World Changing #7 Kathie Chung

World Changing #7
Charting the Deep Oceans pg. 521
Kathie Chung

When considering the well being of our planet, the ocean is one of the most important environments that we should be concerned about because the base of the land that we live on lies underwater. With the advanced technology that we now have, scientists are able to explore the ocean’s depth more accurately and further with equivalent equipment similar to the ones that NASA uses when researching space. Thus, this advance in ocean exploration can be called the oceanographic revolution. This revolution informed scientists that the oceans are being harmed by pollution and global warming as well, such as the dead zones called hypoxic, which are areas where life can not survive due to lack of oxygen. Due to global warming, thermal inertia will cause the temperature of the ocean to rise further causing harm to the life in the ocean such as the coral reefs and planktons. Phytoplanktons and coral reefs are sensitive to the change in the temperature of the water, and due to global warming; the temperature in the water caused a heat shock, changing the color of the reefs to white. Due to the reefs being sensitive to such slight changes, scientists use and study coral reefs to research the actual harm that people are causing the environment such as with global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.