By KIM BELLARD

It probably didn’t show up on your calendar, but Monday was World Ocean Day. It’s a day meant to catalyze “collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate,” and has been around since 2002 (although the U.N. didn’t officially recognize it until 2008). Its website claims a network of over 2,000 organizations, in 180 countries.

I wish we had more to celebrate.

Many have recognized the irony of humans calling our planet “Earth,” when, in fact, 71% of its surface is covered with water. Even more amazing, oceans account for 99% of the biosphere. We come from the ocean and still owe much of our existence to it.

Unfortunately, these are not good times for oceans, and we’re to blame. The most recent World Ocean Assessment from the U.N. highlights:

• The ocean matters to everyone, everywhere;
• The ocean is under intensifying stress;
• Climate change is transforming conditions;
• Biodiversity is declining across nearly every marine habitat;
• Pollution is widespread and increasing;
• Ocean food systems are threatened.

The report concludes: “The coming decade is decisive: without rapid, coordinated global action, ocean health will continue to decline, threatening climate stability, biodiversity resilience, food security, livelihoods and the wellbeing of billions.”

I think about this in light of last month’s announcement by the National Science Foundation that it was “descoping” the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Major Facility, beginning next week. That’s a $368 million deep-ocean observation system “that delivers real-time data from more than 900 instruments to address critical science questions regarding the world’s oceans.” Some 900 instruments will be removed, in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.