Letters to the Editor: Earth's ocean is in crisis. Why spend $5 billion to study the one on Jupiter's moon Europa?

Los Angeles Times Opinion
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The surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa as seen by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s.
The surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, as seen by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SETI Institute)

To the editor: As a marine ecologist, I’ve studied marine sedimentary ecosystems since 1972. My studies show that our current knowledge of these ecosystems is quite poor.

Therefore, in this age of existential threats to species habitability and survival on Earth, I have serious objections to spending $5 billion on a project to explore the sea on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, to see if it contains chemicals that might support life.

What real good will that do us? Can you imagine how much good it would do to spend those funds here to learn how our own oceans function and how to deal with injuries we humans are causing?

What are our funding priorities? What benefits will knowing the chemistry of Europa’s sea create for us here as our planet becomes less habitable?

There is credible evidence that fish-feeding sedimentary ecosystems on our continental shelves may be failing, but research to investigate this is lacking.

Dennis Lees, Encinitas

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.