The Dirty Seas

By Anastasia Toufexis

The very survival of the human species depends upon the maintenance of an ocean clean and alive, spreading all around the world. The ocean is our planet's life belt.

-- Marine Explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1980)

After sweltering through a succession of torrid, hazy and humid days, thousands of New Yorkers sought relief early last month by heading for the area's public beaches. What many found, to their horror and dismay, was an assault on the eyes, the nose and the stomach. From northern New Jersey to Long Island, incoming tides washed up a nauseating array of waste, including plastic tampon applicators and balls of sewage 2 in. thick. Even more alarming was the drug paraphernalia and medical debris that began to litter the beaches: crack vials, needles and syringes, prescription bottles, stained bandages and containers of surgical sutures. There were also dozens of vials of blood, three of which tested positive for hepatitis-B virus and at least six positive for antibodies to the AIDS virus.

To bathers driven from the surf by the floating filth, it was as if something precious -- their beach, their ocean -- had been wantonly destroyed, like a mindless graffito defacing a Da Vinci painting. Susan Guglielmo, a New York City housewife who had taken her two toddlers to Robert Moses State Park, was practically in shock: "I was in the water when this stuff was floating around. I'm worried for my children. It's really a disgrace." Said Gabriel Liegey, a veteran lifeguard at the park: "It was scary. In the 19 years I've been a lifeguard, I've never seen stuff like this."

Since the crisis began, more than 50 miles of New York City and Long Island beaches have been declared temporarily off limits to the swimming public because of tidal pollution. Some of the beaches were reopened, but had to be closed again as more sickening debris washed in. And the threat is far from over: last week medical waste was washing up on the beaches of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. "The planet is sending us a message," says Dr. Stephen Joseph, New York City's health commissioner. "We cannot continue to pollute the oceans with impunity."

As federal and state officials tried to locate the source of the beach- defiling materials, an even more mysterious -- and perhaps more insidious -- process was under way miles off the Northeast coast. Since March 1986, about 10 million tons of wet sludge processed by New York and New Jersey municipal sewage-treatment plants has been moved in huge barges out beyond the continental shelf. There, in an area 106 nautical miles from the entrance to New York harbor, the sewage has been released underwater in great, dark clouds.

The dumping, approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, has stirred noisy protests from commercial and sport fishermen from South Carolina to Maine. Dave Krusa, a Montauk, N.Y., fisherman, regularly hauls up hake and tilefish with ugly red lesions on their bellies and fins that are rotting away. Krusa is among those who believe that contaminants from Dump Site 106 may be borne back toward shore by unpredictable ocean currents. "In the past year, we've seen a big increase of fish in this kind of shape," he says. Who will eat them? New Yorkers, says a Montauk dockmaster. "They're going to get their garbage right back in the fish they're eating."

This summer's pollution of Northeastern beaches and coastal waters is only the latest signal that the planet's life belt, as Cousteau calls the ocean, is rapidly unbuckling. True, there are some farsighted projects here and there to repair the damage, and there was ample evidence in Atlanta last week that the Democrats hope to raise the nation's consciousness about environmental problems. The heightened interest comes not a moment too soon, since marine biologists and environmentalists are convinced that oceanic pollution is reaching epidemic proportions.

The blight is global, from the murky red tides that periodically afflict Japan's Inland Sea to the untreated sewage that befouls the fabled Mediterranean. Pollution threatens the rich, teeming life of the ocean and renders the waters off once famed beaches about as safe to bathe in as an unflushed toilet. By far the greatest, or at least the most visible, damage has been done near land, which means that the savaging of the seas vitally affects human and marine life. Polluted waters and littered beaches can take jobs from fisherfolk as well as food from consumers, recreation from vacationers and business from resorts. In dollars, pollution costs billions; the cost in the quality of life is incalculable.

In broadest terms, the problem for the U.S. stems from rampant development along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Gulf of Mexico. Between 1940 and 1980, the number of Americans who live within 50 miles of a seashore increased from 42 million to 89 million -- and the total is still mounting. Coastal waters are getting perilously close to reaching their capacity to absorb civilization's wastes.

Today scientists have begun to shift the focus of research away from localized sources of pollution, like oil spills, which they now believe are manageable, short-term problems. Instead, they are concentrating on the less understood dynamics of chronic land-based pollution: the discharge of sewage and industrial waste and -- possibly an even greater menace -- the runoff from agricultural and urban areas.

Conveyed to the oceans through rivers, drainage ditches and the water table, such pollutants include fertilizers and herbicides washed from farms and lawns, motor oil from highways and parking lots, animal droppings from city streets and other untreated garbage that backs up in sewer systems and spills into the seas. Says Biologist Albert Manville of Defenders of Wildlife, a Washington-based environmental group: "We're running out of time. We cannot continue to use the oceans as a giant garbage dump."

The oceans are broadcasting an increasingly urgent SOS. Since June 1987 at least 750 dolphins have died mysteriously along the Atlantic Coast. In many that washed ashore, the snouts, flippers and tails were pocked with blisters and craters; in others, huge patches of skin had sloughed off. In the Gulf of Maine, harbor seals currently have the highest pesticide level of any U.S. mammals, on land or in water. From Portland to Morehead City, N.C., fishermen have been hauling up lobsters and crabs with gaping holes in their shells and fish with rotted fins and ulcerous lesions. Last year's oyster haul in Chesapeake Bay was the worst ever; the crop was decimated by dermo, a fungal disease, and the baffling syndrome MSX (multinucleate sphere X).

Suffocating and sometimes poisonous blooms of algae -- the so-called red and brown tides -- regularly blot the nation's coastal bays and gulfs, leaving behind a trail of dying fish and contaminated mollusks and crustaceans. Patches of water that have been almost totally depleted of oxygen, known as dead zones, are proliferating. As many as 1 million fluke and flounder were killed earlier this summer when they became trapped in anoxic water in New Jersey's Raritan Bay. Another huge dead zone, 300 miles long and ten miles wide, is adrift in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shellfish beds in Texas have been closed eleven times in the past 18 months because of pollution. Crab fisheries in Lavaca Bay, south of Galveston, were forced to shut down when dredging work stirred up mercury that had settled in the sediment. In neighboring Louisiana 35% of the state's oyster beds are closed because of sewage contamination. Says Oliver Houck, a professor of environmental law at Tulane: "These waters are nothing more than cocktails of highly toxic substances."

The Pacific coastal waters are generally cleaner than most, but they also contain pockets of dead -- and deadly -- water. Seattle's Elliott Bay is contaminated with a mix of copper, lead, arsenic, zinc, cadmium and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals once widely used by the ( electrical-equipment industry. "The bottom of this bay is a chart of industrial history," says Thomas Hubbard, a water-quality planner for Seattle. "If you took a core sample, you could date the Depression, World War II. You could see when PCBs were first used and when they were banned and when lead was eliminated from gasoline." Commencement Bay, Tacoma's main harbor, is the nation's largest underwater area designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund site, meaning that pollution in the bay is so hazardous that the Federal Government will supervise its cleanup.

Washington State fisheries report finding tumors in the livers of English sole, which dwell on sediment. Posted signs warn, BOTTOMFISH, CRAB AND SHELLFISH MAY BE UNSAFE TO EAT DUE TO POLLUTION. Lest anyone fail to get the message, the caution is printed in seven languages: English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Chinese and Korean.

San Francisco Bay is also contaminated with copper, nickel, cadmium, mercury and other heavy metals from industrial discharges. Last year toxic discharges increased 23%. In Los Angeles urban runoff and sewage deposits have had a devastating impact on coastal ecosystems, notably in Santa Monica Bay, which gets occasional floods of partly processed wastes from a nearby sewage- treatment plant during heavy rainstorms. Off San Diego's Point Loma, a popular haunt of skin divers, the waters are so contaminated with sewage that undersea explorers run the risk of bacterial infection.

U.S. shores are also being inundated by waves of plastic debris. On the sands of the Texas Gulf Coast one day last September, volunteers collected 307 tons of litter, two-thirds of which was plastic, including 31,733 bags, 30,295 bottles and 15,631 six-pack yokes. Plastic trash is being found far out to sea. On a four-day trip from Maryland to Florida that ranged 100 miles offshore, John Hardy, an Oregon State University marine biologist, spotted "Styrofoam and other plastic on the surface, most of the whole cruise."

Nonbiodegradable plastic, merely a nuisance to sailors, can kill or maim marine life. As many as 2 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die every year after eating or becoming entangled in the debris. Sea turtles choke on plastic bags they mistake for jellyfish, and sea lions are ensnared when they playfully poke their noses into plastic nets and rings. Unable to open their jaws, some sea lions simply starve to death. Brown pelicans become so enmeshed in fishing line that they can hang themselves. Says Kathy O'Hara of the Center for Environmental Education in Washington: "We have seen them dangling from tree branches in Florida."

Some foreign shores are no better off. Remote beaches on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula are littered with plastics and tires. Fish and birds are being choked out of Guanabara Bay, the entryway to Rio de Janeiro, by sewage and industrial fallout. Japan's Inland Sea is plagued by 200 red tides annually; one last year killed more than 1 million yellowtail with a potential market value of $15 million. In the North Sea chemical pollutants are believed to have been a factor in the deaths of 1,500 harbor seals this year. Last spring the Scandinavian fish industry was hard hit when millions of salmon and sea trout were suffocated by an algae bloom that clung to their gills and formed a slimy film. Farmers towed their floating fishponds from fjord to fjord in a desperate effort to evade the deadly tide.

For five years, at 200 locations around the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been studying mussels, oysters and bottom- dwelling fish, like flounder, that feed on the pollutant-rich sediment. These creatures, like canaries placed in a coal mine to detect toxic gases, serve as reliable indicators of the presence of some 50 contaminants. The news is not good. Coastal areas with dense populations and a long history of industrial discharge show the highest levels of pollution. Among the worst, according to Charles Ehler of NOAA: Boston Harbor, the Hudson River-Raritan estuary on the New Jersey coast, San Diego harbor and Washington's Puget Sound.

Last week the EPA added six major estuaries to the half a dozen already on the list of ecologically sensitive coastal areas targeted for long-term study. Estuaries, where rivers meet the sea, are the spawning grounds and nurseries for at least two-thirds of the nation's commercial fisheries, as well as what the EPA calls sources of "irreplaceable recreation and aesthetic enjoyment."

Although the poisoning of coastal waters strongly affects vacationers, homeowners and resort operators, its first (and often most vocal) victims are fishermen. Commercial fishing in the U.S. is a $3.1 billion industry, and it is increasingly threatened. Fisherman Richard Hambley of Swansboro, N.C., recalls that only a few years ago, tons of sturgeon and mullet were pulled out of the White Oak River. "Now that is nonexistent," he says. "There are no trout schools anymore. Crabs used to be like fleas. I'm lucky to get a few bushels." Ken Seigler, who works Swansboro's Queens Creek, has seen his income from clams and oysters drop 50% in seven years; this year he was forced to apply for food stamps. New Jersey Fisherman Ed Maliszewski has used his small boat for only two weeks this year. He is trying to bail out, and so are others.

In the diet-and-wellness '80s, fish has been widely touted as a healthful food. Not only do smaller catches mean ever higher prices, but also the incidence of illnesses from eating contaminated fish -- including gastroenteritis, hepatitis A and cholera -- is rising around the U.S. Pesticide residues and other chemicals so taint New York marine waters that state officials have warned women of childbearing age and children under 15 against consuming more than half a pound of bluefish a week; they should never eat striped bass caught off Long Island. Says Mike Deland, New England regional administrator for the EPA: "Anyone who eats the liver from a lobster taken from an urban area is living dangerously."

Fish and shellfish that have absorbed toxins can indirectly pass contaminants to humans. Birds migrating between Central America and the Arctic Circle, for example, make a stopover in San Francisco's wetlands, where they feast on clams and mussels that contain high concentrations of cadmium, mercury and lead. Says Biologist Gregory Karras of Citizens for a Better Environment: "The birds become so polluted, there is a risk from eating ducks shot in the South Bay."

Despite the overwhelming evidence of coastal pollution, cleaning up the damage, except in a few scattered communities, has a fairly low political priority. One reason: most people assume that the vast oceans, which cover more than 70% of the world's surface, have an inexhaustible capacity to neutralize contaminants, by either absorbing them or letting them settle harmlessly to the sediment miles below the surface. "People think 'Out of sight, out of mind,' " says Richard Curry, an oceanographer at Florida's Biscayne National Park. The popular assumption that oceans will in effect heal themselves may carry some truth, but scientists warn that this is simply not known. Says Marine Scientist Herbert Windom of Georgia's Skidaway Institute of Oceanography: "We see things that we don't really understand. And we don't really have the ability yet to identify natural and unnatural phenomena." Notes Sharron Stewart of the Texas Environmental Coalition: "We know more about space than the deep ocean."

Marine scientists are only now beginning to understand the process by which coastal waters are affected by pollution. The problem, they say, may begin hundreds of miles from the ocean, where nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as contaminants, enter rivers from a variety of sources. Eventually, these pollutants find their way into tidal waters. For the oceans, the first critical line of defense is that point in estuaries, wetlands and marshes where freshwater meets salt water. Marine biologists call this the zone of maximum turbidity -- literally, where the water becomes cloudy from mixing.

There, nutrients and contaminants that have dissolved in freshwater encounter the ionized salts of seawater. The resulting chemical reactions create particles that incorporate the pollutants, which then settle to the bottom. As natural sinks for contaminants, these turbidity zones protect the heart of the estuary and the ocean waters beyond.

But the fragile estuarine systems can be overtaxed in any number of ways. Dredging can stir up the bottom, throwing pollutants back into circulation. The U.S. Navy plans to build a port in Puget Sound for the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz and twelve other ships; the project will require displacement of more than 1 million cu. yds. of sediment, with unknown ecological consequences. Similarly, natural events such as hurricanes can bestir pollutants from the sediment. The estuarine environment also changes when the balance of freshwater and salt water is disturbed. Upstream dams, for example, diminish the flow of freshwater into estuaries; so do droughts. On the other hand, rainstorms can cause an excess of freshwater runoff from the land.

Whatever the precise cause, trouble begins when the level of pollutants in the water overwhelms the capacity of estuaries to assimilate them. The overtaxed system, unable to absorb any more nutrients or contaminants, simply passes them along toward bays and open coastal areas. "When the system is working," says Maurice Lynch, a biological oceanographer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, "it can take a lot of assault. But when it gets out of whack, it declines rapidly."

It is then that the natural growth of sea grass may be ended, as has happened in Chesapeake Bay, or sudden blooms of algae can occur, particularly in stagnant waters. The exact reasons for these spurts of algal growth are unknown. They can be triggered, for example, by extended periods of sunny weather following heavy rains. Scientists believe algal growth is speeded up by the runoff of agricultural fertilizers. The burgeoning algae form a dense layer of vegetation that displaces other plants. As the algae die and decay, they sap enormous amounts of oxygen from the water, asphyxiating fish and other organisms.

Some kinds of algae contain toxic chemicals that are deadly to marine life. When carcasses of more than a dozen whales washed up on Cape Cod last fall, their deaths were attributed to paralytic shellfish poisoning that probably passed up the food chain through tainted mackerel consumed by the whales. Carpets of algae can turn square miles of water red, brown or yellow. Some scientists speculate that the account in Exodus 7: 20 of the Nile's indefinitely turning red may refer to a red tide.

When such blights occur in coastal areas, the result can be devastating. Last November a red tide off the coast of the Carolinas killed several thousand mullet and all but wiped out the scallop population. Reason: the responsible species, Ptychodiscus brevis, contains a poison that causes fish to bleed to death. Brown tides, unknown to Long Island waters before 1985, have occurred every summer since; they pose a constant threat to valuable shellfish beds.

A study of satellite photographs has led scientists to believe that algae can be conveyed around the world on ocean currents. The Carolinas algae, which had previously been confined to the Gulf of Mexico, apparently drifted to Atlantic shores by way of the Gulf Stream. One species that is native to Southern California is thought to have been carried to Spain in the ballast water of freighters.

The effects of man-made pollution on coastal zones can often be easily seen; far less clear is the ultimate impact on open seas. The ocean has essentially two ways of coping with pollutants: it can dilute them or metabolize them. Pollutants can be dispersed over hundreds of square miles of ocean by tides, currents, wave action, huge underwater columns of swirling water called rings, or deep ocean storms caused by earthquakes and volcanoes.

Buried toxins can also be moved around by shrimp and other creatures that dig into the bottom and spread the substances through digestion and excretion. Though ocean sediment generally accumulates at a rate of about one-half inch - per thousand years, Biogeochemist John Farrington of the University of Massachusetts at Boston cites discoveries of plutonium from thermonuclear test blasts in the 1950s and 1960s located 12 in. to 20 in. deep in ocean sediment. Thus contaminants can conceivably lie undisturbed in the oceans indefinitely -- or resurface at any time.

There is little question that the oceans have an enormous ability to absorb pollutants and even regenerate once damaged waters. For example, some experts feared that the vast 1979 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would wipe out the area's shrimp industry. That disaster did not occur, apparently because the ocean has a greater capacity to break down hydrocarbons than scientists thought. But there may be a limit to how much damage a sector of ocean can take. Under assault by heavy concentrations of sludge, for example, the self- cleansing system can be overwhelmed. Just like decaying algae, decomposing sludge robs the water of oxygen, suffocating many forms of marine life. What effect chronic contamination from sludge and other wastes will have on the oceans' restorative powers is still unknown.

Rebuckling the planet's life belt may prove formidable. The federal Clean Water Act of 1972 overlooked runoff pollution in setting standards for water quality. Meanwhile, the nation's coasts are subject to the jurisdiction of a bewildering (and often conflicting) array of governmental bodies. One prime example of this confusion, reports TIME Houston Bureau Chief Richard Woodbury, is found in North Carolina's Albemarle-Pamlico region. There both the federal Food and Drug Administration and a state agency regulate the harvesting of shellfish. A third agency, the state's health department, surveys and samples the water and shellfish. And another state body sets the guidelines for opening or closing shellfish beds. Complains Douglas Rader of the Environmental Defense Fund: "The crazy mix of agencies hurts the prospects for good management."

Lax enforcement of existing clean-water policies is another obstacle. According to Clean Ocean Action, a New Jersey-based watchdog group, 90% of the 1,500 pipelines in the state that are allowed to discharge effluent into the sea do so in violation of regulatory codes. Municipalities flout the rules as well. Even if Massachusetts keeps to a very tight schedule on its plans to upgrade sewage treatment, Boston will not be brought into compliance with the Clean Water Act until 1999 -- 22 years after the law's deadline. Meanwhile, the half a billion gallons of sewage that pour into Boston Harbor every day receive treatment that is rudimentary at best.

Some communities are leading the way in trying to preserve their shores and coastal waters. In March the legislature of Suffolk County on Long Island passed a law forbidding retail food establishments to use plastic grocery bags, food containers and wrappers beginning next year. Sixteen states have laws requiring that the plastic yokes used to hold six-packs of soda or beer together be photo- or biodegradable. Last December the U.S. became the 29th nation to ratify an amendment to the Marpol (for marine pollution) treaty, which prohibits ships and boats from disposing of plastics -- from fishing nets to garbage bags -- anywhere in the oceans. The pact goes into effect at the end of this year.

Compliance will not be easy. Merchant fleets dump at least 450,000 plastic containers overboard every day. The U.S. Navy, which accounts for four tons of plastic daily, has canceled a contract for 11 million plastic shopping bags, and is testing a shipboard trash compactor. It is also developing a waste processor that can melt plastics and turn them into bricks. The Navy's projected cost of meeting the treaty provision: at least $1 million a ship. Supporters of the Marpol treaty readily acknowledge that it will not totally eliminate plastic pollution. "If a guy goes out on deck late at night and throws a bag of trash overboard," says James Coe of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle, "there's no way that anyone will catch him."

Stiff fines and even prison sentences may get the attention of landbound polluters. Under Administrator Mike Deland, the EPA's New England office has acquired a reputation for tough pursuit of violators. In November 1986 the agency filed criminal charges against a Providence boatbuilder for dumping PCBs into Narragansett Bay. The company was fined $600,000 and its owner $75,000; he was put on probation for five years.

Washington is one of the few states with a comprehensive cleanup program. Three years ago, the Puget Sound water-quality authority developed a master plan for cleaning up the heavily polluted, 3,200-sq.-mi. body of water. The state legislature has levied an 8 cents-a-pack surtax on cigarettes to help pay the bill; this year the tax will contribute an estimated $25 million to the cleanup. The Puget Sound authority and other state agencies closely monitor discharge of industrial waste and are working with companies on ways to reduce effluent.

An aggressive effort is being made to limit runoff as well. Two counties have passed ordinances that regulate the clearing of land and the installation and inspection of septic tanks. Farmers are now required to fence cattle away from streams. Zoning has become more stringent for construction in a critical watershed area: a single-family house requires at least two acres of land. The number of livestock and poultry per acre is also controlled.

The Puget Sound group has an educational program that teaches area residents everything from the history of the sound to what not to put down the kitchen sink. Controlling pollution is promoted as everyone's task. High school students take water samples, and island dwellers have been trained in what to do if they spot an oil spill. Says Seattle Water-Quality Planner Hubbard: "Bridgetenders are great at calling in with violations. They are up high, and when they see a black scum or a little slick, they let us know about it."

Officials hope the cleanup program will have the same result as a decades- long effort mounted by the Federal Government and four states in the Delaware River estuary, an area ringed by heavy industry and home to almost 6 million people. The Delaware's pollution problems began in Benjamin Franklin's day. By World War II, the river had become so foul that airplane pilots could smell it at 5,000 ft. President Franklin Roosevelt even considered it a threat to national security. In 1941 he ordered an investigation to determine whether gases from the water were causing corrosion at a secret radar installation on the estuary.

Although the Delaware will never regain its precolonial purity, the estuary has been vastly improved. Shad, which disappeared 60 years ago, are back, along with 33 other species of fish that had virtually vanished. Estuary Expert Richard Albert calls the Delaware "one of the premier pollution- control success stories in the U.S."

Such triumphs are still rare, and there is all too little in the way of concerted multinational activity to heal the oceans. That means pollution is bound to get worse. Warns Clifton Curtis, president of the Oceanic Society, a Washington-based environmental organization: "We can expect to see an increase in the chronic contamination of coastal waters, an increase in health advisories and an increase in the closing of shellfish beds and fisheries." ) Those are grim tidings indeed, for both the world's oceans and the people who live by them.

With reporting by Andrea Dorfman/New York, Eugene Linden/Boston and Edwin M. Reingold/Seattle