OUR  OCEANS ARE IN TROUBLE

"Do we have the courage to face the realities of our time and allow ourselves to feel deeply enough that it transforms us, and our future?" -Chris Jordan, from his film "Midway: A love story for our time, from the heart of the Pacific"

Our oceans, ourselves. This statement is not an exaggeration. Statistics vary, but scientists agree that from 50-70% of the oxygen in each breath comes from plants and algae in the ocean. Yet, our plastic waste has created a gigantic plastic soup in the Pacific the size of Russia. Plankton are one of the most important organisms on our planet, however, marine samples in the North Pacific show that plastic outweighs plankton 6 to 1. This soup is growing as we speak at the rate of 8 football fields every second, and is made of mainly of plastic bottles, caps and above all PLASTIC BAGS. Each individual must think about how our continued reliance on plastic in all areas of our lives is impacting our oceans, and our future.

Sylvia Earle , has been at the frontier of deep ocean exploration for 4 decades. In her Ted Talk, she shares astonishing images of the ocean--and it's shocking stats about it's rapid decline, and her wish that we join her in protecting the vital blue heart of the planet.

One very important book that assisted in our creation of this page is Ocean Country: One Woman's Voyage from Peril to Hope in Her Quest to Save the Seas by Liz Cunningham.  A story, a call to action and a poetic meditation on the state of the seas. Most important, it is a story of finding true hope in the midst of one of the greatest crises to face humankind, the rapidly degrading state of our environment.

6 WAYS TO HELP THE OCEANS :

1. Reduce Plastic Use:

• 5 Gyres: Working to Restore Healthy, Plastic Free Oceans whose motto is" Less Plastic, More Ocean".
  
• Plastic Pollution Coalition. "Refuse single use plastic, because it is a substance the Earth cannot digest."
  
• Reuse This Bag, resources about the environmental impact of plastic shopping bags.
  
• Plastic Oceans who seek to change the world's attitude towards plastic within a generation.
  
• Why We Need to Rethink Plastic, and Soon "Every little bit counts, and that's where we have to start."
  
• The Ocean Conservancy works to keep the ocean healthy, to keep us healthy.
  
• The World Counts a website that counts the square kilometers of plastic soup in the worlds oceans. An astonishing, eye opening site about the impact of our choices.
  

2. Eat Sustainable Seafood:
For our health and the health of the oceans, it is important to make good choices about our seafood. Making ocean friendly choices are easy with these websites!

• The Safina Center's Sustaintable Seafood Program
  
• Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch
  
• FishChoice, helping businesses source and sell sustainable seafood
  

3. Make your voice heard:

• Audre Lorde  wrote: "Your silence will not protect you".
  
• Liz Cunningham asks us to consider: "What if you lived your life as if your voice mattered?"
  
• Think of ways to get people to care about the ocean.
  

Be daring and speak up about the things you love that need protecting; share what you learn with anyone who will listen. Write letters to your legislators. Many conservation organizations have email lists to subscribe to that allow you to sign petitions. Talk to a school class, pass on information and inspiration on social media.
Trust that YOUR VOICE MATTERS!

4. Reduce your carbon footprint:

• Carbonfund,org, information to help reduce what you can, offset what you can't
  

5. Support conservation organizations:

• Carl Safina, author, conservationist and founding president of the Safina Center.   "Watching the places I loved disapear turned me into a conservationist. What drives my work is a devotion to conservation, and what drives that devotion is a deep love and wonder for the living world".
  
• Ocean Conservancy has a broad focus to protect and clean up the oceans. They offer opportunities to be active in moving us towards Trash Free Seas, Sustainable Fisheries, Restoring the Gulf, Confronting Ocean Acidification, and Protecting the Artic.
  

6. Volunteer to organizations that work for clean oceans. streams, lakes and rivers:

• Mission Blue, Sylvia Earle's initiative to ignite public support for the protection of Hope Spots--special places that are vital to the health of the ocean
  
• Sanctuary Forest, a land trust in Northern California who conserves the Mattole River watershed, an important flowage to the ocean that runs thru old growth Redwood forests, protecting and restoring important salmon habitat.
  
• Ocean Conservancy organizes actions to clean up the oceans, with the goal of "Trash Free Seas"
  
• Liz Cunningham website for more essential ocean resources.