Increasingly Frequent Ocean Heat Waves Trigger Mass Die-Offs of Sealife, and Grief in Marine Scientists

These are excerpts of this story highlighting the portions about Jennifer Lavers. For the full story go here.

“We talk a lot about eco grief, that sense of being overwhelmed and feeling loss,” said Jennifer Lavers, who has been tracking how thousands of seabirds have starved to death during recent ocean heat waves off the coast of western Australia as coordinator of the nonprofit marine research Adrift Lab….

With even more mass die-offs of ocean species projected, “scientists are leaving in droves from the field,” she said. “Incredibly skilled, talented, qualified, very passionate people are leaving because no matter what they say, what they do, how many papers they publish … It doesn’t matter.”….

Lavers said that as the enormous consequences of global warming and ocean heat waves become more clear, she has become more determined to warn people.

“Even when you’re crying and you feel like there’s no hope and you just want to give up, our job is to give a voice to the voiceless,” she said. “Those animals that are dying, that are declining, that are losing their habitat to super-trawlers and everything else—I will not fly the white flag. I will fight on to the very end to give them the voice they so desperately deserve.”