What We Once Used As

When I Was 12, We Moved From New Jersey To Florida. The Gulf Of Mexico Was Literally My Backyard. Every Day, I Could See The Ocean. At Low Tide I Went Out And Played In Seagrass Meadows That Used To Come Right Up To The Shore, Filled With Tiny Seahorses, Pipefish And Soft Corals. There Was So Much Life! But Then I Witnessed The Change, The Loss Of The Shoreline, The Loss Of The Mangrove Trees, The Loss Of The Seagrass Meadows. Shallow Bay Areas Were Turned Into Parking Lots.

This Much Is Certain: We Have The Power To Damage The Sea, But No Sure Way To Heal The Harm.

People Still Do Not Understand That A Live Fish Is More Valuable Than A Dead One, And That Destructive Fishing Techniques Are Taking A Wrecking Ball To Biodiversity.

We Have The Power To Abstain From Destructive Behavior.

We Humans Have This Idea That The Ocean Is So Big, So Vast, So Resilient That It Doesn't Matter What We Do To It. That May Have Been True 1,000 Years Ago. But In The Last 100, Especially The Last 50 Years, We Have Destroyed The Assets That Make Our Lives Possible.