More than Googling and less oogling is needed to save the oceans.

When it comes to raising awareness about the oceans there is a real challenge in how to reach people so they might give some of their attention to the crisis in our oceans. The problem may be that the ocean is a big place and we humans have scant contact with it. Where we have or want to have contact with it is in those places where the ocean is at its most alluring. And nothing is more alluring than the beauties near shore, coral reefs and beaches.

Ocean beauty spots top everyone’s list of where they hope to one day go. The bathing beauties hold the top of the list by such an overwhelming factor how might one interest people in paying attention to the big blue part of the ocean far from shore. Out where it is deep and foreboding, the world of the unknown, or worse the world of scary stuff like sharks and pirates and the perfect storm.

Almost violet it was so clear, as clear as the clearest lakes on the planet, yet salty ocean water, and roughly the size of the Mediterranean – this, say researchers, is the clearest and most lifeless patch of ocean in the world. And it is in the middle of the Pacific.

Ocean pastures becoming lifeless deserts.

The distant blue part of the ocean is, however, where the oceans are most at risk. Out there where one might think that ocean waters being shown to becoming ever more clear and bluer than blue could be a good thing.

Instead I find this to be the worst news ever for life on earth as reported in the New Scientist.

But where attention ought to be focused and where it is most easily focused is really all about advertising science and not ocean science. You can always capture the attention of people with the picture of a scantily clad beauty, even better if that beauty is surrounded by more natural beauty. Once there, it’s a simple matter of making the pitch, ask for what your heart desires and in the case of most who are selling the public to help protect the ocean, what is desired is cash. So come hither sailor and talk to me, buy me something, anything, just be happy and hand over the cash.

If you do a little Googling along with the oogling you’ll swiftly see that the vast majority of ocean environmental pitches are made on behalf of one form or another of bathing beauty at the beach.

The Usual Suspects

It’s all coral all the time along with beaches in need of some careful watching over. The story is always the perfect Hollywood melodrama, big bad guys ruthlessly bashing the defenseless. The usual suspects are marched out in and lined up in the perp line up.

There’s the story of the bad fisherman, the bad oil-worker, the bad navy sailors, the bad whalers, the bad freighter tanker captains, the bad cruise ship, any and all “bad people” or “bad memes.”  All this carefully avoids the placement of any blame on the collective audience. Ahem… cough cough…the shills, the marks, the suckers who came to view the beauties but are presented with glimpses of the beasts and fleeced in process.

So next time your find yourself being enthralled by Her Deepness’ gorgeous reefs, or hope spots, or Cousteau family jewels, or a hundred other bathing beauties at the beach. Take a moment to think about what is really going on in the ocean.

Consider that while the water becomes ever more clear it is becoming ever more lifeless. Think of an ocean of life being an ocean that ought to be blue green not clear blue. Think of ocean beauty as murky as a broth of life not so clear the blue turns ever darker into a deep purple and lifeless black.

It’s all your fault and mine

By knowing that your CO2 emissions, you know those 2 or 3 tonnes of CO2 that went into the air destined to kill ocean life from your flight to your ocean paradise. Imagine what you might do to help the ocean convert your deadly CO2 from being ocean doom to an ocean bloom. And by the way ocean blooms are what make cooling clouds that reflect away hot sunlight and provide cooling shade and it is the ocean blooms that make the vast majority of clouds on our cloudy blue planet. So next time you are smiling at a beautiful blonde at the beach remember you owe your being in the Goldilocks Zone to ocean phytoplankton 😉

Here’s the pitch. We hope we’ve still got your attention. What the ocean needs from you is just a little dust in the wind.

If you wanted to help you’d carry a thimble full of rock dust on your next flight to an ocean paradise.

Along the way you’d toss it out of the window as you flew over the bluest ocean.

Your thimbleful of rock dust (ideally ground up hematite iron ore) provides sufficient mineral micro-nutrients to nourish ocean plankton. Enough thimble fulls and it becomes a sustainable bloom.

Your green blooming plankton would turn the ocean blue-green and capture and convert all of your flights CO2 emissions into ocean life itself.

Bora Bora in clear Pacific waters

A plane full of flyers might collectively release one single passengers allotted small carry on bag of rock dust.

In doing so they would give back to the ocean and save it for their grandchildren instead of just spewing into it a deadly ocean acidifying CO2.

Not too certain about asking your airline to drop your thimble of rock dust on your next flight?

My Research Ship Weatherbird II In Mid-Atlantic

That’s OK, if you’ll spring for the price of one fancy tropical cocktail for Mother Ocean while you are enjoying her beach beauties, we’ve got an alternative means to do it for you.

We know this works, we’re well along in the study of the results from world’s largest ocean dust replenishment and restoration demonstration project. The work will continue, the world needs your help.

IT JUST WORKS!

This article derives from one I posted in 2007 under a different moniker.