[intro music, ocean sounds]
Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
There are times when things disparate coalesce and in the ocean world, a worldwide space; such a time is now. We recently celebrated World Ocean Day with its annual focus on the status of the ocean, as measured by public awareness and engagement in celebration and action for ocean preservation. On that day, June 8, the new film, OCEAN, presented by Sir David Attenborough, debuted in theatres and maritime museums around the world, a glorious compendium of the ocean’s beauty and distress with a passionate call for urgent protection. The World Ocean Observatory sponsored one such showing, in a local Maine theater, to four full house screenings – a quiet measure of interest and determination.
The week after, thousands of ocean scientists, policy-makers, ministers and heads of state, environmental leaders, and advocacy organizations gathered in Nice, France, for a UN sponsored World Ocean Summit with speeches and exhortations, plenary sessions, distinguished panels, workshops devoted to the full spectrum of ocean interests and needs. The Summit was divided into two physical spaces, a Blue Zone for the most eminent with their eloquent calls for action, and a Green Zone for the organizations with specific programs in specific places with specific localized applications . The World Ocean Observatory had a four-person team in place, two in each zone, all with the intent to engage our erstwhile, innovative practices with all the others, hopefully to emerge with a great collective, cresting wave forward in commitment, governance, and financial resources available to transform knowledge into action.
Every attendee at the Attenborough film was there because of a deep ocean interest, Every delegate at the conference represented a thousand more. The aggregated and amplified sum of this presence represented a totality of interest and determination gathered here and there, an inspiring measure of those “citizens of the ocean” worldwide who care. And, of course, it is safe to say, there are million more.
But there is a darker presence in all this. Sir David’s concluding, uplifting statement was based on HOPE, on one particular example of a successful policy, a treaty for the eradication of international whaling, as a symbol and harbinger of the fact that, if protected, the ocean has the potential to heal itself. That some of the parties to that agreement have reneged, and that limited whaling has recommenced, was left unmentioned. It was a victory in part; threatened whale species, including the nearly extinct blue whale, have somewhat recovered. But to base fulsome optimism for the future on that limited success seemed to me like a desperate reach and I feared that the symbol bore little resemblance to the discouraging reality of massive, wasteful overfishing and ecosystem destruction in bottom-trawling, deep sea mining, and toxic pollution otherwise depleting ocean resources at a far greater, most unhopeful scale.
The delegates spoke a similar message: in hope as evinced in expanding marine protected areas, in treaties nearing ratification, in funds pledged, in the enthusiasm of their constituents, in the exuberance of possibility that their successes will multiply exponentially, enough, in time, to counter the vested interests and counter-forces that have prolonged, even sabotaged, similar successes for decades, since the very first ocean summit which I attended in New York in 2017.
Sir David Attenborough celebrated his 99th birthday just weeks before the opening of his film. He shames my cynicism of only 84. I fear that hope can be a euphemism for failure, that we cling to it as a last resort, a talisman against despair, when we have lost belief in the possibility, and the joy, of success. And is success a function of repeating what has failed? Or should we examine what we have NOT done as the only strategy for fulfillment? My hope lies in the latter – in invention and innovation applied not so much by the experts, but by the people who, in the wisdom of direct experience, must be trusted and enabled to meet the challenge. In that world of immediacy there can be no place beyond hope called hopelessness, no time for empty words, for well-intended actions not yet taken, for knowledge that does not more immediately serve.
What will it take? Is it time for a reversal of perspective and engagement: to educate and communicate from the inside-out; to define and apply new systems from the bottom-up; to engage those whose basic need is greatest with the solutions required for quality of life, indeed, for “the benefit of all mankind,” Should we not turn it all upside-down, and re-mix in the swim? We have everything we need – the science, the money, and the penultimate care to make it so. Do we have the courage and imagination? Hold fast. Lean forward. Act now.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
WORLD OCEAN RADIO IS DISTRIBUTED BY THE PUBLIC RADIO EXCHANGE AND THE PACIFICA NETWORK, FOR USE BY COLLEGE AND COMMUNITY RADIO STATIONS WORLDWIDE. FIND US WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS, AND AT WORLD OCEAN OBSERVATORY DOT ORG, WHERE THE FULL CATALOG OF MORE THAN 700 RADIO EPISODES IS SEARCHABLE BY THEME.
[outro music, ocean sounds]
