Second, like almost everyone, we like seafood — cod, crab, shrimp, oysters, lobster, tuna, swordfish and lots of other kinds of fish that we can’t get from Lake Michigan. Did you know an acre of coastal waters and wetlands can produce more food than an acre of the Midwest’s best farmland? We have a definite stake in the protection and good management of our marine fisheries, not only in U.S. waters, but worldwide. We have every right to speak up about the depletion of the world’s fisheries, because declining supplies means we pay higher prices at our local restaurants and supermarkets — and that someday perhaps our favorite seafood may no longer be available at any price.

The global ocean affects our local, state and national economy in other ways, too. Transoceanic shipping provides an economical way of exchanging all kinds of raw and manufactured goods — including the grain, automobiles and myriad other items produced here in the Midwest —  with the rest of the world. More than half of our fellow Americans live within 50 miles of the nation's coastline, and about 40 percent of all new commercial and economic development occurs in that same area. On the minus side, our federal taxes and insurance premiums also help foot the bill each time a powerful hurricane slams into those densely populated coastal areas, or when erosion from a strong El Niño storm causes those expensive California beachhouses to tumble into the sea.

As microcosms of the world’s oceans, these inland seas have served us well — albeit sometimes unintentionally — as natural laboratories for studying and learning about how aquatic systems work. They have taught us much over the last 150 years, and the lessons learned from the Great Lakes over the last century tell us much about what we should and shouldn’t do with our oceans now and in the next century.

For example, we once thought the Great Lakes fisheries were so bountiful they couldn’t be overfished. We once thought the Great Lakes were too huge to ever become polluted by the sewage, industrial wastes and trash we dumped into them. We didn’t fully realize the profound and long-lasting effects that deforestation, agriculture, industrialization and coastal development could have on the fisheries and water quality of these great freshwater seas — until in the 1960s "dead" Lake Erie became a national symbol of pollution and environmental neglect.

However, the relatively modest investments made in Great Lakes and marine research to date have shown that, with enough knowledge, sustainable use of our fisheries and other coastal resources is possible. Lake Erie today is anything but "dead" — its water quality is generally good, noxious algal blooms are no longer a problem, and it boasts a world-class walleye fishery.

During this Year of the Ocean, let us pause to reflect on the ocean’s importance not only to Wisconsin, but to all life on Earth, and let us dedicate ourselves anew to exploring, understanding and protecting it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Anders W. Andren is Director of the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute and Professor of Water Chemistry in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Andren received his Ph.D. in Chemical Oceanography from Florida State University and conducted his post-doctoral work in the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has been a member of the UW-Madison Water Chemistry Program faculty since 1975. His research interests deal with the sources, transport and fate of toxic contaminants and other chemical compounds in the environment.

Andren is a member of the U.S.-Canadian International Joint Commission’s Science Advisory Board and served as the U.S. co-chair of the IJC’s Task Force on the Virtual Elimination of Toxics in the Environment. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Research and Peer Review in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has served as a member of several other NAS panels dealing with mercury, PCBs and acid deposition. He also has chaired the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Extramural Research’s Review Panel on the Physics and Chemistry of Sediments and Water.