World Ocean Day 2019: Together we can protect and restore our ocean

Mayanglambam Ojit Kumar Singh *

The English peasant John Clare told his children, “I used to drop down under a bush & scribble the fresh thoughts on the crown of my hat as I found nature then.” Rig Veda says ‘Let all the best things come from all the side’. Our generation too will depend on that alertness and freshness that nature provides.

Exploring the woods and oceans must be there before the exploration of webs and surfs! “Nature-deficit disorder,” is overcome easily by imagining about nature, experiencing fieldwork, science, journalism, activism, and policy to make life livable for us all.

Most widely accepted theory of the origin of life says that life began in the ocean. The oceans occupy more than 70% of the Earth’s surface and 95% of the biosphere. Life in the sea is roughly 1000 times older than the genus Homo where we humans belong to. Seas and Oceans never fail to cause surprises, beauties and thrills whatsoever still unexplored are they!

Saira Obaidullah says as
The sea, the sea, the glorious, emerald sea,
Stretches as far as my sight carries me.
What tranquility, what treasures, what beauties dwell
In her fathomless depth, only God can tell.
Sometimes, I find her as gentle as a mother to her child.
Yet, when furious, she is as cruel as the beasts in the wild.
As I sit by the sea, watching the evening sun descend low,
The silver ripples shiver and the golden waters glow.
Oh sea,oh sea, oh glorious boundless sea.
Thou glitter like silver, as the moon shines upon thee.
We are born to fade away and some day we would never -
Return to cherish the glories of God, which would be there forever.

Hundreds of thousands of species are living in our oceans, and we continue to find more every day. The oceans help regulating the temperature of the earth, absorbing solar heat and redistributing it around the world. As much as they give life, oceans are also a source of means of livelihoods of millions. A healthy world ocean is critical to our healthy survival and sustenance.

Every June 8 of each year is celebrated as the World Oceans Day and it provides a unique opportunity to honour, help protect, and conserve our world’s shared ocean. It helps in attending to the call that oceans are essential to food security and the health and survival of all life; it powers our climate and is a critical part of the biosphere.

The oceans are important because they generates most of the oxygen we breathe, help feed us with the rich biodiversity, regulate our climate, clean the water we drink, offer a pharmacopoeia of medicines and provide limitless inspiration!

Together we can protect and restore our ocean

Oceans are greatly impacted upon by the human activities in many negative ways. Over extraction of the resources such as fishes by predatory means and release of wastes and toxic substances knowingly or unknowingly are major sources of ocean pollution. The scales of destructions and misuses are so much and these can be reduced and solved only by global efforts. This year the World Ocean day is having the theme of ‘Together we can protect and restore our ocean’.

When you lead or participate in World Oceans Day events and activities, you are both celebrating our blue planet and uniting with a global community of leaders and change makers to protect and restore our ocean. It is opined that World Oceans Day 2019 – with the 24-member World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council helping empower people of all ages to become leaders in their communities – will rally the world to stop ocean plastic, a growing crisis facing society and our shared ocean.

World Oceans Day 2019 will build on personal awareness, actions, and commitments to reduce single-use plastic, and mobilize action on the scale necessary to bring about real change. We can be leaders by rallying others - including families, friends, schools, local businesses, organizations, and corporations - for greater involvement!

Learning the wealth of diverse and beautiful ocean creatures and habitats, how our daily actions affect them, and how we are all interconnected will surely help developing the sense of belongingness. Encouraging individuals to think about what the ocean means to them and what it has to offer all of us with hopes of conserving it for present and the future generations.

We all are connected to the oceans directly or indirectly. Hence taking care of our own backyards and helping our community we are acting as a caretaker of our ocean. Making small modifications in our everyday habits will make a difference to help our blue planet even more. It is only when we know that oceans are important and at the same time fragile that we will get the motivation to save and guard our oceans. Let’s cooperate in making the ocean a livable space and to cherish forever.