believable.

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What is the difference?

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John Bund

Both are interconnected. How can you separate one without the other? Like many issues throughout nature this is another canary in the coal mine. But, the leadership here in the US would rather spend millions of dollars on a baseless impeachment circus than providing real leadership on critical problems facing humanity.

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Alec Hamilton

The oceans supply two thirds of our oxygen, which is made by blue-green algae. If the oceans die, we die. Almost any disease except K J has some recovery rate.

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Steve Drake

The ocean will heal itself if we give it a chance. Damaging such a vital part of the worlds eco system without knowing how much abuse is too much is firting with disaster.

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A. Carter

I am very concerned about ocean diseases as a symptom of environmental damage. I am afraid if we don't respond promptly to these warning signs, we may damage our environment beyond repair. And then it WILL be a health hazard to humans.

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Stirling Noel Cousins

While both are obviously important, as an ecologist I look at the big picture and this means looking at ocean damage as a symptom of envivonmental damage. I get tired of humans being so self centered as to care only about our species when we are actively destroying so many others.

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Joan & Tim Scalzone

I am more concerned about the threat to biodiversity and a healthy functioning ecosystem as concerns viruses and bacteria because of the conscious,prolonged, apparently brutal lonliness, that that would entail. During my lifetime alone I have seen landscapes covered by progress where I once collected insects and studied frogs as an undergraduate. Here in Hawai'i, our coral gets tramped on by tourists and unaware locals. I am unaware of disease, but assume its here, because turtles develope a papilloma which weakens them and eventually kills.

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