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The Poseidon Adventure: Humanity’s Experiment and Love
Affair with the Oceanic World
Scott DonnellyDepartment of Chemistry
Source: NASA Earth Observatory System, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
Earth at Night, 2006
Silk Trade Route
When the Ottoman Empire gained strategic control of the lucrative overland Silk Trade Route, powerful European merchantile city-states immediately sought an maritime route to central Asia to regain access to the highly profitable and exotic spices, textiles, and other highly sought-after resources not found in medieval Europe.
Delectable & Exotic Asian Spices
Vasco da Gama
Year = 1497 Portuguese Vasco da Gama successfully found an oceanic trade route to the lucrative lands of spice, thus giving birth to powerful European merchantile states that ultimately controlled the economic landscape of western Europe.
A Portuguese sailing for Portugal's archrival Spain, Ferdinand Magellan sought a western route to the fabled Spice Islands of Indonesia since Portugal fiercely controlled the eastern route. Circumnavigation of the world became a reality. Spain's venture into the New World with its rich natural resources had begun.
Today's Maritime Global Trade Routes
Conclusion: Somebody has something that someone else wants or needs.
North America
South America
Africa
Eurasia
Australia
*Remember this region*
What does a fish have to do with the American Revolution?
CodCod
""British GoldBritish Gold""
Image source:
Signature page Treaty of ParisSignature page Treaty of Paris
Article 3: It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and on all the other banks of Newfoundland, also in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and at all other places in the sea, where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish. And also that the inhabitants of the United States shall have liberty to take fish of every kind on such part of the coast of Newfoundland as British fishermen shall use, (but not to dry or cure the same on that island) and also on the coasts, bays and creeks of all other of his Brittanic Majesty's dominions in America; and that the American fishermen shall have liberty to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, so long as the same shall remain unsettled, but so soon as the same or either of them shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such settlement without a previous agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground.
Article 3: It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank....
Worldwide Cod Fishing Stock
Geography is destiny.Attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte
The Modern Brave New World: The Arctic?
The Long Sought Northwest Passage Fulfilled?
As the Arctic sea ice pack continues to thin and recede each year, nations with geographical claims to the region are jockeying to stake their claim for the unproven, untapped resources located at the ocean floor of the relatively shallow Arctic Ocean. Based on the rate of ice thinning, mining and extraction of natural resources may begin within five years.
Russian Icebreaker
The following five nations have legitimate geographical claims to the Arctic- USA, Canada, Russia, Norway via Svalbard (Spitsbergen), and tiny Denmark via Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory.
Untapped resources include natural gas, crude petroleum (oil), minerals, metal ores, and fishing stocks. Will neighbors at peace (e.g., USA and Canada) turn against one another over potentially volatile border and territorial disputes that originate from control over hundreds of billions of dollars of resource wealth?
Shortcut Across the Top of the World
Current Route12,900mi
Proposed Route8,500mistart
finish
EgyptLibya
Cyprus
Turkey
Greece
Black Sea
Crete
Italy
Adriatic Sea
Red Sea
Nile River
Tyre
Bolinus brandaris
Byzantine Emperor Justinian I clad in Tyrian purple, 6th- century mosaic at Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy
What’s One Example of the Modern Equivalent of the
Ancient Tyrian PurpleIndustry?
Bioprospecting Marine Life for Medicines
Sponges
Coral Reefs
TomatoWinter flounder
What’s the connection between a favorite edible terrestrial plant and an
oceanic saltwater fish?
No, it’s not the creation of a fishmato or a tomfish.
Portland, Maine
What’s to become of Earth’s seemingly infinite oceans?
What’s for sure is that for the next twenty years humanity will continue to exert more pressure on the oceans in order to feed its growing population, satisfy its insatiable appetite for finite resources such as petroleum, natural gas, and fish stock, and serve as the transportation conduit to keep the world’s immense consumer economies afloat (no pun intended).
