Each holiday season on World Ocean Radio we return with a special reading of "Christmas at Sea", an evocative poem by Robert Louis Stevenson written in 1883. Stevenson, the son of a lighthouse engineer, had intimate, first-hand knowledge of extreme weather, storms and nor'westers.
This week we're providing our listeners with a list of intentions that describe the World Ocean Observatory's statement of beliefs that drives all action. And we provide suggestions for those who may ask, "What can I do?" while encouraging determination to pursue the causes that you believe in. This week's episode is a statement of belief and intent that dates back to the original principles of W2O, begun more than 20 years ago.
Here is a favorite World Ocean Radio episode in which we highlight an innovative company in Iceland that has developed a product from fatty acid-rich fish skin to treat chronic wounds so that new skin can grow. Called Omega 3 Wound and developed by Kerecis Limited, this FDA-approved skin is grafted onto damaged human tissue such as from burns or diabetic wounds, and is ultimately converted into living tissue. This product illustrates the capacity to use 100% of the fish, thereby maximizing the value of the catch and accelerating economic opportunity around the globe.
The debate over the reality of climate change is over. There is no place on land or sea that is immune from the effects of extreme weather, fire, flood, inundation, erosion, and social impacts. This week we're discussing carbon as the key culprit to our current condition, and the multitudinous methods and suggestions and investments to remove carbon from the atmosphere and the ocean. Is it possible we've made this all too complicated? Might the solutions be right there, in front of us, having already been discovered at the technological, political, and regulatory levels? What does it look like if we apply simplicity, imagination, collaboration, and energy to guide our way forward, toward solutions?
The face of war is changing quickly: cheap, unmanned, versatile drones and remotely operated aircraft, coupled with rapidly-advancing technology, satellite communications, ambiguous algorithms, accountability, and responsibility are shifting the shapes of war around the globe, especially as it pertains to the unseen and largely unmonitored high seas. With a world struggling to keep up, the instruments of war are becoming invisible, ephemeral and uncontrollable. What laws are in place to protect the ocean and the natural systems on which life is sustained?
This week on World Ocean Radio we're talking about global communication, asking how we as ocean communicators break through, and how we create messaging that resonates and reaches the millions of citizens whose lives are so dependent on the ocean’s bounty. And we highlight two ocean heroes, Dr. Sylvia Earle and Sir David Attenborough, whose quiet successes have combined to communicate with and to reach millions of citizens of the ocean worldwide.
This week on World Ocean Radio we are examining Renewell, a company that has developed a method to repurpose abandoned oil wells across the United States into displacement reserves, effectively capping the more than 2 million abandoned, methane-leaking oil wells and converting them into renewable storage and renewed financial return.
This week on World Ocean Radio, two new books for readers to consider this fall: "The High Seas: Greed, Power, and The Battle for the Unclaimed Ocean" by Olive Heffernan, and "What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World Ocean" by Helen Scales. Both books evoke hopeful possibility while exploring the extent of the ocean and the implications of ongoing exploitation and excess.
Insurance is everywhere, established to transfer risk or to compensate for loss. Deep-sea mining has attracted much attention lately, as we look to offshore exploration and extraction for energy and mineral resources. As the UN International Seabed Authority deliberates standards and regulations related to drilling into the ocean floor, insurers of deep-sea risk are calculating potential loss as potentially so great that no coverage would be adequate to cover the costs of consequence, and no payment large enough to mitigate the risk of deep-sea mining.
The maritime industry is a major contributor to our global systems: our economies, security, and stability. More than 80% of all international trade and transport moves across the ocean: shipbuilding, port operations, shipping, cruise lines, offshore energy, pipelines, salvage, communications, cables, insurance, ferries, exploration and science. This week we are discussing a 2023 United Nations review of maritime transport, and the technologies that rely on the men and women worldwide who work in the maritime industry.
As we discuss resiliency, adaptation, and mitigation of climate and ocean, we must also invent--not to merely rearrange the elements of an old plan, but to imaging and consider some things new and different. If the ocean movement is to embrace the change required to respond to challenges worldwide, we must imaging new ways forward, confident in our abilities to solve problems through imagination, action, and energetic response.
It has been nearly twenty years since the Ocean Literacy Principles and Framework were first adopted by classroom educators to promote the ocean as a central focus for climate, water, food, health, exploration, science, and more. Today it has been incorporated into the agenda of the UN IOC; it seems Ocean Literacy is riding a new wave of interest and possibility. This week on World Ocean Radio we are laying out the basic tenets and truths of Ocean Literacy, describing the foundational assumptions that underlie the matrix, including the first principle: the earth is one big ocean with many features.
Eustacy is a word used to describe worldwide changes of sea level. This is a new word for us: even though it seems we live in a eustatic world. We're using this newly-discovered word to distill the five areas of our existence where the ocean matters most: fresh water, the ocean-fresh water continuum, energy, food, health, and exchange.
This week on World Ocean Radio: synopsis of a recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission entitled "Call to All Voices of the Ocean – Consultation of Civil Society in Preparation of the Next United Nations Ocean Conference" addressing issues and providing recommendations and specific actions related to ocean climate, science, and policy. One glaring omission: a powerful specific call for action--a plan through communication that will amplify, advocate, educate, and initiate the change required to connect us all through the sea.
This week we are discussing two technological innovations—both bright ideas that could have huge impacts for useful, sustainable change for the future. The first is WaterCube, a machine that pulls vapor from the air and condenses it into liquid form for household use and disaster relief; the second is Sway Seaweed Packaging, a farmed seaweed application designed to create a compostable packaging that is biodegradable and chemical free.
As we review the state of climate change challenge and response, it becomes clear we are not succeeding. Is it possible to craft a new economic system that values natural resource sustainability over depletion of those resources? Can we conceive a new economics, a forward-directed system of financial valuation and exchange based on the asset value of Nature? We're discussing this and more this week on World Ocean Radio.
Plastic. It is ubiquitous. It is everywhere in our lives, yet we do not possess the cycle or recycle to continue production in a sustainable or environmentally friendly way. If offsets and recycling do not provide the answer to the plastic pollution problem, what does?
How old is water? Where on earth is water found? How is it circulated, cycled, and recycled? We know where water is distributed on the planet down to the fraction of a percentage. We know that water is finite in volume and its utility is constant. What happens when we pollute water? What happens when there is no water? We discuss this and more this week on World Ocean Radio.
World Ocean Observatory is ever in search of new systems that convert knowledge into action, especially as they relate to ocean education and communication. Here on World Ocean Radio we often discuss the concepts and principles of ocean literacy, and the ways in which they can be distilled into learning opportunities for educators and students everywhere. We are pleased to report a prospective turning point in the ocean literacy movement: concepts that have been articulated into a new report out of the first Ocean Literacy World Conference held in Venice, Italy 7-8 June, 2024.
This week on World Ocean Radio we are hailing the alewife: a species of herring found in the west Atlantic where they thrive along shore and seasonally move into estuaries before swimming up small streams to freshwater ponds to breed. Alewives are considered a “species of concern” by the US National Marine Fisheries, threatened by dams and re-channeling of streams that blocked their upstream trajectory each spring. Host Peter Neill recently communed with them as they spawned upstream; in this episode he proposes reasons for alewives to offer us hope.
"The state of the ocean is not good." So states Vidar Helgesen in the forward to the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) State of the Ocean Report that was released in May. This week on World Ocean Radio we are summarizing the findings.
On June 8th each year we come together as a global community to celebrate World Ocean Day, a date set aside to recognize our relationship with the ocean. Public awareness of ocean issues in the United States barely advances year on year, despite consistent efforts by conservation, ocean, and other environmental organizations like World Ocean Observatory whose mission it is to inform and educate. What is World Ocean Day meant to do? Do we have the will to coalesce around a single issue, to be informed and changed into a voice for change?
We have launched a Substack to share a plan for specific action and public participation. In this two-episode arch we reintroduce listeners to RESCUE: a 33-part series outlining a plan for specific action and public participation, providing a blueprint for how the ocean can save civilization. In the series we cover ocean topics related to Science, Policy, Energy and Technology, Finance and Ecosystem Services, Education and Ocean Literacy, Culture, and Human Health. RESCUE stands for: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, Engagement. Join the conversation on Substack for weekly free 4-minute reads: substack.com/@oceanblueprint
We have launched a Substack to share a plan for specific action and public participation. This week and next on World Ocean Radio, we will reintroduce listeners to RESCUE: a 33-part series outlining a plan for specific action and public participation, providing a blueprint for how the ocean can save civilization. In the series we cover ocean topics related to Science, Policy, Energy and Technology, Finance and Ecosystem Services, Education and Ocean Literacy, Culture, and Human Health. RESCUE stands for: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, Engagement. Join the conversation on Substack for weekly free 4-minute reads: substack.com/@oceanblueprint
After a recent visit to Japan, an island nation, World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill ponders, what if, as in Japan, we applied values individually, locally, and nationally to our purchases, foodways, institutions, public relations, our life choices? Look from the East, look from the West: are we not all islanders?
