When I read these types of articles, I always end up doing a bit of mental translation in my head to make sense of it.
The ocean is obviously not "broken". It is a large body of salt water covering the majority of the planet's surface. It still exists as a liquid, therefore it's still an "ocean"
A more useful translation of the title is "The ocean had a lot of artistic meaning to me in the past. A recent trip demonstrated to me that this artistic value is now gone"
Very difficult to get clicks for, sure, but at least with the modified title I can pick it up and know what to do with it.
It's a shame the author had this experience. I too like the birds and water without debris. I wonder, though: is the state of the entire ocean the same as this author indicates? Or might he be using a bit of artistic license and hyperbole to emphasize his loss?
I feel that he's probably stretching things quite a bit for effect, but that's fine. After all, the point is his emoting to us and us understanding his feelings. I was able to feel what he was feeling. Very well done.
The problem here, however, is trying to have some sort of public policy discussion based on what amounts to a poetic interpretation of reality. Just what is the ocean supposed to do? Look pretty? Purify our air? What job do we assign the ocean that it can then fail or succeed at? Do we owe some consideration to a large body of water that we don't to, say, a rock? Or is the ocean's "job" just to keep us alive?
These are subjective questions. Different people can have widely different answers to them. We make a mistake when we jump from a nicely written article about one man's personal loss at his view of the changing state of a large body of salt water and deciding what's right or wrong for everybody else in the world.
So I liked it, but with caution. Many readers will be unable to both appreciate the author's loss and keep in mind the context of these types of works. It all just bleeds together to them.
It has nothing to do with "artistic meaning". The ocean's are acidifying and being over fished at the same time. The entire ocean ecosystem is collapsing. Soon there will be no fish, the ocean will be fully of jelly fish. Ecosystem's dependant on the "old way" will be next up to start collapsing.
Oh right, and we need the ocean as a carbon sync and it generates most of the oxygen on the planet.
But yeah, it's all about the art. Nothing to do with the ocean being an incredibly complicated delicate life support system for the planet that we are breaking...
Nice story, but the "ocean is broken" is still linkbait. Its not in any way true as a statement or even as a concept. The article is a story about "how my pre-conceived notions" are broken, signed--The author. That hurts the credibility of the author, and diminished any (actual) point he was trying to make.
I suspect I'm being trolled but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you just skimmed the article: Here's the high points:
[On the same trip 10 years earlier] "There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.
But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.
No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.
They observed a trawler going back and forth day and night across a reef and later the same trawler offered them buckets of fish...
"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."
I read the article and realized that it had a completely different meaning to me than the average HN reader. I felt it might be interesting to share. If nothing else, the responses should be instructive.
If your value for the ocean is "it must support the life of humanity" then that's fine. Just come out and say it. Of course the next step in the conversation is what, exactly, is required for the ocean to do to support life. That's where it starts getting more tricky.
I think the problem here is that writers such as this are asking folks to have a religious experience -- to feel a sort of transcendence or guilt that doesn't have to be explicitly defined or looked at too closely. Therefore anybody can read the article, feel guilt and anguish, and join in the emotional fun. Hey, who wants to nuke the ocean, kill the fish, and fill it full of garbage? Nobody, that's who. That's the troll, not my analysis of the piece.
It's like humor. Once you start to really look at it, it goes away. A good sign you're having your chain yanked.
I shared my opinion because articles like this only serve to gin up mobs. Take a look at some of the comments. You'll have free marketers talking about the people that were fed, green earth types venting over the damage to mother earth, and so on. Not much in the way of actual analysis aside from just reassuring each other of our mutual shared subjective values, no matter which ones they are. Just noise.
I would have flagged it, but, as I said, it has artistic value. I could really feel I was there on the guy's voyage. However your point is valid. My honest reaction seems to have generated plenty of disgust. So I invite fellow HNers to just take a look around. I've shared my reaction to the piece. It's emotionally manipulative, but that's okay -- as long as you understand what it's doing. But for you personally, is this a useful article for the site or not?
There are tons of scientific reports about Oceans' fish stocks falling dramatically. This article is a very strong way to reinforce the point, to make you see it. Because those scientific reports, as troubling as they are, hardly make news any more.
The lack of birds and fish is striking. However, the trawler is still catching fish. The tsunami may have some natural effect too.
Also striking is the lack of photos - I suspect it wasn't literally "like sailing through a garbage tip" (as opposed to occasional debris, much more than usual).
The decline can be very rapid and dramatic, fishermen have to work harder and harder to maintain their catch levels (my hometown was one of the ones that suffered with the collapse of the northern cod fishery):
In the 1990s the Northern Cod populations collapsed to less than 1% and after a 20+ year moratorium on fishing has only increased to 10% of its historical stock.
The ocean is obviously not "broken". It is a large body of salt water covering the majority of the planet's surface. It still exists as a liquid, therefore it's still an "ocean"
A more useful translation of the title is "The ocean had a lot of artistic meaning to me in the past. A recent trip demonstrated to me that this artistic value is now gone"
Very difficult to get clicks for, sure, but at least with the modified title I can pick it up and know what to do with it.
It's a shame the author had this experience. I too like the birds and water without debris. I wonder, though: is the state of the entire ocean the same as this author indicates? Or might he be using a bit of artistic license and hyperbole to emphasize his loss?
I feel that he's probably stretching things quite a bit for effect, but that's fine. After all, the point is his emoting to us and us understanding his feelings. I was able to feel what he was feeling. Very well done.
The problem here, however, is trying to have some sort of public policy discussion based on what amounts to a poetic interpretation of reality. Just what is the ocean supposed to do? Look pretty? Purify our air? What job do we assign the ocean that it can then fail or succeed at? Do we owe some consideration to a large body of water that we don't to, say, a rock? Or is the ocean's "job" just to keep us alive?
These are subjective questions. Different people can have widely different answers to them. We make a mistake when we jump from a nicely written article about one man's personal loss at his view of the changing state of a large body of salt water and deciding what's right or wrong for everybody else in the world.
So I liked it, but with caution. Many readers will be unable to both appreciate the author's loss and keep in mind the context of these types of works. It all just bleeds together to them.