Thanks for reading yesterday, and coming back today for more. It delights me that this topic interests you, and that you can’t wait to find out why protecting our ocean will benefit you. Did you know that the estimated net worth of coral reefs and the ecosystem services they provide is about $29.2 billion/year? I have seen a few examples of figures of this magnitude, but their message is the same. This $h*t is worth protecting. Imagine a time you went to a beach (if not a beach, then imagine a time you were mesmerized by marine life in an aquarium or on TV). That beach is pristine, there are white sands, no trash, gorgeous healthy plantlife all around the coastline. You dive into the ocean and you see bright, neon colors of live, vibrant coral reefs. The reef is just alive and full of reef fish, octopus, lobsters, crabs. A world abundant. Now imagine that same beach but this time, it’s crowded with people. Each of these people has brought an ice chest and …

There is this term in science we often use to describe how one generation views the ocean, versus a past generation: shifting baselines. This term was first coined by Daniel Pauly, a renown fisheries biologist who warned us that continuing to fish like we do will undoubtedly lead to overfishing and severe issues for our oceans, and ourselves. He wasn’t wrong, that’s exactly what happened for several fisheries around the US and the world. Now as we try to climb back out of this hole we’ve dug ourselves, we’ve discovered that this “shifting baselines” is a real situation. This means that the fisheries, the coral reef ecosystems, the rainforests that we see today is what we refer to as our “baseline”. This is what we need to protect, because it’s all that we have left. Let’s get grim… there is about 10% of live coral reef in the Caribbean. That is amazing right? Can you believe that is all that is left? But imagine if you were a scientist, a diver, a recreational fisher, a …