The ocean
Millions of us live beside the sea, while the rest of us dream about endless horizons and far away voyages. Marine depths are home to majestic whales, curious fish, sea mountains and vast expanses of algae and kelp forests. The sea provides us with an immense wealth of food, resources and pure enjoyment - we know this. But what most of us don’t know is that the ocean’s tiniest organisms also provide us with more than half of the oxygen we breathe.
The ocean’s worst enemy
As huge as it may seem, the ocean is not the living infinite that amazed 19th century explorers. Today, we’ve become the ocean’s worst enemy. We tirelessly overexploit entire populations of fish, catching them faster than they can reproduce - and taking much more than we can actually eat. We dump tons of plastics overboard and spill chemicals and fertilisers into the ground and rivers, where they end up poisoning algae, fish, and even ourselves. Our industry, shipping and cruise boats make such intense noise that whales lose their bearings. Put simply, we are destroying the ocean that sustains and empowers us.
