FEATURE: MARINE CONSERVATION
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MARINE CONSERVATION Many years ago, I took part in a conference related to marine mammals in Bristol. One of the guest speakers was a producer at the ‘BBC Blue Planet’. At the time, the BBC Blue Planet series was not only innovative as a concept, but they also used technology from a new era and released a budget to film marine wildlife as never before. At the end of the presentation time for questions on the new release was granted. A ten or eleven-year-old girl asked the speaker,
“how can we save the Ocean?” The answer started with the importance of recycling plastic … He suddenly stopped, looked at the young girl, and explained that he has a daughter of the same age who asked the exact same question, and will give her the same reply. “I am afraid we won’t be able to restore our Oceans to be as we filmed them, ever again. The only thing we can do from now on is to slow down the degradation process of the Oceans as much as possible”. Something in me was triggered that day, and I knew he was right.
By then, I had already worked for marine conservation for some years through the foundation firmm®, exposing threats marine mammals face by speaking at conferences, organising educational campaigns for schools, and giving many talks to passengers before boarding the whale-watch boats. Whales and dolphins are, by excellence, the animals to transmit the distress message on behalf of our Oceans. Talking about marine conservation through sea slugs, deep-sea orange roughy, or sharks is however more challenging when facing the general public. The reality is that all are so closely related when it comes to protecting the biodiversity and ecosystems of our Oceans that it doesn’t matter which species are discussed, as all are inter-connected. The second point mentioned by the speaker which caught my attention, was when he explained that to slow down the global degradation of our Oceans, the support to local non-profit organisations in Asia (including India) is crucial. Perhaps South America and Africa are doing worse in taking responsibility towards our Oceans than Canada or Europe, but the biggest challenge is Asia. Not only is the population growing exponentially but so is their consumption, especially their seafood frenzy. Unfortunately, too few organisations are present in this area of the world and the lack of education and infrastructure to develop marine conservation does not allow public-