The ‘Single Greatest Health Threat’ Facing Humankind

The Earth’s oceans are in trouble. In short: They are sick and dying. Poisons, trash and overfishing are destroying the Earth’s biggest resource—and the primary source of food for 1 billion people.

“You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species. I suspect this will shorten lives, if it turns out that this is what is going on” (emphasis mine). This is the conclusion of biologist Roger Payne, president of Ocean Alliance, a research and conservation group that just released a shocking report concerning the world’s sperm whale population.

The report released on June 24 found that sperm whales feeding in even the most remote reaches of the oceans have built up incredibly high levels of toxic and heavy metals. The five-year study collected tissue samples from almost 1,000 whales.

The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales’ surface tissues, but say levels are probably much higher in inner organs. Experts recommend that children and pregnant women avoid eating fish such as shark and swordfish, which typically have levels of only 1 part per million.

The researchers were stunned with the “jaw dropping” results. They even found chromium. “That’s an absolute shocker. Nobody was even looking for it,” said Payne.

High levels of cadmium, aluminum, lead, silver and titanium were also found.

Many of these metals, once accumulated, get stored in the fats of organisms and are not released back into the environment. This is especially problematic for higher food-chain animals, because when they feed, they ingest all the metals taken in by lower organisms (i.e.: the metals absorbed by the algae, which is eaten by the zooplankton, which is eaten by the small fish, which is eaten by the large fish, which is eaten by the shark, which is eaten by the whale). At each level, the heavy metals get more concentrated. And for some toxins, once ingested, they never get expelled.

For sperm whales and other top-level predators, this is becoming a major concern. When the mother whale nurses her calf, she passes on the poisons to the next generation. “What she’s actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby,” says Payne, and each generation passes on more to the next.

“I don’t see any future for whale species except extinction,” says Payne. “This is not on anybody’s radar, no government’s radar anywhere, and I think it should be.”

But the astoundingly high levels of the synthetic chemicals found in the whales give an overall report on the health of the oceans—and it is not good. When top predators die out, whole ecosystems get thrown out of whack with unpredictable ramifications for other species. One billion humans rely heavily on the fishing industry for food.

“The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings,” says Payne. “These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They are certainly threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean.”

Sperm whales are not the only whale populations struggling—though, since bans of commercial whale hunting were implemented, some whale populations are increasing again.

In 2008, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature reported that one quarter of whales, dolphins and porpoises are still threatened with extinction, with 1 in 10 species endangered to the very highest levels. Blue whales, for example, used to number around 250,000. Today, it is estimated there are only 2,300 alive.

On June 17, marine biologist John Calambokidis reported an autopsy had found “the largest amount of trash ever recorded in a stranded whale in Puget Sound.” The garbage inside the gray whale included sweatpants fabric, a golf ball, plastic bags, duct tape, fishing line and a juice pouch.

In March, it was reported that southern right whales were dying in record numbers along Argentina’s Patagonian coast, resulting in the largest die-off of great whales ever documented. Over 300 whales were found dead; over 80 percent were calves less than 3 months old. At this important spawning ground, it was estimated that one quarter of the year’s calves died in this one event. And no one knows why.

Regina Asmutis-Silvia, senior biologist at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, says whale populations are at a tipping point. A combination of factors threatens the survival of whales. “You need to look at the cumulative impact of vessel strikes, entanglements in fishing nets, pollution, destruction of habitat and acoustic disturbances,” she said in June 2008.

“Their situation is very critical. It could go either way.”

The Earth’s troubled oceans are crying out. To better understand the message they are sending, read “Where Have All the Fish Gone?”