Perreault Magazine - 25 -
BP:
In 1990, you were named the first woman to serve as Chief Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency that conducts underwater research, manages fisheries, and monitors marine spills. You left the position after eighteen months because you felt that you could accomplish more working independently of the government.
What is today’s most pressing and weighty message that the population should hear from you?
SE:
The ocean is alive. It is the cornerstone of Earth’s life support system, and the cornerstone of the ocean’s life support system is life in the ocean. Living creatures generate oxygen. Every fish fertilizes the water in a way that generates the plankton that ultimately leads back into the food chain, but also yields oxygen and grabs carbon; it’s a part of what makes the ocean function and what makes the planet function.
Take away the ocean and we don’t have a planet that works. Take away life in the ocean and we don’t have a planet that works. No ocean, no us. No blue, no green. All life needs water, and all life needs other forms of life to have the complex communities of life – ecosystems of life ¬– that ultimately, over four-and-a-half billion years, arrived at a state that is just right for humankind.
Protecting the ocean really protects ourselves. We are all sea creatures. We all depend on the ocean to maintain conditions on Earth that make life hospitable. We need a global movement of people using their unique talents and skills to create innovative solutions to climate change and policies that fully protect vast networks of ocean areas, both near-shore and in the high seas.
The US Government and the United Nations are beginning to take greater strides than ever before to safeguard large ocean regions. World leaders are gathering at meetings like the US Department of State’s Our Ocean Conference last June and the recent meetings at the UN to protect the High Seas, which cover half of our planet. People are waking up to the reality that NOW is the time to act.
The ocean is not too big to fail. Fifty years ago, we could not see limits to what we could put into the ocean, or what we could take out. Fifty years into the future, it will be too late to do what is possible right now. We are in a “sweet spot” in time. We need to convey a sense of urgency because the world is changing quickly. Never again will there be a better time to take actions that can insure an enduring place for ourselves within the living systems that sustain us. We are at an unprecedented, pivotal point in history when the decisions we make in the next ten years will determine the direction of the next 10,000.
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