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An Oceanography Conservation View of Central America: Caribbean Wealth, Pacific Wilderness, Plunder and Mismanagement Meets Seafloor Mining, Deep-Sea Drilling, Climate Change, and Human Population Explosion in the EEZs and Beyond

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Central American Biodiversity

Abstract

Two thirds of the world are covered with salt water (Dietrich et al. 1993; Thurman 1994), and of the remaining one third (i.e., land), wetlands, snow, and ice play a large role (Miller and Spoolman 2011). If water is absent this can create a vast desert, accompanied with areas often devoid of life. And as emphasized by the above authors, atmospheric processes play a large role due to water and vapor. Our globe, therefore, should not be called “Earth” but rather “Water.” (“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.”—Sir Arthur C. Clarke, English writer.) It is not so surprising then that the human body consists of c. 60 % of water too. Water is simply an inherent part of our system, and of the evolution of life. This is seen explicitly in Central America, in the land- and seascapes and its atmosphere. It is all deeply connected through water cycles. Water troubles are human troubles, and beyond.

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Acknowledgments

For any public scholar of the world, the tropics, and the oceans, I would like to emphasize and acknowledge the relevance of public Open Access websites and resources like Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) as an introduction and pointer to more information. Some of these resources have been employed in this chapter. I am grateful to G. Halas for help with this text. Further, I would like to kindly acknowledge the great research readings by Dan Pauly exposing the wrong assumptions and flawed approaches to (tropical) ocean management by many Western institutions and scientists. We can only hope that their institutional terror becomes a thing of the past.

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  1. EWHALE lab—University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), 99775, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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  1. Falk Huettmann
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Correspondence to Falk Huettmann .

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  1. Dept. Biology & Wildlife, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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Huettmann, F. (2015). An Oceanography Conservation View of Central America: Caribbean Wealth, Pacific Wilderness, Plunder and Mismanagement Meets Seafloor Mining, Deep-Sea Drilling, Climate Change, and Human Population Explosion in the EEZs and Beyond. In: Huettmann, F. (eds) Central American Biodiversity. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2208-6_5

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