Science
Humans Are Altering the Seas. Here’s What the Future Ocean Might Look Like.
Working from a dock on St. Helena Island, S.C., on a sweltering day this summer, Ed Atkins pulled in a five-foot cast net from the water and dumped out a few glossy white shrimp from the salt marsh.
Mr. Atkins, a Gullah Geechee fisherman, sells live bait to anglers in a shop his parents opened in 1957. “When they passed, they made sure I tapped into it and keep it going,” he said. “I’ve been doing it myself now for 40 years.”
These marshes, which underpin Mr. Atkins’s way of life, are where the line between land and sea blurs. They provide a crucial nursery habitat for many marine species, including commercial and recreational fisheries.
But these vast, seemingly timeless seascapes have become some of the world’s most vulnerable marine habitats, according to a new study published on Thursday in the journal Science that adds up and maps the ways human activity is profoundly reshaping oceans and coastlines around the world.
Soon, many of Earth’s marine ecosystems could be fundamentally and forever altered if pressures like climate change, overfishing, ocean acidification and coastal development continue unabated, according to the authors.
It’s “death by a thousand cuts,” said Ben Halpern, a marine biologist and ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the authors of the new study. “It’s going to be a less rich community of species. And it may not be something we recognize.”
Among the other ecosystems at high risk are sea grass meadows, rocky intertidal zones and mangrove forests. These parts of the ocean, near shore, are the ones people most depend on. They provide natural defenses against storm damage. And the vast majority of commercial and recreational fishing, which together support more than two million jobs in the United States alone, takes place in shallower coastal waters.
There’s also an intangible cultural richness at stake. The culture of Gullah Geechee people like Mr. Atkins, a community descended from enslaved West Africans forced to work the rice and cotton plantations of the Southeastern coast, for example, is inextricably linked to fishing and the seashore.
“We have our own language, we have our own food ways, we have our own ecological system here,” said Marquetta Goodwine, the elected head of the Gullah Geechee people and a leader in efforts to protect and restore the coastline. That distinctive culture, she said, depends on things like the oyster beds, the native grasses and the maritime forests that characterize the seashore and the scores of tidal and barrier islands here, collectively known as the Sea Islands.
“You don’t have that, you don’t have a Sea Island,” said Ms. Goodwine, who also goes by Queen Quet. “You don’t have a Sea Island, you don’t have Gullah Geechee culture.”
A Poorer Ocean
The new study tries to measure just how much various human-caused pressures are squeezing, shifting and transforming coastal and marine habitats.
The research began in the early 2000s, when widespread coral bleaching was raising alarm among marine scientists. In response, Dr. Halpern and his colleagues set out to map the parts of the ocean that were healthiest and least affected by humans and, conversely, which parts were the most affected.
The inherent challenge was comparing marine habitats, from coral reefs to the deep ocean floor, and their responses to different human activities and pressures, like fishing and rising temperatures, all on a common scale. They came up with what researchers call an impact score that’s based on a formula incorporating the location of each habitat, the intensities of the various pressures on that habitat, and the vulnerabilities of each habitat to each form of pressure.
Under the world’s current trajectory, the study found, by the middle of the century about 3 percent of the total global ocean is at risk of changing beyond recognition. In the nearshore ocean, which most people are more familiar with, the number rises to more than 12 percent.
That future will look different in different regions. Tropical and polar seas are expected to face more pronounced effects than temperate, mid-latitude ones. Human pressures are expected to increase faster in offshore zones, but coastal waters will continue to experience the most serious effects, the researchers forecast.
There are also countries that are considered more vulnerable because they depend more heavily on resources from the ocean: Togo, Ghana and Sri Lanka top the list in the study.
Across the whole ocean, scientists generally agree that many places will look ecologically poorer, with less biodiversity, Dr. Halpern said. That’s mainly because the number of species that are resilient against climate change and other human pressures is simply far fewer than the number of more vulnerable species.
The study found that the biggest pressures, both now and in the future, are ocean warming and overfishing. But the researchers most likely underestimated the effects of fishing, they wrote, because their model assumes that fishing activity will hold steady rather than increase. They also focused only on the species actually targeted by fishing fleets and did not include by-catch, the unwanted species swept up in gear like gill nets and discarded, or habitat destruction from bottom trawling.
The effects of some other human activities aren’t well represented either, including seabed drilling and mining, which are expanding quickly offshore.
Another limitation of the Science study is the fact that the researchers simply added together the pressures from human activities in a linear way to arrive at their estimate of cumulative effects. In reality, those effects might add up to more than the sum of their parts.
Even low-ranking global stressors can cause enormous damage to local ecosystems
How individual stressors contribute to cumulative impacts
“Some of these activities, they might be synergistic, they might be doubling,” said Mike Elliott, a marine biologist and emeritus professor at the University of Hull in England who was not involved in the study. “And some might be antagonistic, might be canceling.”
Even so, Dr. Elliott said he agreed with the broad conclusions of the new study. Scientists could argue about whether the cumulative effects of human activities will double or triple, he said, “but it will be more, because we’re doing more in the sea.”
“If we wait until we’ve got perfect data,” he added, “we’ll never do anything.”
‘Time to Scale It Up’
One of the benefits of such studies is that they can help inform better ocean planning and management, including initiatives like 30×30, the global effort to place 30 percent of the world’s land and seas under protection by 2030.
In South Carolina, one place that has already been set aside is the ACE Basin, a largely undeveloped 350,000-acre wetland on the state’s southern coast that is named for the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers, which thread through it.
Riding a boat across the enormous basin can be disorienting. The world flattens as the sun beats down and salt marsh stretches in every direction. Almost everything is a vivid blue or green, like an abstract painting or a map come to life.
White wading birds dot the green marsh grasses, and occasional groups of gray bottlenose dolphins break the blue surface of the water.
Sometimes the dolphins corral their fish prey onto the mud and temporarily beach themselves for a meal, using the salt marsh islands like giant dinner plates. This behavior, called strand feeding, is rarely seen outside the Southeast.
On a recent visit, in one tucked-away corner of the marsh, something emerged from the mud at low tide: a wall, built with concrete blocks now nearly hidden by thousands of shells. They’re called oyster castles, and they look like something out of a storybook about mermaids.
The blocks were placed by volunteers from the Boeing assembly plant in nearby North Charleston. The effort was organized by the Nature Conservancy and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources as part of a growing string of living shorelines projects, which aim to stabilize the coast using natural materials like shellfish and native vegetation, in South Carolina and beyond.
The oyster castles are meant to protect the landscapes behind them from erosion, sea level rise and storm surges. Scientists from the Nature Conservancy have been experimenting with a variety of methods for years, and are beginning to see results. Behind the oyster castles, which allow water to pass through and deposit sediment, mud had piled up significantly higher than elsewhere. And in the mud, marsh grass has taken root and grown tall.
“We’ve been testing and piloting things for so long, and now is the time to scale it up,” said Elizabeth Fly, director of resilience and ocean conservation at the Nature Conservancy’s South Carolina chapter.
In fact, the state’s oyster shell recycling program has now built small living shorelines at more than 200 sites, all with the help of volunteers, and often working with other groups, like the Gullah Geechee Nation. There’s a living shoreline taking shape at the Charleston wastewater treatment plant. Another at the entrance to the exclusive Kiawah Island Golf Resort. They’re at Marine Corps bases, at boat launches and at docks.
Many of these efforts are part of a sprawling network called the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative, which includes the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Department of Defense, other federal agencies and state governments. The network spans one million acres of salt marsh across four Southeastern states.
Amid those efforts to reinforce and protect marine ecosystems, and as scientists work to better understand the pressures that are altering the oceans, people in coastal communities everywhere are already living changes large and small.
The day after Mr. Atkins demonstrated his fishing methods, the town of Mount Pleasant, S.C., 80 miles up the coast, held its annual Sweetgrass Festival to celebrate the region’s traditional Gullah Geechee baskets. Dozens of artists braved the heat in booths at a waterfront park, showing off and selling baskets woven from sweetgrass, bulrush, palmetto leaves and pine needles.
One artist and teacher, Henrietta Snype, displayed baskets made by five generations of her family, from her grandmother down to her own grandchildren.
Ms. Snype started making baskets at age 7. Now, at 73, she takes pride in upholding the tradition and teaching others the craft and its history. But she feels the world around her changing.
She said she had noticed the climate shifting for many years now. Big hurricanes seem to have become more frequent and seem to do more damage. And making baskets is harder, too.
Traditionally, the men in basket-making families went out into the dunes, marshes and woods to gather the materials they needed. But lately, Ms. Snype said, the plants have been harder to find. Sweetgrass is diminishing, and harvesters have trouble getting access to built-up and privately owned parts of the coastline.
“The times bring on a lot of change,” she said.
Methodology
Maps and table showing human impacts on oceans reflect estimates based on the SSP2-4.5 “middle of the road” scenario, which approximates current climate policy.
Just days after the Trump administration completed millions of dollars in renovations on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to make it American flag-blue, residents and online users noted it had turned a phosphorescent green.
Here’s why:
The calm, still waters of the Reflecting Pool make it an ideal nursery for algae growth. Algae need nitrogen and phosphorus to grow, and the Reflecting Pool is primarily fed by the Potomac River, which gets heavy doses of those nutrients from nearby urban and agricultural lands.
The Potomac also absorbed one of the largest sewage spills in U.S. history earlier this year when a pipe burst five miles upstream of Washington, although that event probably happened too long ago to contribute to the algal bloom today.
Untreated sewage is high in nitrogen and phosphorus. When nutrient levels are high, feasting algae can quickly reproduce.
The Department of the Interior said when the algae first appeared that it was “residual,” from the supply lines to the pool.
Experts also speculate that the darker blue color may be helping the Reflecting Pool absorb more heat. The higher temperatures promote algae growth by allowing their metabolisms to shift into overdrive.
Summer temperatures in D.C. aren’t helping. This week, temperatures are as high as 95 degrees in the city, prompting a heat alert.
The combination probably explains the excessive growth, turning the water surface an opaque green and preventing onlookers from seeing the new blue hue of the concrete basin.
Algae are important and beneficial organisms when the ecosystem is in balance. They’re the base of the aquatic food chain, fed on by herbivores of all shapes and sizes, including shrimp and juvenile fish, which in turn feed organisms higher up the food chain. The single-celled organisms use the power of the sun to produce energy through photosynthesis, similar to houseplants on your balcony.
In an effort combat the algae in the Reflecting Pool, employees of the National Park Service were seen pouring in gallons of hydrogen peroxide, a chemical commonly used in pool maintenance.
The Department of the Interior also is employing a “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” to destroy the cells of the algae.
Ozone — yes, the same irritant that is in smog — is a gas composed of three oxygen molecules, and the small size of the bubbles allow the most gas transfer into the water, where it can damage algal cells, similar to how it irritates our lungs.
This only treats the symptoms, however. Generally, ozone nanobubbling is effective as a temporary solution for algae blooms. Longer-term fixes would have to address what makes the Reflecting Pool so ideal for algae, such as its depth, darker color and inflow of nitrogen and phosphorus.
In California, ozone nanobubbles also have been used in a project to improve water quality in the Tijuana River. The 120-mile river that runs near the border in northern Mexico and Southern California was the site of a pilot study in 2025. The U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission reported that the nanobubbling reduced “odors and bacteria,” but the project concluded prematurely after a flood swept some of the instrumentation into the river.
A plant extract that’s gaining popularity as a pain cure-all and has been associated with multiple California deaths in its concentrated, synthetic form has been approved for research as a treatment for opioid addiction by the federal government.
Kratom is derived from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a tree native to Southeast Asia, and is commonly made into a powder or pill.
Researchers say people in the U.S. are using kratom to alleviate anxiety, treat chronic pain or as a remedy for the symptoms associated with quitting opioids, due to its ability to bind with opioid receptors in the body. But recently, public health officials have raised alarms about a component of the leaf called 7-hydroxymitragynine, also known as 7-OH, an alkaloid that has the potential for abuse and addiction in high doses.
Last year, the Los Angeles County Public Health Department linked the deaths of six county residents to the use of 7-OH mixed with other substances. The toxicology screens for some of the deceased revealed both kratom and 7-OH, leading to a countywide crackdown of products with either compound because they’re unregulated.
Although there is no scientific consensus on whether kratom has therapeutic value, the Food and Drug Administration has recommended that its potent 7-OH form be classified as a controlled substance. Consumers who use 7-OH as a pain reliever expecting an experience similar to consuming kratom are at risk, said Dr. Mason Turner, president-elect of the California Society of Addiction Medicine.
“I have a couple of patients that I work with who use 7-OH for chronic pain management, not realizing the potential of the medication, and then developed an opioid use disorder,” Turner said. “I think in that case it was very clear they were seeking it for the chronic pain, not to get high, not to have some kind of experience, but really to reduce their pain.”
About two decades ago, Turner said, the healthcare industry started acknowledging the limits and risks of prescribing opioids for chronic pain. Some doctors pulled back on prescriptions, recognizing the potential for abuse.
That led some patients to find alternative solutions, he said.
“Maybe they don’t get a good benefit, or maybe the benefit from some of the other treatments is not as robust as what they got from opioids,” Turner said. “So they seek out some of these illicit products … or they look for kratom or 7-OH to be able to mitigate the pain.”
Turner said he supports further research into kratom and regulation because “it could be worth exploring as a treatment for chronic pain.”
On June 1, the National Institutes of Health announced that researchers from the University of Florida would begin the first phase of clinical trials on kratom to evaluate it as a potential treatment for opioid addiction. The research would be done with the FDA’s approval, according to officials.
“This … is a major step toward expanding treatment options for the millions of Americans struggling with opioid use disorder, which has contributed to historically high overdose mortality rates,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a statement.
Interest in kratom surged in the last couple of years as users have reported consuming the compound in the form of a pill, powder or tea to treat various ailments. A John Hopkins survey conducted in 2020 reported that 91% of respondents used kratom to treat chronic pain, 67% to treat anxiety, 64% for depression and 41% to treat opioid dependence.
A more recent study by the University of Michigan and Texas State University found that more than 5 million people in the U.S., including more than 100,000 children ages 12 to 17, have used kratom, the compound experts say is growing in popularity with young adults.
In the study, which analyzed data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health collected between 2021 and 2024, researchers say that despite numerous state-level bans on kratom across the nation, its use is at an all-time high and is increasing.
People between the ages of 21 and 34 said they used kratom at least once and 1% said they used it in the last year. The share of children ages 12 and older who said they had used kratom increased from 1.6% in 2021 to 1.9% in 2024.
The FDA has stated that neither kratom nor 7-OH are approved as drug products, dietary supplements or food additives, but that hasn’t stopped storefronts and companies from selling them as such.
Up until November you could find kratom and 7-OH products in smoke shops and specialty stores in California, but that has stopped.
“Until kratom and its pharmacologically active key ingredients mitragynine and 7-OH are approved for use, they will remain classified as adulterants in drugs, dietary supplements and foods,” the California Department of Public Health told The Times via email.
Kratom “Feel Free Classic” liquid products are displayed at a smoke shop in Los Angeles in 2024 before they were banned.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
In May, the California Department of Public Health and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a complaint against Ashlynn Marketing Group Inc., accusing the company of repeatedly flouting the state’s regulations on kratom products.
The filing, submitted in the San Diego County Superior Court, seeks a judge’s order to condemn and destroy the embargoed kratom products, halt ongoing unlawful manufacturing and impose civil penalties.
The California Department of Public Health “is pursuing legal action because Ashlynn’s continued manufacture and sale of these products pose a clear and preventable public‑health risk and violates state and federal law,” said Dr. Erica Pan, the department’s director and state public health officer. “7-OH and kratom-derived products have been associated with addiction, serious health harms, overdose and death.”
The state is alleging its inspectors visited Ashlynn Marketing Group’s facility in Santee in May 2025 and found kratom powders, capsules, liquids and chewable tablets being manufactured and held for sale.
During the visit, inspectors issued an embargo to prohibit the sale and distribution of all kratom-related materials on-site, according to the complaint.
Public health inspectors conducted follow-up visits at the facility in October and April, “collecting evidence at both inspections that indicated embargoed kratom products had been moved, tampered with and repackaged,” according to public health officials.
“In addition, investigators observed evidence of continued manufacturing and distribution of kratom materials,” officials said. “The firm’s owner continues to manufacture kratom products and ships orders weekly.”
To date, the California Department of Public Health has seized more than $5 million worth of kratom and 7-OH products, a spokesperson for the department told The Times.
California and Los Angeles County are considering whether to tighten regulations or ban the compounds altogether.
NEW YORK — Scientists have unearthed communities of marine life — including jellyfish, tubeworms and brittle stars — thriving on a whale graveyard that is millions of years old.
These graveyards form when whale carcasses fall to the sea floor, becoming a sustaining snack for nearby critters. This one, located up to 23,000 feet below the surface of the southeastern Indian Ocean, spans the largest area and is so far the deepest and oldest found.
A whale’s sheer size and the unique chemistry of its bones are the keys to forming these unique underwater neighborhoods, said Xikun Song, a biologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering.
“At the same time, the very nature of the deep ocean makes these sites exceptionally difficult for scientists to locate,” Song, who was involved with the latest find, wrote in an email.
Researchers explored the remains during multiple deep-sea submersible trips in 2023, collecting samples and mapping the extent of the necropolis. They found five carcass sites and fossils, including skulls belonging to beaked and baleen whales. The oldest bones date back 5.3 million years.
Feeding and living on the carcasses were myriad creatures, large and small, including sea cucumbers, squat lobsters and saltwater clams. Many of them are likely species that have never been documented, according to findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“The potential number of specimens is just astounding,” said paleontologist Stephen Godfrey with the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland, who wasn’t involved in the research.
Many factors likely conspired to preserve the bones for millions of years, according to the study authors. They’re dense enough to outlast attacks from bone-eating worms, and located deep enough in the ocean to avoid getting buried by dust and loose particles. The bones also were coated with a light layer of minerals from the surrounding seawater, which may have prevented them from degrading.
Why did so many whales die here? Maybe they were already living in the area and died of natural causes. A few could have perished from exhaustion or illness caused by deep-sea diving. The area’s shape, akin to the letter V, could also have funneled the remains to their resting spot, the authors wrote.
Such discoveries are important because they clue scientists into the vibrant communities that find a way to live even in remote, hard-to-reach environments.
Studying the whale graveyards “is important for understanding how life can adapt to such extreme conditions, not only due to the lack of light and oxygen but also to the incredibly high pressure,” said study co-author and paleontologist Giovanni Bianucci with the University of Pisa in Italy in an email.
Ramakrishnan writes for The Associated Press.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
-
World7 minutes agoTwo-train crash leaves at least 1 dead, 89 injured as emergency crews rush to chaotic scene
-
Politics10 minutes agoDouble endorsement drama: Trump backs second candidate in red state’s GOP gubernatorial runoff
-
Health15 minutes agoMeasles-infected traveler may have exposed passengers at LAX and nearby hotel, health officials warn
-
Sports22 minutes agoWorld Cup Red Cards: 2026 Has More Red Cards Than Each Of Last 2 World Cups
-
Technology25 minutes agoChina’s brain chip breakthrough raises big questions
-
Business30 minutes agoRanch lovers can soon travel with a TSA-friendly kit of the popular American dressing
-
Entertainment37 minutes agoAt the Fonda, Jane Remover’s violent yearning heralds a new kind of stardom
-
Lifestyle39 minutes agoBeer, with a twist? SoCal dads find solidarity through an unexpected activity
