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THE JOURNAL OF
MARINE EDUCATION
Volume 24 • Number 2 • 2008
OCEANREVOLUTION.ORG: EVOLVING THE OCEAN CONSERVATION MOVEMENT IPMEC: K EYNOTE A DDRESS (DAY 1) BY WALLACE J. NICHOLS
THERE
HAVE BEEN MANY KINDS OF REVOLUTIONS throughout our history. What we need now is an ocean revolution. We need to change our relationship to the ocean—not a little incremental change, not small adjustments here and there around the edges, but some fundamental rethinking about what it is that we’re doing to the ocean, and how it is that we benefit and live from the ocean. We need a positive, peaceful, nonviolent revolution, so when our children grow up they will be able to eat healthy, abundant seafood and have the choices that we have or that we’ve had in the past.
We are on, arguably, Planet Ocean, rather than Planet Earth. The majority of our planet is covered by the ocean. The majority of the biodiversity of the planet is in the ocean. The majority of habitat is beneath the ocean. Yet, we do not know as much as we should about the ocean and we certainly don’t treat it as well as we could. So we really need to be thinking about creating an ocean revolution. With that in mind, we started Ocean Revolution. It is a movement with a website focused on getting the word out to young people, networking to get them together and helping them become stewards of the ocean in their own way. We’re also trying to reach kids who may have science phobia or math phobia, but still love the ocean and still want to figure out how to plug into the ocean conservation movement.
The framing of this ocean crisis can be boiled down to three essential things: •
We’ve taken too much out of the ocean.
•
We’ve put too much into the ocean.
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And we’re destroying the edge—the coastal wilderness at the edge of the ocean, the coastal waters, convergence zones, and other edgy places out in the open ocean where life accumulates and the animals that we like to eat and think about hang out.
So the call to action, based on those three essential points, which all ocean issues fit into, is: •
We need to put less in the ocean.
•
We need to take less outt of the ocean (and what we do take out needs to be taken out in a smarter way).
•
And we need to protect the edge.
The take home message is “less in, less out, protect the edge.” LESS IN
TOO MUCH OUT, TOO MUCH IN, DESTROYING THE EDGE It’s pretty clear that the ocean is in trouble. Over the past few years, two multi-hundred page reports have come out piled with facts and recommendations about the ocean. These facts won’t make sense unless we have some kind of framework, some sort of basic understanding or worldview that will allow them to stick.
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The first part is we’ve put too much into the ocean. There’s industrial ocean pollution, the point source runoff, and the domestic stuff that runs off of our streets and down our waterways during rainstorms. We know very well that this pollution in the ocean kills animals and is also bad for our health. There’s an increasing awareness of the non-point problem thanks to the popularity of stenciled messages. Surfrider and other organizations stencil these messages next to the drains so that people will not throw their garbage or throw their waste into drains. The message reminds the public that what goes into the drain goes downstream and eventually ends up in the ocean.
¯ SPECIAL ISSUE FEATURING HO‘OHANOHANO I NA¯ KUPUNA PUWALU AND INTERNATIONAL PACIFIC MARINE EDUCATORS CONFERENCE
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