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  I am not quite sure if I want to go the global warming route with my paper because I feel like that might be something that everyone has heard a million times and boring, but I really did like that TED talk about penguins by Dee Boersma.  I have also watched the TED talk by Brian Skerry about the ocean's many horrors and the ocean's glory.  It is very interesting and seems to go along with the first talk if I just look at the general aspects like how we need a new operating system for the ocean and how over-consumption and too many people are two huge fundamental problems in the ocean and world in general.  The operating system is not giving proper feedback to be able to sustain life as it was before the human population more than doubled since the 1960's, and the humans are not paying the environmental costs of their actions yet.  However, the animals are paying the costs for humans' actions because almost all species, if not all, have much smaller populations, and most species are declining rapidly.  Pollution and climate change are also two factors from this first TED talk.
  The second TED talk deals more with the terribly images of the ocean.  With the seals, there are two huge environmental issues.  First, the seals are being hunted and slaughtered in massive numbers, hundreds of thousands anually, and secondly the loss of ice in the ocean.  The seals need thick, packed ice to be able to nurse baby for twelve days, but the ice is not thick enough, and baby seals are falling through and dying.  There is also the global fish crisis.  It is unbelievable that ninety percent of the big fish in the ocean have disappeared.  I have never thought of the fishing industry in this light- that people are way too efficient in catching fish, so much that we are not even allowing fish to grow older and bigger before they are caught and sold or cooked. 
  Now, I just have to pick a direction to go in- environmental issues like global warming or more of the animal route like overfishing.