The ocean is dying

EVER wonder why fish has been skyrocketing in price lately? Fish that the middle class usually ignore now dominate the market, yet their prices are what we use to pay for lapu-lapu (grouper) and other premium fish.

Today, galunggong is no longer a lowly fish and at more than 1200 per kilo (it used to be 180 per kilo some years back), it had become a barometer of how expensive fish has become.

Scad is now in good company of fish that are collectively called trash fish, defined as a usually marine fish having little or no market value as human food but used sometimes in the production of fish meal.

This definition seems applicable to First World countries, which prefer cod, herring, marlin, tuna, and other pelagic fish of high commercial value.

The alarming rise in the price of fish is linked to the alarming rise of ocean temperature, which killed the coral reefs in our oceans. Remove the corrals and you remove the marine creatures’ source of food, habitat, and shelter.

This dire scenario was dramatized by a National Geographic channel documentary, Years of Living Dangerously, shown on local television.

An introduction to the film said: “There is one place on Earth where the impacts of climate change are most profound and yet practically invisible: The oceans. As global emissions soar, the oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic, creating unbearable living conditions for all marine life and threatening precious ecosystems.”

Prominent personalities have visited various locations to discover the real-world effects of the current environmental situation.

Actor Joshua Jackson visited Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (in 2015) to look at the devastating impact of ocean warming on the world’s largest reef system.

He found out that the reef is dying, turning from its once glorious pallet of astonishing colors to a deathly white skeleton caused by “bleaching.”

By the time his documentary appeared this year, an obituary was published on the Internet last October, 2016, mourning the demise of the Great Barrier Reef.

“Twenty-five million years in the making, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness.”