By Greg Locke
June 8, 2025
ST. JOHN’S, NL – Happy World Ocean’s Day, from the North West Atlantic ocean where spring is marked by the arrival of icebergs, whales chasing food, and seabirds returning to their summer nests to lay eggs in the great bird colonies around Newfoundland and Labrador.
A place where the ocean comes alive around World Oceans Day.
So, how are the oceans and the creatures that live in them doing these days? Not great. While beautiful photos will fill your media feeds to mark this day in celebration, they do not show the reality of the situation.
There are many challenges to the health of our oceans. Some can be seen by everyone, and some not.
Climate change has a heavy impact on our oceans, like everything else on the planet. Melting glaciers in Greenland send icebergs down the Labrador Sea. Warming and acidic oceans are unable to sustain the food chain for all the fish and mammals in the oceans, and the seabirds that are dependent on the same food sources.
Melting sea ice also effects traditional migrations routes for coastal and northern animals such as polar bears and caribou. Sadly, the same icebergs that thrill tourists in Newfoundland, mean receding and collapsing glaciers in Greenland.
Climate change combined with the threat of bird flu and plastics pollution, seabirds are in for a particularly hard time.
Over-fishing our oceans
One thing that has been going on for many years that we can’t witness in our daily lives is the practice of bottom trawling. This is the technique where fishing trawlers drag nets fitted with heavy metal chains and wheels along the ocean floor to displace and catch fish and bottom-dwelling shellfish.
The method not only contributes to the issue of over-fishing, by states and companies in international waters, but destroys living coral formations and bottom rock and sand sediment that are the breeding grounds for many ocean species.
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The oceans are home to more than half of all life on Earth. The oceans touch every living thing on the planet. Human actions and activity have driven many species to the brink of extinction. One example is the Northern Cod on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, leading to a ban on fishing in 1992. The Northern Cod was a major source of seafood for humans for 400 years. Entire culture have formed around cod fish.
Newfoundlanders only exist today as they do because of a history of whaling, sealing and fishing for hundreds of years. Those days may be over, but commerce and its economy still depend on the ocean. Building, maintaining and sustainable a fishing industry and preserving the ocean should be in everyone’s interest.
In Canada British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island also are dependent on the oceans for large parts of their economy, and face many of the same issues. This is in common with most coastal communities and populations around the world.
Now we are facing the consequences
In a film produced by BBC Earth Sir David Attenborough says that people have taken the ocean for granted. Our carelessness impacts all ocean habitats with our actions and by pushing species to the brink.
“Now we are facing the consequences: the seas are warming, rising, and becoming more acidic. It’s a sobering thought, that coral reefs may be lost within the next century,” says Attenborough.
Sir David stresses the importance of the world’s oceans and how they affect every living thing on Earth, from the air we breathe to the freshwater water we consume. Oceans drive the weather and stabilise the climate.
World Oceans Day was first declared on 8 June, 1992 in Rio de Janeiro at the Global Forum, a parallel event at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) which provided an opportunity for non-government organizations (NGOs) and civil society to express their views on environmental issues.
The Declaration was inspired by an event organized on that day by the Oceans Institute of Canada and supported by the Canadian Government: “OCEANS DAY AT GLOBAL FORUM – THE BLUE PLANET.” The programme featured international experts, opinion leaders and those in a position to speak for the oceans’ contributions to sustaining the planet.
Years later, our blue planet is in even deeper trouble. And like the case with worsening climate change, I’m not sure how much more yelling at governments and industry is needed to turn things around before it’s too late.
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All photos Greg Locke © 2025. www.greglocke.com
Originally published in our sister publication The Gammy Bird.
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