Year of the troubled oceans.

The United Nations has designated 1998 the International Year of the Ocean. To kick off this 12-month focus on the marine world, which accounts for most of the volume permanently inhabited by life on our planet, some 1,600 scientists signed their names to a public "call for action."

Unveiled at a news conference in Washington, D.C., last week, the emphatic, one-page declaration argues that life in the world's estuaries, coastal waters, and seas is increasingly threatened by overfishing, habitat alteration, pollution, introduction of non-native species, and global climate change.

"This statement says that the sea is in trouble, much worse trouble than we had previously thought," says Elliott A. Norse, organizer of the effort and president of the Redmond, Wash, based Marine Conservation Biology Institute. An "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" mentality has allowed much of the land-dwelling public to ignore the oceans' plight, he charges.

Through the new statement, marine scientists are issuing "a wake-up call, saying 'we need to get your attention,"' Norse adds.

The declaration calls on governments and their constituencies around the world to take immediate, "decisive action" that would include ending all subsidies that encourage overfishing; increasing the number and effectiveness of marine sanctuaries so that 20 percent of exclusive economic zones, as well as the high seas, are protected by the year 2020; abandoning fishing methods that destroy fish habitats (SN: 10/26/96, p. 268); and funding studies to determine what is needed to conserve imperiled marine populations.

As marine and conservation biologists, Norse told Science News, "we are" realizing slowly but surely that we can't hide in our ivory towers any longer and just do our thing. It's our job--as people who know the most about this issue-to speak out."

Rep. Curt Weldon (R.-Pa.) championed the move, noting that he and other representatives have been prodding scientists to do more than just chronicle what's happening in the seas. They "need to get involved politically," he says, and "to get their faculties, their students, their consumers, and their suppliers into the process of convincing us in the city that oceans are a top priority" for research and conservation.