What Can You See, On the Horizon?

Why do the White Gulls Cry?

Inspired by Annie Lennox’s “Into the West” and the wisdom of ocean restoration

What can you see, on the horizon? Do you see what I see—oceans that once teemed with life now falling silent? Where white gulls once wheeled and cried above fish-filled waters, there is now an eerie quiet. The gulls are fewer. The fish have vanished. The plankton pastures that once bloomed in brilliant greens across our Blue Planet lie barren and gray.

Across the sea, a pale moon rises over waters that no longer shimmer with the bioluminescent dance of a trillion tiny lives. The moon’s silver light falls upon a darkening deep, where the fundamental rhythm of ocean life—the ancient pulse of plankton blooms that have sustained all marine creatures for eons—now stutters and fails.

Why do the white gulls call? They call because they are hungry. They call because the sardines, the anchovies, the krill that filled their bellies have disappeared. They call because something essential has been stolen from the sea, something so small we cannot see it with our eyes, yet so vast in its absence that the entire ocean mourns.

The Theft of the Red Dust

The thief is invisible, unintentional, yet devastating. Rising CO₂ from our fossil fuel burning has done more than warm the atmosphere—it has changed the very breathing of the land. Grasses in the world’s drylands, drinking in this excess carbon dioxide, grow more densely, their roots gripping the soil ever tighter. What was once bare earth, exposed to wind, is now held fast. The mineral-rich dust—iron-laden, life-giving red dust—that once blew freely across oceans on the breath of the wind, nourishing the plankton pastures, can no longer take flight.

We have choked off the ocean’s food supply as surely as if we’d dammed every river that feeds it.

The result? A dust drought. Ocean pastures starving. Plankton blooms collapsing. Fish populations crashing. Seabirds dying. Whales swimming through empty seas. And with this ecological collapse, the ocean’s power to cool our planet through cloud formation and carbon sequestration has withered. The great blue lung of our world struggles to breathe.

The Gray Ships and the Red Dust

But here is where our tale takes a turn toward hope—a turn as unexpected and necessary as the Tolkein’s wonderous Fellowship’s choice to travel into devastated territories even as all seemed lost.

We can restore what has been taken. We can replenish the missing mineral dust. We can bring life back to the ocean pastures.

Imagine gray ships—not warships, but vessels of ocean pasture restoration—sailing out across the vast blue. In their holds, they carry not weapons but hope in the form of finely ground, iron-rich natural mineral dust. Red as the earth itself. Red that begets the greening of ocean rebirth and life.

These ships will sail to the dying ocean pastures—those vast regions where sunlight pours down on lifeless water, where nutrients wait below but are unable to nourish and flourish in surface waters, where the missing ingredient is nothing more than the sparsest sprinkling of a hundred tonnes of mineral dust across tens of thousands of square kilometers.

The Blooming

When this red dust meets the sea, something miraculous happens—something that has already happened, been measured, been proven. The ocean remembers how to live.

Within days, the water transforms. Plankton bloom in numbers beyond counting, turning the gray seas the most beautiful emerald green. The bloom is visible from space—a vast garden suddenly sprung to life. Zooplankton swarm to feast on the phytoplankton. Small fish gather in schools that shimmer like living clouds. Larger fish follow. Seabirds return, the white gulls cries no longer mournful but ecstatic. Whales arrive to find their feeding grounds restored.

You might like to listen to the inspirational Annie Lennox while you read on. Follow this YouTube link. Into The West 

This is not theory. This is not fantasy. In 2012, the Haida Gwaii salmon restoration project did exactly this. A single vessel, carrying mineral dust, sparked an ocean bloom that led to the largest salmon return in history—nearly a billion dollars in economic benefit, countless lives saved, an ecosystem reborn.

The ocean has not forgotten how to heal. It waits only for us to remember our role as stewards, not conquerors.

The Fellowship of the Living Planet

In Tolkien’s great tale, the Fellowship understood something profound: that even the smallest person can change the course of the future. That hope persists in the darkest hours. That the journey must be made, even when the destination seems impossibly far.

Our gray ships represent a new Fellowship—not of elves and hobbits, but of scientists and sailors, indigenous communities and visionaries, people who understand that it is late but not too late. People who refuse the comfortable despair of “we can’t” and instead ask “how soon can we begin?”

This Fellowship carries not one ring but millions of grains of mineral dust. Each grain a seed of possibility. Each voyage a quest to restore balance. Each restored ocean pasture a victory for all life.

The task ahead is vast but achievable:

• Restore the plankton pastures across the world’s high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll ocean regions
• Bring back the fish that feed billions of people
• Revive the marine clouds that cool the planet and bring rain to parched lands
• Sequester billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide in restored ocean biomass
• Detoxify the seas, allowing healthy plankton to biofix mercury and sink it safely to the ocean floor
• Reverse ocean acidification by consuming CO₂ before it becomes acid
• Restore the foundation of the marine food web that supports all ocean life

The Pale Moon Rises

Across the sea, a pale moon rises. But this time, it rises over waters beginning to heal. The moon illuminates not emptiness but abundance. Its light catches on the backs of fish, the spray of whale breath, the white wings of gulls that no longer call in hunger but in celebration.

This is our Undying Lands—not a place we sail to and abandon this world, but the very seas we must restore if life itself is to continue. The ships sail not away from Middle-earth but toward its salvation. They carry the red dust that will green the seas. They carry hope measured not in poetry but in tonnes of iron, square kilometers of blooms, billions of fish.

Before It Is Too Late

The urgency cannot be overstated. Every year we delay, more ocean life is lost. More plankton pastures collapse. More fish populations crash beyond recovery. More carbon accumulates in our atmosphere. More heat builds in our seas. More droughts parch our lands as the ocean’s cooling clouds fail to form.

But unlike Frodo’s quest, which only one hobbit could undertake, this Fellowship needs every hand. We need scientists to refine the methods. We need sailors to carry the dust. We need communities to support the work. We need governments to permit and fund the restoration. We need artists to tell the story. We need children to understand what we’re fighting for.

The question Tolkien asked echoes across our dying seas: Will we turn back from the quest because it seems too hard? Or will we journey on, even into the darkness, trusting that small acts—a few hundred tonnes of dust on a vast ocean—can save a world?

The Call of the Gulls

Listen. The white gulls are calling. But if we act now—if we send forth our gray ships laden with red dust, if we restore the ocean pastures, if we nourish and replenish the plankton blooms—those calls will change from cries of hunger to songs of abundance.

What can you see, on the horizon?

I see gray ships sailing. I see red dust meeting blue water. I see green blooms spreading across the sea. I see fish returning in uncountable numbers. I see whales breaching in joy. I see clouds forming, rain falling, forests greening, fires quenching. I see a Blue Planet remembering how to breathe.

I see hope.

The Fellowship is forming. The quest has begun. The ships are ready.

All that remains is to sail into the west—into the dying seas—and bring them back to life.

Before it is too late.

Take Up Your Oar

This is not someone else’s quest. This is ours. The ocean pastures can be restored. The science is proven. The methods are established. What’s missing is the will, the funding, the collective determination to act.

Learn more about ocean pasture restoration at russgeorge.net. Discover how the Haida Gwaii project brought back the salmon. Understand the science of plankton blooms and climate regulation. Share these stories. Support this work. Join the Fellowship.

The gray ships must sail. The red dust must reach the sea. The plankton pastures must bloom again.

And they will—if we choose to make it so.

The white gulls are calling. It’s time to answer.