Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Sylvia Earle's Blue Mission

There's a terrific documentary, Mission Blue, that's now available on Netflix.  It's the life story of pioneering oceanographer and marine biologist, Sylvia Earle.



From the time she took her science quest underwater in the sixties until today, Dr. Earle has witnessed the wholesale destruction of the most important natural resource we have - our marine ecology. 

Mission Blue is a stark warning that we've put our oceans on the ropes and they won't take much more of our abuse.  We're remarkably complacent about this given that half the oxygen we breathe is generated by our oceans and fish remains the main protein source for the poorest on our planet. 

Earle argues that we still have time to turn this around, to re-seed the world's oceans with marine life, if we can only find the political will to make it happen.  That would mean, at the very least, corralling the industrial fishing fleets responsible for collapsing global fisheries, one after another, as they "fish down the food chain."  They're already in a self-induced death spiral that ends with empty oceans.  Why would any sane government enable that?  Yet we do.

It's a great documentary.  Check out Mission Blue.

3 comments:

WILLY said...

Thx MoS

Lorne said...

I have long maintained, Mound, that if more people watched nature documentaries, we would be far less cavalier about habitat destruction.

The Mound of Sound said...

Willy - we're pulling the same oar, no thx deserved. Lorne, I hope you understand how to reach people who need to watch this doc. BTW, once you've watched it at your leisure, a review would be in keeping.