WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
A renowned marine scientist is still working with the group she founded to help protect troubled places in the world’s oceans. Anyone can nominate a “Hope Spot” for consideration by Mission Blue and the group’s work has shown progress in helping make oceans healthier by repairing human-caused damage.
Despite celebrating her 88th birthday last August, Sylvia Earle still travels about 300 days of the year and just returned from the Cayman Islands, Brazil, Mozambique, Mexico, Antarctica and Europe. “I feel like an octopus with all arms fully engaged,” she says about her workload.
Earle’s sense of urgency is due to her unique position in history. The first woman to dive with scuba gear in the early 1950s, the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1990, she has explored the oceans deeper and longer than any other woman on the planet.
Now, when she returns to spots that once brimmed with fish and vibrant corals, she often only finds a gray underwater desert. While about 12 percent of the land around the world is under some form of protection, less than three percent of the ocean is protected.
“We have lost about 90 percent of sharks, tuna and other fish and 50 percent of coral,” she says. “Her Deepness,” as the world’s most renowned marine scientist is lovingly called by friends and fans, has been working to change that. In 2009, she started the nonprofit Mission Blue with 19 Hope Spots, defined as “areas critical to ocean health in that they have a significant amount of biodiversity.”
There are now 158 Hope Spots, “and counting,” Shannon Rake, Mission Blue’s Hope Spot Manager, emphasizes. Hope Spots can be as large as the coral triangle in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Sea and as well-known as the Galapagos Islands, or small and quite unknown, like a dozen seamounts off California’s coast. No matter how tiny, Earle is convinced every Spot counts. “Every place, even the small places, makes a difference,” she insists. “Take care of the ocean as if your life depends on it because it does.”
“The oceans are the heart of the planet. Without it, life is not possible.”
Initially, Hope Spots were identified by renowned scientists. But after the 2014 Netflix documentary “Mission Blue” made her idea popular and people started reaching out to the nonprofit, Earle opened the process up to the public. She receives up to 100 nomination requests per year that are reviewed by a committee.
When she started exploring the seas decades ago, humankind thought the oceans were so vast they could handle any amount of trash, toxic pollutants and fishing boats. Earle was among the first to sound the alarm.
Some Hope Spots are already fully protected marine areas and the designation is meant to help keep the protections in place when governments change or funds dry up. At other times, the nomination process for a Hope Spot can help galvanize the support of local governments and environmentalists to put legal protections in place. “Mission Blue is trying to help the local communities and ocean champions to move the needle,” Rake says. “We’re using our collective power and community activism to let elected officials know how important this place is.”
For instance, Cabo Pulmo in Mexico was so badly overfished that fishermen kept pulling empty nets from the sea. In the late 1990s, the fishing cooperatives joined forces with scientists, implemented fishing regulations and replaced income from fishing with ecotourism. “The tuna industry was very against [the no-take designation] because they thought their catch would decline but it ended up being the reverse,” Rake remembers.
“Every Hope Spot is on a different journey,” Rake says, referring to widely varying local regulations.
Earle’s favorite Hope Spot might be the Gulf of Mexico. Earle was 12 when her parents moved the family from New Jersey to a beach house in Florida. The ocean became her playground. “It’s where I first took the plunge as a kid and saw what life is like underwater.” It was also in Florida that she first became aware that nature was being destroyed for human consumption.
Mission Blue cooperates with more than 200 ocean conservation groups worldwide, aiming to galvanize local, regional, national and international protection. Some are well known, such as the Ocean Elders, ambassadors for the oceans who include primatologist Jane Goodall, filmmaker James Cameron, mogul Richard Branson and musician Neil Young. Earle speaks of “creating a network of hope. The idea is to get people who can weigh in at a level that transcends political boundaries.”
While being fully aware of the damage done, Earle keeps coming back to the positive changes. “This past year, some tangible actions have been taken that are cause for optimism,” she says, referring to the UN Ocean Treaty that aims to protect 30 percent of the oceans by 2030 and the Biodiversity Treaty. “The Biodiversity Treaty recognizes that we’re on a downhill slide to lose at least a million species by the end of this century if we keep doing what we’re doing.”
Earle acknowledges, “We’re using the old model of consuming nature without being concerned about the impact on the next 10 years, the next hundred years, the next thousand years.” However, she points out that the numbers of the California condor and other species that were on the brink of extinction have been successfully restored.
When people ask her what they can do to help, the mother of 3 and grandmother of 4 tells them to focus on what they love. “You know, we’re causing the problems,” she says. “So we can also cause solutions. You can make change right now, at home. You can make change every day with what you eat, what you wear, with how you vote, with what you plant in your garden if you have access to a yard, with the organizations you join.
And of course, anybody can nominate a Hope Spot.
“We should look at this as the best time ever to do something,” Earle insists. “It’s just getting to the point where people realize the urgency. We have to change if we are to survive. But we do know now and we know what to do.”
Reasons to be Cheerful is a nonprofit editorial project that strives to be a tonic for tumultuous times.
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