Our Lungs of the Sea
- Carissa Welton
- 14 hours ago
- 3 min read
Twenty years ago, I got certified to SCUBA dive on our planet's largest, ancient reef system, the Coral Reef Triangle, off the coast of Nha Trang, Vietnam.
Usually when you go diving, your guides will take you to all the best places. But those are getting harder to find as global warming cooks our ocean relentlessly each year. I'll never forget swimming over my 1st coral graveyard in El Nido, Philippines 11 years ago.
It is everyone's right to understand climate change and become ocean literate. If I can help just 1 more kid understand, love and respect our oldest living relative, Grandma Ocean, this whole Beneath the Surface Book Tour will have been totally worth it.
This is an exciting time to be alive, here on the brink of climate collapse. Because there is always the possibility of some kind of utopian plot twist.
A new vision. People acting with hope.
There are already so many organizations working together in the Florida Keys to protect the ocean. It's really an honor for me to focus on them for the sequel to Beneath the Surface. These people have major hope core vibes and my hope is it will transmit to the new pages.
After launching the Blue Marble Series in the Coral Reef Triangle, I chose to focus on the world's 3rd largest reef system for the sequel: the majestic Florida Keys coral reef barrier.
Why didn't I just go in sequential order and set the sequel on the Great Barrier Reef?
Well, there are a couple of reasons for that:
Time is not linear or always sequential. An effect can happen way down the road and all the way across the map from its initial cause.
The USA is one of the largest contributors to the global boiling of our ocean, and I still haven't personally recovered from news of the devastating 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I carry solastagia for the fact I never got to see my country's only shallow reef coral barrier in their prime, before coral bleaching became a regular 21st century phenomena.
And there's simply no time like the present.
So as I mapped out the stories that comprise the Blue Marble Series, it became clear to me that after diving in the Coral Reef Triangle for over a decade, it was finally time to go home and search for hope. And man oh man, did I hit the jackpot!
This is the fascinating reality of exploitation and oppression. You will always find resistance, and often extraordinary resilience, wherever you find people and their homeland being mistreated and robbed.
We have many lessons to learn from our ancient coral reef systems, our lungs of the sea, and the people who protect them.
My hope is that the Blue Marble Series will continue to reveal all of these hidden wonders and draw connections between life on land and ocean life. Fundamentally, every creature on Earth, even the desert flower, relies on the activity of the sea.
Ocean Literacy Principle 1 teaches us that there's truly just 1 body of water that connects us all, from the Detroit River to the Coral Reef Triangle. And the Blue Marble Series Principle 1 is that all we are obliged to do in life is take care of our ocean and each other.
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