Emily Jeffers: Protecting Our Oceans

Emily Jeffers is a staff attorney for the Oceans Program at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. Jeffers says the Oceans Program’s goal, “is to protect endangered species and the ecosystems they rely on.” According to Jeffers some of the main issues our oceans face today include ocean acidification, ocean warming, overfishing, fossil fuel extraction pollution. Jeffers says the Oceans Program tackles these problems by presenting petitions to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) asking them to record species as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and to identify critical habitat for protected species. The Center for Biological Diversity can also sue the government if  it fails to enforce laws and works to develop education and outreach.

When asked what the major threats facing the ocean’s wildlife and ecosystems, Jeffers replied, “the climate threat, which is ocean warming and ocean acidification… I think that we’re just starting to understand the magnitude of ocean acidification and how it’s going to totally change the ocean ecosystem.” Jeffers explained the expansion of scientific papers published over the past few years that tackled effects of ocean acidification on corals, shellfish and a many other organisms. Jeffers pointed out, “Can you imagine there being no coral reefs in the next 100 years? That’s happening. Scientists say corals cannot exist under pH 7.8, and that’s predicted within the next 50 to 100 years. Shocking statistics like that you can’t avoid and you can’t avoid working on it.” Jeffers continued on the human impacts on climate change and acidification, “oil and gas development. I think that there’s always going to be another deep water horizon around the corner. There’s going be more oil spills and to discover the oil deposits and gas deposits they have to do these seismic surveys which are pretty damaging to marine mammals and they disturb essential fish habitat.” This detrimental hazard that humans are so closely linked to is only growing says Jeffers, especially in the arctic areas and in the deep water in the Gulf, where a multitude of ecosystems and organisms reside. Jeffers also tells Earthscope that oil and gas development is, “pushing our wildlife to the brink, and pushing them out of their natural habitat, and it’s habitat we can’t recover if something terrible happens.”

Aside from coral reefs, Jeffers worries about the future of sea turtles. She says humans are the harming them through plastic pollution. Turtles have been known to eat plastic trash floating in the ocean, get entangled in fishing nets, and are losing their nesting ground. Jeffers says unknown parts of the ocean may soon be destroyed before we even know much about them, “We know more about the surface of the moon than we know about the deep sea. Going forward with deep sea mining before we even know what’s down there seems crazy, and it seems like a shame to loose that ecosystem before we know what it is.”

So what about the future? Will we be able to find a healthy balance between fish farming, deep sea trawling, and other controversial forms of fishing and our appetite for fish?  “I think there are certain lines that need to be drawn to say that’s not okay. We can’t totally destroy ecosystems before we even know what they are. We can’t bottom trawl in the Bearing Sea and destroy cold water corals before they’ve been discovered.” Jeffers continues, “ I certainly think fish are an important source of protein for a lot of people all over the world, but we as a culture need to decide what’s important and I think a lot of people think that the ocean itself has a lot of intrinsic value and biological diversity is an intrinsic value that we all have recognized as a nation and as a society in the world. More broadly when people look at the ocean, not just people who live on the coast, but people who live in the middle of the country hundreds of miles from the coast, there’s something about looking at the ocean and seeing a huge expanse to the horizon and not knowing what’s below it, it really stirs your imagination and it would be such a shame to lose that diversity.” Jeffers highlighted not only the economic value of oceanic diversity, but also the personal connection we have as a culture with the ocean, and how important it is to maintain a sustainable relationship with it.

Natalie Kokka, Earthscope Student Reporter