Introduction

THE SEA AROUND US

In 1951 — more than half a century ago — Rachael Carson published The Sea Around Us, a classic compendium of the ocean's history, its workings, and its central role in the health of our world and those who live in it. The book is short, concise, informative, and eloquent. It is not a polemic, although its reputation as a classic of environmental literature might suggest that purpose. The text clearly struck a chord, won the National Book Award, has progressed through multiple reprintings, and remains a seminal work, indeed the impetus for subsequent awareness, expanded ocean research, and greater public interest and engagement in the surrounding ocean.

Carson worked at John Hopkins University and the Marine Biological Institute at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and went on to serve as marine biologist at the US Fish and Wildlife Service and to write additional books to include Under the Sea Wind, The Edge of the Sea, and of course, Silent Spring, that was a polemic and sounded the alarm over the harmful effect of chemical pesticides in agriculture.

Carson, and subsequently Jacques Cousteau, brought the ocean into our classrooms and living rooms. Cousteau's popular, long-running television series took us into the ocean, under the sea, to explore the underwater topography, the brilliance of coral reefs and biodiversity, and the physical workings of marine systems — tides, winds and currents, vast cycles of underwater movement and exchange, earthquake and tectonic shifts, and the life cycles of creatures heretofore beyond our imagination. Carson and Cousteau introduced us to the rewards and dangers of ocean observation and exploration, and their influence shaped more than one generation to become environmental scientists, marine biologists, oceanographers, and conservationists.

This legacy has driven decades of new investigation. New research institutions and programs have been founded in the United States and around the world. Governments have created and funded agencies and projects that have extended our observations by expedition, satellite, and arrays of drifting, fixed, and submerged monitors — a powerful network for the assemblage of data, experiment, and reports that have established an informed baseline of ocean conditions against which future study can be compared. Carson and Cousteau inspired an exponential increase in ocean observation and set in motion the first efforts to transform that information into conservation action.

The period that followed added the ocean to the scrutiny and mission of land-focused conservation groups — World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and the Natural Resources Defense Council — as well as motivated the creation of new organizations such as Conservation International, Oceana, The Ocean Conservancy, and Mission Blue that both extended their advocacy and programs worldwide and applied their resources more directly to ocean issues. Their work, and that by numerous other global organizations and government initiatives, has raised ocean knowledge, consciousness, and planning to its highest level.

But is it enough? Recently, I listened to a radio interview with a well-known and very well-informed ocean advocate and philanthropist who was describing the world ocean crisis in its many forms. He painted a dour picture indeed. It was a call-in show, and so I dialed in with the question, "Now that we know the problem, what do you suggest we do about it?" He indicated that that was the essential question, and then proceeded to give a very disappointing answer — don't use plastic bags, don't eat fish, don't drive your car, hope for the best! With all due respect, that's just not good enough.

If the second phase of the Carson/Cousteau legacy was observation and information that has defined the questions, then the next phase must be invention: the definition of new ideas and application of different answers. We are all seeking. I hear it again and again, at ocean conferences, in speeches and books by ocean experts: presentation of the overwhelming problem followed by silence, not solutions. It is as if we are sailing along the edge of an abyss; we have the skill perhaps to keep going, to extend our way for a time, until we fall off into darkness, or we can apply that skill to our ship and change course, away in a new direction. It is dangerous and uncertain, but I submit that we have no choice but to set forth.

Where to Begin

FROM THE HORIZON

The Exhausted Land We Live In

To understand the crises affecting the world ocean, we must first understand the condition of the land around us. For decades, alarms have been sounded to alert us to the exhaustion of the Earth. We have experienced a continuing increase in population; in demand for energy, food, and fresh water; and in the pollutants derived from our physical, chemical, and biological responses to those requirements. We have come to expect an annual raise, ever increasing quality of life, and sustained returns on our investments unrealizable without undisciplined personal credit, under-collateralized debt, and unregulated consumption of natural and human resources. Like any ponzi scheme, we have borrowed against assets once tangible, now increasingly limited, even ephemeral, and can no longer rationalize, postpone, or deny the consequences.

For me, pollution is excess: too much chocolate, too much alcohol, too much fertilizer, too many chemicals, too much waste, too much unregulated gain indifferent to the needs of an evergrowing community. That we have become divided over money, land, resources, and power, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, by disputes over all of these is surely no surprise.

We can measure that excess now: in diminished wells and corrupted waterways, in the acidified air, in the price of fuel, in the exploitation of labor, and in the failed economic and social aspirations now impacting the entire world.

But what about the ocean? I submit that the ocean begins at the mountaintop, and descends to the abyssal plain; that is, everything that occurs on land — be it development, manufacturing, agriculture, or financial enterprise — descends to the sea. It passes in, on, and above the earth in fluid streams of decision, action, and transaction, behaviors that reveal our system of values, be they economic, personal, social, political, or moral.

Thus, specifically, those...