The ocean plays such an immense role in our lives as humans on earth even though in places like Colorado, humans don’t ever come into contact with it. Despite a large portion of the human population not directly coming into contact with the ocean, it still holds a significant function for society at large and is still impacted by the masses of the human population. As our population and consumption patterns continue to grow, humans need to keep in mind the importance behind sustaining our oceans in the wide variety of ways that the ocean serves as a resource for us.
Over time, the ocean has been a significant factor and resource across a large range of human activities including, bio-resource utilization, transportation/ trade, mineral resources, scientific research, recreation/ tourism and military operations. Humans use the bio-resources that are featured in the ocean through the exploitation of fish and other seafood, seaweed and other things used for human consumption. Just to get an idea of just how much food that humans really get from the ocean, global fish production exceeds that of cattle, sheep, poultry, or eggs and is the biggest source of wild or domestic protein in the world.
The ocean is also incredibly prevalent when taking into account the amount of trading/transferring of goods that occurs through the oceans. In the United States alone over 90% of foreign trade passes through ports and are transported via ships. We can also observe the significance of trade via the ocean because of the large amount of gross domestic products being produced in coastal areas in many countries, harbors are the reasoning for this.
Humans also use the ocean for the extraction of mineral resources from sea-bed’s, mainly oil and natural gases. About 17 percent of the worlds oil and natural gas supply comes from the ocean along with minerals such as phosphorite which is collected for human use for the purpose of things like agricultural fertilizer. The seafloor can also offer materials such as manganese, iron, copper, nickel and cobalt for human collection and use.
The ocean is also a very large source for human scientific research, through the understanding of organisms within the ocean and the impacts that human activity have on their environment we are better able to understand the ocean and how it works as well as the value in preserving/conserving the ocean for both the interest of humans and the organisms within it. Many medicinal products also come from the ocean including ingredients that help fight cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, and heart disease (NOAA). The ocean also offers answers to geologic questions of the evolution of earth and how the earth works through the ocean basin, while serving a large purpose in our atmosphere to serve help scientists understand our climate in all its forms and the way it changes.
The ocean is a very large attraction for humans in the realm of recreation and tourism, considering when people travel for vacation it is often to somewhere coastal or an island that has access to the ocean, this is responsible for over 5% of the worlds total GNP. More than half of the worlds population live within 60 miles of the coastline and most economic activities on islands depend on the coastline through the use of things such as hotels, restaurants, shopping sales and tours. This puts strain on this coastal area because this coastline must be able to provide everything needed for this condensed population.
The last major service that the ocean serves is for things like military involvement that utilize the ocean in a slightly different way. Although it is not as sought after as land, the waters have large amounts of military use and the allure to be conquered or claimed such as land. Naval bases and military harbors that have things like air craft carriers, airplane hangers and other resources that all use the ocean to carry out their missions and add to their military power. A reason that this area of ocean use is so important is because governments often have fewer restrictions, if not none, on the extent that they are allowed to exploit the environment and this becomes increasingly prevalent when thinking of the oceans and the detrimental impacts that outside human toxins can have on that environment.
Throughout the course this semester we have used numerous separate sociological perspectives to view nature and the way that society interacts with it but perhaps the largest and one of the easiest to understand for the majority of people when viewing this issue is the market perspective. The ocean has enormous economic value to society as it is today and with new technology growing at such a rapid rate there is a lot of new potential for ocean use in the future. Today we see the ocean used for things such as fisheries, seafood processing, shipping, offshore oil/gas, coastal/ocean tourism as well as marine and naval services. Today we are already seeing advancements to make our use of the ocean as a resource more efficient and conscientious through emerging industries such as offshore wind energy, renewable ocean energy, and marine biotechnology.
However, with new technology and all the different resources that the ocean provides, things are now becoming more complicated. For example, there may be potential for deep sea mining to be started in some areas but this could impeded on the trade route of a ship when there is supposed to be free and open seas. We observe that as more boundaries and rules are put in place, open vs closed seas and international vs national waters are created which leads the market perspective into the realm of the political economy perspective because of the importance of these resources that governments see value in so they try and preserve it/claim it for themselves. The oceans are worth at least $24 trillion in total and goods/services from coastal and marine environments amount to about $2.5 trillion each year which would put the ocean as the seventh largest economy if put into terms of Gross Domestic Product (Vosburgh).
The ocean takes up such a large portion of our planet 71% to be exact, and is such a crucial factor in our way of life, that society’s perception of the ocean is very important to the way that we interact with it. The social construction of the ocean as it is today is very interesting because it has evolved over time, and impacts us whether we are aware of it or not. The ocean is portrayed as a mysterious, wild, unconquerable force that is separate from us as a society (Steinburg) and this particular construction comes with a series of different reactions as a result. Humans viewing the ocean as separate from them and their lives can be problematic because it minimizes our involvement in learning about it and potentially preserving it. We can see this in our everyday lives through specific fields that are dedicated only to dealing with the ocean in academia with specific schooling and majors and the military with the navy which is a specialized branch that strictly deals with aquatic matters.
It has been suggested that this could possibly be the goal of capitalist enterprise in order to achieve, a free, unregulated ocean space for the unimpeded flow of capital (Steinburg). These conflicting ideas of what the ocean should be used for and who gets to use it, demonstrates the different socially constructed ideas of how the ocean should be used. This also raises the question of who gets to decide on resolutions to these conflicts because the traditional perception of the ocean has been that it is open access for all, but we see as a result of more people starting to view the ocean as an endless resource, that it is also becoming increasingly regulated. These perceptions and boundaries between society and the ocean impact the way different societies operate drastically and create opportunity for misuse because it places the issue as separate from ourselves or as someone else’s problem when in reality we should be working collectively to use the ocean properly, carefully, and equally.
This perception that the ocean is part of the unknown or is mysterious and the lack of education/awareness of the ocean can lead us back into the market perspective, however, we must also keep in mind the role that institutions can play in this and other the other relevant sociological perspectives that come into play as a result of social construction and markets, such as the political economy approach. The combination of the social construction of the ocean and the current economic value that it provides to our society provides us even more insights to other perspectives through them, demonstrating why these two are the largest factors in human interaction with the ocean.
Despite this, there are still flaws and things to keep in mind when considering these two perspectives and how they are connected to both society and the ocean at large. As far as the market perspective goes, while we now are able to put numerical values on a natural resources such as the ocean, we must also reference all of the things that the ocean provides for us that come at no cost for humans, have no monetary value, but still provide a great service. The ocean produces about half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs 30% of carbon dioxide emissions which helps regulate our air temperatures, regulates our water climate through ocean currents traveling from the poles to the equator, as well as helps us in regulating heavy rains and droughts as a result of the ocean holding 97% of the earths water, meaning that most of the rain we receive comes from the ocean and can also flow back to the ocean if need be (WWF).
Complications with the social construction perspective include that the ocean used to be perceived as free and open access, but that now is now quickly changing at the expense of capitalist institutions and in some cases the government through trade and military/naval expeditions. Many different groups are now using the ocean as a resource through a wide variety of interests but these interests rarely coincide with each other. Now it has become the issue of deciding as a society how to regulate these matters, what is the proper amount of regulation and who is truly in charge of the ocean. The most important matter of all of this is that despite so many different groups trying to claim parts of the ocean to use as their own resource or advantage, none would like to claim responsibility for the current detrimental state that it is in.
The first way that we can start creating change surrounding this issue is to widen the knowledge of these issues so that the public can be more informed on the importance of using the oceans resources sparingly and carefully. This will help to get rid of some of the socially constructed ideas surrounding the ocean and bring to light just how important the ocean is to us as a society, and what we are doing to it as a result. The market perspective calls for solutions consisting of using economic analysis to administer penalties to groups that do not adhere to the regulations and incentives to those that do. This could perhaps also fall from the market perspective into more of the political economy perspective if governments were to take a greater role in regulating these markets and hold themselves and others more accountable for the way they treat one of our most precious resources.
A swiftly growing ocean economy relies heavily on a healthy marine ecosystem, which is already under stress on several distinct fronts.(Jolly), and this type of system could hopefully lead to more environmentally conscientious decision making from those groups which would really benefit everyone because it would be safer and cleaner for us and more sustainable for future generations to come. The last step to improving this environmental issue is to utilize the large advancements in technology that we have at our disposal to innovate new ways of doing things, discover new resources/how to utilize resources and help progress our current systems to become more sustainable. Governments could possibly take a larger role here as well by sponsoring more research and using more of inventive and balanced tactics to improve the overall management of the ocean. The only way that it seems society will be able to start moving in a more positive direction in regards to interacting with the ocean in a responsible way, is to combat the social construction that is surrounding it and to start putting more regulations in place to alleviate the environmental stress that the constantly growing population and culture of consumerism is causing.