Note: Tune into Coastal Currents today at noon on KHUM with your special guest LoCO correspondent, me!

Let’s play a word game. I say “Ocean” and you say…?

If anything other than the response “crisis” came to mind, you haven’t been keeping up. Yes, it’s a bummer, I know. Who’d have thought we’d be able to cause so much damage to something so large and seemingly resilient? Seventy percent of our planet consists of oceans and one hundred percent of our future wellbeing depends on how we take care of these waters we truly know little about.

In the sad news of the sea category, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), a global panel of marine experts, released a new study, the kind that comes with the adjectives “alarming” and “shocking” attached. Humans have only explored a tiny fraction of the ocean, but have damaged it so much we are, according to study authors, “at high risk for entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.”

Meanwhile, down in SoCal, researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography fret over future biodiversity off our coast. You know about the California Current, that cold water that runs down from Alaska keeping our ocean unfriendly to all those who enter without a wetsuit? It’s warming up – and as appealing as a neoprene swim off Moonstone Beach might sound, this is not a good thing.

Today’s Chron sums the ocean’s situation as “dire”: “The world’s oceans are degenerating far faster than predicted and marine life is facing extinction.”

Yikes.

But wait! Not all is doom-and-gloom. As we like to say in the enviro-advocacy world, “Don’t get depressed, get active!” (OK, you can get a little depressed, but only if you promise to also step up and do something.) Here on the heartbreakingly beautiful North Coast of California, we’ve still got it pretty good.

We have a legacy of water quality innovation.

Developments on marine protection move forward with broad community support. (MPAs work, says NOAA, among other experts.) 

Salmon restoration efforts appear to be paying off.

Commitment to keep new offshore oil drilling – or at least the opportunity to take a stance against it – continues.

We like to ride our bikes, clean up trash and eschew plastic!

Seriously. Check it:

• Express your support for Marine Protected Areas! Specifically, the North Coast’s proposed MPAs to California’s Fish & Game Commission meeting in advance of the June 29 meeting here.

(Recap past MLPA coverage with KHUM 104.3/104.7/khum.org via Coastal Currents here and more here and below.)

KHUM’s aerial tour of the North Coast

Audio companion to video here. 

• Attend Hands Across the Sand at Moonstone Beach, Saturday, June 25, 11 a.m. Local info here.

• Be ready to register for the International Coastal Cleanup, California-style, through the NEC.

• Tune into Coastal Currents today at noon on KHUM with your special guest LoCO correspondent, me!

Jennifer Savage serves as Ocean Conservancy’s North Coast Program Coordinator, Surfrider Foundation’s Humboldt Chapter chairperson and occasional Lost Coast Outpost correspondent.