All rivers run into rivers

During the past thirty years,i have observed and studied the oceans closely,and with my eyes i have seen them sicken.Certain reefs that teemed with fish only ten years ago are now almost lifeless.The ocean bottom has been raped by trawlers.Priceless wetlands have been destroyed by land fill.And everywhere are sticky globs of oil,plastic refuse,and unseen clouds of posonous effluents.Often,when i describe the symptoms of the oceans' sickness,i hear remarks like"they're only fish'or "they're only whale"or"they're only birds."But i assure you that our destinies are linked with their in the most profound and dundamental member.For if the oceans should die-by which i mean,that all life in the sea would finally cease-this would signal the end not only for marine life but for all other animals and plants of this earth,including man.

With life departed,the ocean would become,in effect,one enormous cesspool.Billions of decaying bodies,large and small,would create such an insupportabe stench that man would be forced to leave all the coastal regions.But far worse would follow.

The ocean acts as the earth's buffer.It maintains a fine balance between many salts and gases which make life possible.But dead seas would have no buffering effect.The carbon  dioxide content of the atmosphere would start on a steady and remorseless climb,and when it reached a certain level a "greenhouse effect"would be created.The heat that normally radiates outward from the earth to space would be blocked by the CO2 and sea level temperatures would dramatically increase.

One catasrtophic effect of this heat would be melting of the icecapes at both the North and South Poles.As a result,and ocean would rise by 100 feet or more,enough to food almost all the world's major cities.These rising waters would drive one-third of the earth's billions inland,creating famine,fighting,chaos,and disease on a scale almost impossible to imagine.

Meanwhile,the surface of the ocean would have scummed over with a thick film of decayed matter,and would no longer be able to give ferrly to the skes through evaporation.Rain would become a rarity,creating global drought and even more famine..