The Jim Moran SeaKeepers Engineering Laboratory in Fort Lauderdale, where the SeaKeeper 1000 oceanographic monitory systems are assembled. Banner image above: When motoryacht Katharine travels the world, she collects important data for scientists on the health of the world’s oceans

Keepers Of The Sea
In the ten years since its launch, the International SeaKeepers Society has reached several impressive milestones. The society, which develops and promotes the use of its high-tech, low-cost ocean data and weather monitoring systems, has become one of the most important marine data networks in the world, thanks to the vision and concern of more than 100 families who founded and funded the organization.

Though SeaKeepers is international in scope, it has significant ties to Southern California, not the least of which is its important new Coastal Monitoring Project with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. The objective of the Coast Monitoring Project is to re-engineer SeaKeepers’ award-winning blue-water oceanographic monitoring equipment, the SeaKeeper 1000 system, to provide critically needed data and early warnings of changes and threats to coastal waters. Many SeaKeepers donors, who contribute a minimum of $50,000 to support the organization as Admiral’s Club members, come from Southern California. Indeed, the organization’s founding chairman, Albert Gersten, hails from Los Angeles.

The sheer enormity of the seas, which cover 72 percent of the planet’s surface, underscores both the importance of increasing marine monitoring efforts. The combined effects of pollution, global warming, and devastating and unregulated fishing practices have created a crisis that by mid-century could have catastrophic consequences on humankind. By 2047, all major wild food fish are expected to have been depleted to the point of complete collapse. It’ll come as no surprise to Californians that marine weather-related catastrophes (El Niño and La Niña floods and droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, etcetera) have been doubling in number every 4.45 years since the late 1960s. By mid-century, the increasing cost of these marine disasters will, according to some leading economists, exceed society’s financial capacity to repair the damage they cause.

Perhaps the most frightening news, however, is that as the seas absorb vast quantities of greenhouse gases, they are rapidly becoming more acidic. By the end of this century, they are predicted to be more acidic than they have been in the last 10 million years. The consequences could be terrible. At the predicted levels of acidity, coral will die, shrimp, lobsters, and shellfish will no longer be able to grow new shells, and zooplankton — the very base of the marine food chain — will no longer be able to reproduce. How fast are these changes occurring? What will be their effects, and where will they be felt most? These are some of the questions scientists hope to be able to answer using data collected by the SeaKeepers monitoring network.

Along the coast, the importance of a healthy ocean is equally critical. More than 75 percent of all Americans are expected to live within a half-hour drive of the sea by mid-century. More than 20,000 beaches are closed each year in the U.S. alone. For hundreds of millions of people around the world, in-shore fishing is their primary source of livelihood and protein. Near-shore pollution, runoff, bacterial contamination, and beach erosion threaten the health, safety, and home values of everyone who lives by the ocean. A robust, automatic, and inexpensive way to monitor and study these critical issues, starting with a six-pier network in Southern California, will bring extraordinary benefits to everyone connected to the sea, from surfers in Laguna Beach to third-world villagers on the impoverished west coast of Africa.

It may not sound large, but the existing SeaKeepers network — with 55 atmospheric and oceanographic monitoring systems on large yachts, cruise ships, ferries, and commercial vessels — is already one of the largest in the world. It produces almost six percent of the world’s marine weather data and its ships collect more than 250,000 pieces of scientific information over more than 5,000 miles of ocean each day. By 2010, SeaKeepers hopes to have 200 combined ocean and weather monitors deployed around the world. Jim Gilbert, SeaKeepers’ board president and former owner and editor-in-chief of ShowBoats International magazine, says he is particularly proud that yacht owners started such a significant organization, which is now reaching out its membership to a much broader community. "It was natural for SeaKeepers to be started by yachtsmen such as Paul Allen, who witnessed firsthand the diminishment of the ocean while aboard their boats," he says. "Their leadership has attracted other successful, visionary members who are motivated by making a substantive contribution to addressing the coming crisis of the seas." Gilbert adds, "Our members in many ways are unlikely conservationists. They reflect the entire political spectrum with business interests as diverse as society itself. What they share in common is the idea that whatever is happening now, and whatever the future holds, our problems are only going to be solved by providing the world with the best possible information." To view a video titled Be A SeaKeeper please visit www.seakeepers.org/moviepage2.php. (954/766-7100, www.seakeepers.org) — Alastair Buchanan