• Things You Can Do
• Ocean Voices

1. Letters from the President

“Documenting ocean decline is not enough. We need to move beyond the obituaries.” —Marine Scientist Nancy Knowlton

Nancy Knowlton

IIn the 1950s I roamed the beaches of Long Island Sound, fishing for my breakfast and exploring tide pools before dinner. My grandfather often muttered about the “damned bunker boats” that were already stripping menhaden from these waters, but I took the ocean for granted.

When Knowlton was about eight years old, she started a project entitled “Density dependent migration in an intertidal marine gastropod.” She put hundreds of snails on a nearby boulder but failed to do the appropriate controls. Nancy Knowlton

Fast forward to the summer of 1980, eight years after being scuba-certified north of Boston and six years after discovering the wonder and warmth of coral reef diving. I was huddled in the dark with others in a small house above Discovery Bay, Jamaica, and Hurricane Allen was heading our way. We emerged the next morning to the spectacle of 30-foot (10-meter) waves crashing over new islets built from once-living corals. Below the surface, the vast fields of staghorn coral had been pulverized. Marine biologist Judy Lang and I tagged hundreds of survivors, and when these all died we tagged hundreds more, optimistically prepared to document the rebound that was not to be.

Such tales of doom and gloom—ecosystem collapse without recovery—have become the norm. Those of us who study the health of the ocean sometimes feel less like Ph.D.s and more like M.D.s. But medical doctors do not spend their careers writing ever-more-refined obituaries of their patients, and neither can we. Notwithstanding the media credo “If it bleeds, it leads,” the public is tired of tragedy and craves solutions and successes.

Nancy Knowlton, published by National Geographic Society, 2010

This is why I agreed to write "Citizens of the Sea." This National Geographic book commemorates the conclusion of the first Census of Marine Life, a ten-year global undertaking to understand what lived, lives and will live in the ocean, an effort that comes to its long-awaited climax this month. The book celebrates the beauty, mystery and bounty of the ocean and shows just why we must protect our watery planet.

I hope this book will inspire us all to seek solutions to the problems. Clear, inspiring communication about our ocean is critical to its survival, as all the concerns raised by scientists will amount to nothing if no one believes a healthy ocean is possible or cares enough to make it happen. When I founded the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography with my husband, marine biologist Jeremy Jackson, and ocean explorer Enric Sala, the goal was to train students who could bring hope and change to the ocean by breaking down barriers between the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. Easier said than done to be sure, but the Center has changed the culture at Scripps and is part of a growing trend to use interdisciplinary approaches to solve problems.

The Census team found this octopus species off Lizard Island in Australia, up to 40 feet (12 meters) below the surface. Julian Finn, Museum Victoria

With Jeremy, I now work to celebrate the successes we do have in our Beyond the Obituaries project, where the focus is not on what we have done (outputs) but the measurable successes we have achieved (outcomes). Inspired by the message of Don’t Be Such A Scientist by scientist-filmmaker Randy Olson, I have joined evangelicals in a climate change initiative, and draped myself in seaweed for a shoot for Vanity Fair. I help guide the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal website and I worked to bring the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef to the National Museum of Natural History, a magical project from the Institute For Figuring that combines conservation, art, science, mathematics and community. All was done with the recognition that there may be one ocean, but it has many audiences.

And yes, I still “do” science, because wonder is part of what makes the ocean worth saving. Most of the ocean is unexplored and undescribed, and a few square meters of coral reef has as many crab species as all of Europe. An expedition to the nearly pristine reefs of the Central Pacific showed me firsthand what a gold standard for a healthy ocean looks like. A yearly pilgrimage to study mass coral spawning always takes my breath away, while reminding me that the citizens of the sea need us to tell their story.