Dr. Sylvia Earle said “with every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you are connected to the sea. No matter where you live.” And it’s true.

Every other breath you take comes from the phytoplankton and seaweeds of the ocean. The ocean covers 70 percent of the world’s surface. We live on a water planet. All of the oceans and seas on Earth are interconnected making ONE global ocean. Life originated in the sea, most likely in deep sea hydrothermal vents about 4 billion years ago. It’s where we all come from and the health of our planet depends on having a healthy ocean.

Author Rachel Carson once wrote “It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”

I hope we can all do what we can to respect and protect our dear Mother Ocean.

This is a detail from a poster I did for NOAA back in 2002 on sustainable fisheries, with exquisite digital coloring by Terry Pyles.