POLL - People underestimate their damage to oceans
Date: 01-Dec-99
Country: USA
The poll, commissioned by a consortium of museums, aquariums and zoos
that together form The Ocean Project, asked 1,500 U.S. adults about how
the Earth's oceans function and what environmental risks they face.
While 92 percent of the poll respondents said oceans were critical to
maintaining a habitable planet, a full 66 percent mistakenly thought
industrial waste was the main threat to the ocean environment.
Instead, small-scale runoff from yards, roads and farms is the primary
cause of ocean pollution today - a fact known by only 14 percent of the
poll respondents.
"An estimated 15 times more oil than the Exxon Valdez spill finds its
way into the sea annually from street runoff and individual dumping into
municipal storm drains," the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the Ocean
Project's sponsors, said in a news release. The Exxon Valdez spilled
about 35,000 tons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.
The Ocean Project said it would use the poll results to help design a
series of major programmes and exhibits designed to boost public
awareness of the threats to the oceans' health.
"We now have a good understanding of where we need to go," said Bill
Mott, the project's director. "People have a fundamental sense that
oceans are important and they play an integral role in the balance of
nature. The next steps will be to show people how oceans relate to human
survival and what each of us can do to protect them for the future."
The poll was conducted July 24-Aug. 8 and had a margin of error of 2.5
percentage points.
