This Earth Day, Celebrate the Oceans Too

Over four decades ago I was inspired as a young boy by a very moving television ad. A Native American  warrior stood in a beautiful forest. Standing at a road side, litter thrown from a passing car fell to his feet.  A silent tear ran down his strongly featured face.  This moving ad was a major part of an American campaign to clean up our roads and the local environment in the USA.

With burning rivers, lead toxified air and polluted waterways, Americans were angry and concerned about the health of their children and our ecosystems.

Other grass roots efforts inspired by citizens in the early 1970s resulted in the clean air act, the clean water act and the EPA, all under a conservative administration.

At seven years old, I lead a road side clean up to pick trash up in my community  Decades later I am an ocean activist hoping to inspire similar campaigns for the rest of our fragile planet.  We are overfishing our oceans, especially large predators like swordfish, sharks and tuna at an unsustainable rate. Oil spills have destroyed marine ecosystems and others are imminent. Millions of gallons of waste and sewage still enter the oceans- including the San Francisco Bay-  from developed nations with the resources to prevent this pollution.

This last week I had the pleasure of partnering with a community group and directly reach over 5000 school children discussing sharks, marine ecosystems and threats to biodiversity.  The week culminated with the Pacifica Beach Coalition Earth Day beach and road clean up and celebration. Joined by young people, over 8000 community members cleaned up trash, plastic and invasive plants from the city. School children made large banners of sharks with the motto, Take a Bite Out of Litter. Today, plastic bag bans have been introduced in several Bay area cities.  Our group was an early part of the coalition to ban plastic bags in Marin cities and the county staunching the flow of this waste that kills millions of marine animals from sea turtles to whales..

We have the power to protect the earth and the ocean.  As Sea Stewards we are protecting the entire earth, including the other 71%- our world oceans.  We are hopeful that the youth of the 2010s will take action to protect the ocean for the next generations.  We will be fighting for this, protecting sharks and critical habitat in the Bay and ocean.  Our new Patch Blog, Ocean Voices, will give voice to issues from plastic pollution to shark finning.  Join us celebrating the earth, and celebrating another important day on June 8 for World Oceans Day in San Rafael.

Lets celebrate, love and protect the entire Earth including the Oceans.