Sylvia Earle: A Celebration of Oceans

Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California. I am John Racanelli, Vice Chairman of the Board of the Bay Institute of San Francisco. I will serve as your Chair for this evening's program entitled "A Celebration of Oceans", more on that in a moment. Another thing we would like to pay homage to tonight is a wonderful person who has who was in her lifetime as important to water in California as any one and that was Jean Auer. Besides being the President of the Board of the Commonwealth Club she was also a really a tireless public servant who served as Mayor of Hillsborough, who was involved was on the State Water Board and really was a champion of water issues for this state. And it's really in tribute to her tonight that we are launching this program. In fact tonight's program is a joint effort between the Club and Bay Institute. One of San Francisco Bay's most affective advocates and in fact a great friend of Jean's throughout its life and while she was actively involved. Thanks to TBI we are here at Pier 39's Aquarium at the Bay. In the near future the Bay Institute intends to purchase the aquarium and make it an even greater educational and conservation resource for the Bay and its people so many good things on the horizon. But now it's my pleasure to introduce our distinguished speaker. I have been lucky enough to have known Dr. Sylvia Earle for almost 20 years, since our first dive together in that Kelp Forest exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. At that time I introduced Dr. Earle as "The women who is plunged to the deepest depths of any women in history". While technically true I think I may have missed the mark a bit in trying to capture the essence of this remarkable woman. Doctor Earle is an oceanographer, explorer, author, lecturer and experienced field research scientist who has dedicated her life to opening people's eyes to the wonder, importance and fragility of the oceans. She is the founder of DOER Marine which is a company that is a pioneer in technology for scientific Ocean Research and Exploration. She has authored more 100 books in publications. She has led 50 expeditions worldwide. She has logged over 6'500 hours under water in connection with her research. She has served for the last 10 years as the National Geographic Society's explorer in residence. Oh, and she also holds the record for solo diving at 1000 meters that's unattached solo diving. So that's why I got inspired to say what I said back many years ago at the aquarium. At heart however Dr. Earle is a naturalist. One who grew up exploring the wild places of Florida and diving in it then as zero waters. With all that she has done and feels she has yet to do, she tells me her greatest joy is in sharing what she knows with young people, from first graders to grad students. Her incredible capacity to to prevent me from dropping my notes on the floor to inspire them and to install a sense of their place in the natural scheme of things may well be her greatest legacy. Dr. Earle recently founded Deep Search International, a non profit foundation dedicated to inspiring ocean conservation and exploring the world's oceans. She tells me and in fact we are working together on some things there that will be seeing some pretty cool stuff coming out of that work in the very near future. Tonight Dr. Earle will share her vision for the future of the world's oceans as well as her ardent belief that every one of us is at heart a sea creature. On behalf of the Commonwealth Club and the Bay Institute please join me in welcoming very warmly a true champion of the sea and one who has earned the nickname "her deepness". Dr. Sylvia Earle. Thank you John thanks to all of you for coming here, what a great place to have a talk about the ocean. Here at the Aquarium, it's one of my grandson's favorite places to come. I have four grandsons by the way. As John indicated I have a somewhat checkered past which includes having three children and four grandsons. I have had mostly as my backbone being a scientist and explorer, someone who has been smitten with the oceans since I was a small child, but it has also led me to Washington where for a while I was the Chief Scientist at Noah under the first Bush administration. I made such a fuzz about the fish; they called me the stergeon general. Somebody has to speak for the fish after all. I have also been involved as a business women I have started a couple of small companies, right across the Bay from here. And I have been on the Boards of some major corporations which provides certainly an interesting prospective well an important perspective on what makes the world go round. But I think really in my deepest heart of hearts, what drives me the most is the people I have come to know and love as my family, my parents, my kids and now the grandsons coming along, because through their eyes especially the youngsters, I continually ask the question what is the world going to be like going forward considering how fast it has changed not entirely for the better, during my lifetime. And what can I personally what can all of us do about it to make it a difference? To do what my mom suggested that I should do as a kid; leave the place better than I found it. She said that when looking in my room. Or my dad advice that sticks with me too as I had a habit of taking things apart to see how they worked which was fine except I didn't know how to put them back together again. And he said well you know before you destroy something, you should at least know how they work. And that has helped me in good stead thinking about what we are doing to the planet. It's all right to make a place for ourselves within the natural systems that sustain us. But we ought to know how it works before we start messing it up. And we have not done a very good job about doing that on the land and now, look at the ocean. We somehow look at the surface of the ocean and perhaps think everything is okay, because from the surface it looks pretty much today the way it has for all preceding history. Not withstanding the fact that I went to school in Clear Water Florida when Clean Water had clear water and it doesn't any more, the Bay here had clear earth water than it does today. So even from the surface just a week ago I was in the Chesapeake Bay, reflecting on how it must have been when Captain John Smith was there 400 years ago or what it was like a 100 years ago or 50 years ago, what it's like today? What will it be like in the future? I can look at this Bay and ask those same questions. What was it like when Richard Henry Dana came to California and saw trees right down to the shore and saw a fish right from the side of the boot, in clear water for heaven sake much clearer at least than what we see today. I am asked sometimes provocatively "Who needs the ocean anyway?" There was a reporter in Australia who asked me that sort of rocked me back on my flippers when I first got that question; but it made me think. My response was something like well, "Okay, who needs the ocean? Let's get rid of it, dry it up, what difference would it make?" Think Mars, there is the planet the only place in the Solar System, perhaps in the universe that has hope for sustaining human life not six billion of us for heaven's sakes but it might sustain a few of us if we take along our life support system with us. The atmosphere in Mars is much like the early atmosphere of Earth. You know 95 plus percent carbon dioxide. It's taken a long time. The better part of four and a half have billion years of fine tuning to get this place pretty much the way we like it, with 20 percent or so oxygen in the atmosphere and the rest largely nitrogen. Tiny little bit of carbon dioxide just enough to keep the green plants growing. To keep that motor running, that churns out oxygen through photosynthesis; continues to grab carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere maintaining spaceship earth pretty much the way we like it. Do away with the ocean; you do away with the underpinnings of our life support system. This after she had explained to me that the reporter in Australia that she doesn't eat fish, get seasick, she doesn't swim, people don't drink salt water, who needs the ocean? Well, think about it. We all need the ocean. Every breath we take, every drop of water we drink, we are connected to the ocean. It doesn't matter where on the planet you live About 70 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from this little green critters out there in the ocean truly the the blue engine, the green engine that drives the way the planet works, many people are concerned about what's happening to forest on the land and we should be because that's another great source of maintaining the stability of the atmosphere, of the climate of the things that we have taken for granted. Couple of weeks ago I gave a talk at the world bank, and I flashed a picture up on the screen of earth form space, my favorite picture of all time not withstanding all those great pictures at the national geographic turns out that I love, I have done a few myself, because I think you can communicate so beautifully with images. But I put that image up there and said this was perhaps the most important picture ever ever taken that of looking back on ourselves from a perch out there in the solar system because it reminds us seeing that that this is it, this is home, not just in the solar system but in the universe we got to figure out how to make this place work for us find a place for ourselves that is enduring and I said at the world bank remember I said, there it is the world bank the image of the earth that's where the assets are that's every thing and that is the way it is, earth is the world bank. It is a source of every thing that we treasure including most fundamentally life it self, do you take care of your bank account, well some of us do some of us don't, do we spend it wisely, some us do some us don't, but at the end of the day we have to take care of that which provides the basics for living, food, water, air, a place to live, a future that we and our families can have some hope of enjoying. Not only is earth a hospitable place for us, its hospitable for most of the rest of life on earth. We are so incredibly terrestrial in our thinking that it's just hard to imagine that all those creatures that we grown up with are terrestrial allies and buddies and friends what ever that we think of that as life on earth, the trees, the mammals, the birds, the insects and some of the fish. But 97 percent of earth water is ocean. 97 percent of the biosphere is ocean too; it's where the action is. The single non negotiable thing that life requires - water and most of it is salt water; it's also the source of the fresh water because up in to the atmosphere comes back as rain sleet and snow. It's the bank account, the aquatic bank account for all of us. So when I see the ocean I don't just see water I see I see life, I see a living minestrone all those of things out there. Its alive you can see some of that here in the aquarium of the bay not quite the same as going out in to the ocean because there is more plankton, and more stuff in the ocean. Here you got a nice cross section, a slice of life carefully taking care of to insure, good long life for those creatures who are ambassadors for the sea. I wish if I could scoop all of that up right here right now, and leave this terrestrial place even though it's right here at the aquarium. But I like to go to take the plants take the you out and see what it is like in the ocean, for me it's like diving in to the history of life on earth because in a in a bucket full of water, in a cup full of water even a spoon full of water you can see great diversity of life. The larval stages of many of the creatures that grow up to be things like star fish and sharks or - not sharks so much but little fish any way that have little stages out there in the ocean and lots and lots of microbes in recent work that has been done by scientist who spends a lot of time here in California Craig Ventnor, known best for perhaps for his work with a human genome he is also been turning his considerable talents to the sea and finding great diversity of life on the microbial level in single little dollops of water taken from the sea in places all around the world, finding almost every where he goes hundred, in some cases thousands of new variations on the theme of microbes in single little scoops of water. We are just beginning to understand how much we don't know about the ocean, we should know much more given that it drives the way the world works. Not just generating the fresh water that falls back on land and sea and recharges that bay here, the rivers, the ground water but because the ocean is really at the corner stone of climate and weather shapes planetary chemistry. Does the ocean matter to you? Did you ever think about what the ocean would be? What the world would be without the ocean like my reporter friend in Australia. One of the problems is in our thinking, in our lack of understanding about the sea or our complacent thing about it is that we are by nature air breathers, we are terrestrial we are naturally biased. It's probably a handicap as serious as the bias centuries ago that made us think that the earth and we were the centre of the universe. In theory, we kind of know better now but we usually don't act as if we do, it's probably accounted for by just the fact that we aren't out in the ocean as much as we are on the land. If we were, if we could see what's there, see how the processes work, we might care more than we presently do. That has changed in the last fifty years owing to some clever engineers and others who have developed the ways and means to get us out into the sea. I suspect that a fair slice of this audience has at some stage put on a mask and flippers and been out in the ocean, my mother waited until she was 81 and she finally took the plunge and then scolded me for not getting her into the ocean sooner. I thought I had tried but I didn't try hard enough. So if any of you are not yet 81 go do it, if you are more than 81, hurry up! But please don't let time pass without personally getting out there and seeing the blue part of the planet. Sometimes it's green but what ever it is the wet part and gets to see the creatures over there face to face. We have tended to regard the area of the water, the wild life of the planet as free, that's how economist tend to calculate the balance sheet. They don't generally think of the World Bank earth as the way I and some of my pals do. We have come to understand that the loss of those things we take for granted like contaminated water, contaminated air does have a hefty price tag and that the loss of the species that we are now seeing cascade into oblivion has a price tag beyond imagining, we don't know how to put creatures back together again once they are gone. I wish I could see a stellar sea cow. They were only fairly recently members of the world community now gone. In the Caribbean Sea there was a seal like the monk seal or similar to it that is out in Hawaii but it was - the last one was seen in 1952 on my watch when I was a kid, I never got to see one. We need to be mindful of how fast things are disappearing on our watch to see if there are things that can be done to reverse that trend, not just to slow it down but turn it around. Like the air, the sea has generally been accounted for its free and forever, infinitely resilient no matter how much we take out of it, no matter how much we put into it. Like the air, the sea is part of what some call the global commons. It's a resource that separates the peoples of the world but it also joins them. Over the centuries traditions have grown, I think most notably something called the freedom of the seas that you can go out into the ocean and do just about anything you want to do. So wonderful concept and it works, it's almost everybody behaves but only takes a few to misbehave to ruin things for everybody, and unfortunately in our life time mine any way, the last half century or so. That is what's happening a few are ruining this global asset, the global commons for every body for all time. In the 1950s at a time, when it still was thought that the ocean was infinitely resilient that we could be able to take out what we want and put in and what we want with no worries because it is so big, a human kind of so small in our capacity to change things, at that time the United Nations convention on living resources of the sea, set forth a new conceptual basis. The idea even then, despite these grand thoughts about the ocean being infinitely capable of recovering no matter what we do, just thought about sustainable use of ocean life. There were visionaries even then, who could see that we were changing the way, the ocean functions, but those ideas were not widely accepted and the ideas of sustained taking were then as they are today, way over the top in terms of being optimistic with respect to how much we can take up of ancient ecosystems that have been developing for hundreds of millions of years and that just in our time, the last few decades, with new technologies sort of never before been applied to the sea, to find fish, to capture fish and other ocean wild life and to export it, to transport it to distant parts of the planet. As hunter-gatherers, like our ancestors that's all we fit ourselves years so, we hunted the wildlife, we gathered roots and berries and things from a planet that was far more together, than is today, together in terms of the ecosystems that were healthy. But then our numbers were small, it took until 1800 before there were billion people on the planet, the time I came around in the 1930s, there were two billion. By 1980, there were four billion and you know the numbers today, six billion and climbing 6.5, I think at the latest count the numbers are kind of slipping off a little bit, but certainly not stopping in terms of increased numbers of us and a diminishing of our life support system, the wild life, that once sustained, the human beings on this planet easy pickings birds, little fury things, fish that you could take out of the waters of the land, on the land and in the sea. Try to imagine today feeding ourselves with wild life from the land, how far could we get with song birds and squirrels, and all those things that we could go dig out of the earth, or catch from the sky. The limits were they are in the ocean too, but its some how still hasn't quite got into our brains that there are limits, really strong limits on what we can extract from the sea, and so in the last half century, we have seen numbers from where they were, to were they are today cascade down ward, about 90 percent of the big fish, that appear in our markets, that we love to consume are gone. I mean they are gone, we have out there in the sea, about ten percent of things such as the sharks, the big Tunas, the sword fish, the cod for heavens sakes, cod the nations of the North Atlantic for 500 years were the main stage of the economy today diminishing fast, protect it now, and parts of the range but not protected enough to see a reversal of that down hill slide. Sophisticated technologies developed during world war two and the cold war to detect and track submarines and how use to exploit life in the sea. There are acoustic means to detect every last Tuna in the school, satellites to track water masses, where certain species are known to concentrate, new navigation systems that encourage fisherman to venture further, safer, longer, new materials durable plastics that can be deployed in long lines often 40 50-60 miles, of baited hooks every few feet to catch, not just those targeted species, there is no sign on the hook that says only a certain kind of fish need to grab on to it. They catches all sorts of things including sea birds, like Albatrosses, and others. There are drift nets that sweep through miles of ocean that in a single set constraint the sea and every thing in their path including un intended things so called by catch including Whales, including Dolphins, including Birds, including Jelly fish, and whatever else happens to be in the path way. In the past ten years in particular, this has come to the attention of those who care about the health of the ocean which include the fishermen for heaven sakes fishermen really need to understand if anybody does that there are limits to how many fish can be extracted I had a chance just little more than a year ago to actually be at a dinner with president Bush and talk about the issues that relate to fisherman and fish and conversation went something like this. For there to be fisherman there have to be fish like 'duh', but that's how it is. And with creatures such as ducks and geese on the land. If you want to have ducks and geese, turkeys, quail to take home for a bite to eat now and then you got to protect the places that they live you have to think about where the young grow up, you can't take them anywhere anytime in any numbers and you have to be concerned about their flyways, their migration routes, where do they live, how do they live we have to know those things before, we can effectively and really intelligently extract any raw for ourselves if you want them to be around on into the future it's taken us a long time to understand some of these things for the land and it's taking us even longer to understand it for the ocean you are still at this wide spread belief that the ocean is somehow big enough, resilient enough that it will recover no matter what we put in or what we take out despite the wake up calls we have had in the last few decades with those collapse of the populations of popular fish species of the changes in ensure waters, our own San Francisco bay being one shining example around the world about ten years ago, it was said that there were some 50 dead zones that had developed in coastal waters around the world. Now its more than 150 so called dead zones places we are owing to land based pollution the costal waters give rise to extensive blooms of microorganisms that are so rich in their growth that they use up all the oxygen and the area becomes as I say anoxic not only its bad for those organisms but for all the others that share the space with them as well basically everything ultimately dies. I say everything, there are microbes that will live no matter what it seems but it is certainly not a healthy balance to productive system as this sort they preceded this events. When I show show this to the chief scientist of NOAA in the early 1990s, - its an agency as you may know that includes the national marine fishery service I was shocked to discover that 90 percent of the blue finned tuna in the north Atlantic at least had been taken in the last 20 years. Well now that has been reinforced not just the Blue fin in the Atlantic but Blue fin world wide and it's less than ten percent that exists now and it's across the board with species after species. We have seen for example Orange Roughy so anybody here had Orange Roughy? Have you ever seen one the menus? Seen it in the local supermarkets? I have seen it in the local Albertsons fort because most recently it was 895 a pound. Well these are fish that are transported from the other side of the planet around New Zealand and Australia. They live in depths of about 2000 feet of water. So until recently we haven't found them now we can find them now we can catch them now we can market them globally. Orange Roughy, the fish that may be when it is fully grown after about 30 years and can start to reproduce may be as much as I may be you know 16 or 17 inches long that's a big Orange Roughy, they get a little bit bigger than that but after all they live to be 250 years old so that little 20 minute bit of pleasure which you have with lemon slices and butter on your plate may have been around long before your great great great great grand parents we r born. We need to know those things and realize that eating Orange Roughy is not sustainable, that eating things like Chilean sea bass, not sustainable it takes about 30 years for them to mature as well because they don't live quite as long as Orange Roughy, but most of them aren't living very long at all at all these days because we are finding them and catching them and taking them to market. But when I was a kid nobody ate either one of them because most people didn't even know they existed. That alone supply in commercial markets on a global scale. Those are the things that we are now facing as people who are looking at our health connected to the health of the ocean. I mean we should care if Orange Roughy disappears, if sharks that once were so abundant. They have been around for 300 million years and they, like these other big fish have declined precipitously just in the last few decades owing to our increased appetite for eating the macho meal you know shark or shark fin soup, the new Asian markets with new wealth, new appetites , new pressures on these ancient creatures. Inspired by a sense of urgency that some of us at least feel but you can't feel that unless you know that these problems exist. But better hundred and fifty individuals from a cross-section of what human beings do. Scientists, policy makers, lawyers, teachers, communicators, business leaders got together in Louise Carlos Mexico. Now, several years ago in 2003, after a year of thinking about what can be done to help solve some of the problems that we now face we had 70 organizations present. This was in keeping with two other efforts that were taking place simultaneously in this country. One, a privately funded initiative, the PEW ocean commission and the other a an official commission, the national ocean commission that was put together by experts of experts to consider all right we have got some problems with the ocean what can we do about it. It is not good enough just to say wow it's me, look at all these negative trends and what it is going to mean for, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the future of the ocean, the planet that we live on that is now going through rapid climate change not that there hasn't been climate change over the ages, it's the nature of the planet. It does change and it has been getting warmer since the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago. But our impact clearly is causing things to change faster at a head spinning pace. What are we going to do about it, just go along for the ride and see what happens, that's known as complacency. That's also known as a root for disaster. There are things that we can do that can make a difference. In the little event with president Bush, the outcome of that discussion that we had over dinner coupled with ten years of hard work by lot of people who did invested in trying to do something positive for the ocean resulted in the declaration of the 140,000 square miles of ocean out in the north west Hawaiin Islands for full protection. It took a lot of doing for a lot of people but there was a pivotal movement over dinner when something is crystallized and as president Bush left the room, he called back to Jim Compton the head of the counsel of environmental quality. Jim, make it happen, no take for the north-west Hawaiin Islands and so we have got this junk of ocean here in California we are seeing a move toward similar positive things could not just for the fish, not just for the kelp forest, good for us to have places that are fully protected. A network is growing in state waters, we already have a network of marine protected areas, marine sanctuaries, not fully protected for the fish but none the less, the ethics is growing to take care of these places that matter for the health of the ocean and matter to our big bank account, you know the World Bank which is largely blue. Well, this idea of having marine protected area surfaced at this conference in Mexico called "defying oceans end" its surfaced as well in the PEW oceans commission. It surfaced as well with the national ocean commission. This was an idea that's has got legs or flippers if you will and I hope it grows because today a fraction of one percent enjoys the same kind of protection that we accord to about 10 percent of the land as national parks. In spite of that great new addition in the north-west of Hawaiin islands, in spite of the great barrier reef, marine park authority that recently declared 33 percent of it is safe for fish up from six percent from previous years. But globally now about 4000 places have been dignified with areas with designation for for protection. The other sort of pillars of thought, about what we can do. One is fisheries reform doesn't mean, stop eating fish but it does mean be smart about what we catch be smart about how we catch. Be smart about what we eat, we should as consumers drive what appears on our plates not just be content to sit by and let these 200 250 year old fish go by into oblivion because we they taste good. I mean songbirds taste good too but we gave them up because we value them for reasons beyond pounds of protein. Global science, that investment needs to be amped up. When I was chief scientist at NOAA, I was so sad because the little sliver of investment going into research as compared to our mighty neighbor over there in NASA that had billions when we had little in millions. I wouldn't take a penny away from NASA by the way. I think that that's one of the best expenditures we've ever made as as human beings to look skyward and to use our technologies to develop to the best of our ability. Ways to see ourselves in the context of what's out beyond our own solar system. I just want equal time for the Ocean equal bucks for the ocean, equal commitment to this part of the solar system at least equal because the pay off is so important. We are stressing our life support system. Astronauts understand life support systems very well. They look at earth and say, "Life support system" and recognize that we have to take care of the systems that take care of us. So we need to invest in in exploration, in science, in understanding, - how this world works and then so armed we can take measures that will improve our ability to take care of it. Governance is another factor of that comes through in all of these mighty commissions that have been formed. We need to have better policies and it starts both at the top, but it begins with a grounds flow of support from the likes of those in this room and those who are listening with kids, who think they have no power because they are just kids; but everybody has power. And I am here to tell you as a grandmother, "Kids have a lot of power". Mom or in my case, g-mom, or whatever they call me number of things Mimi. I listen to what the kids say. I have to. I can't resist, neither can you I suspect the pressure from the youngsters coming along, leave the world at least as good as you found it. Use your power, kids no matter what's your age is. And I am talking to the 80 year olds too. Because there is a kid inside of all of us who can be reached through this understanding that we are part of the natural world and it's our job to take care of it. Communication perhaps underlies all of these things and is the over-arching missing link in so much of why we are indifferent to the ocean? People don't know why the ocean matters. They don't know that we've got a problem out there. You can't solve as problem if you don't know you've got one. You can't care about the ocean if you don't know why it matters to you. So, getting the word out any way possible. Its one of the reasons I am so thrilled to be here thanks to the aquarium, the Bay Institute, the Commonwealth Club, all of you for coming all of you for listening. But magnify that. Take someone who doesn't know and share what you know about these issues and other issues that you care about. That's how the word gets out there. I am actually so thrilled to see Google Earth come into existence and recently there are announcement about working with non-governmental organizations to find better ways to communicate, yes you know. You can make a difference with tools such as this it didn't exist when I was a kid. We have the power now to get the word out rapidly about the blue part of the planet as well as all the rest about how we are connected. All arrows are now pointing in one direction. Take precautions now to protect what we can't put back together again precautionary principles talked about with fishing policies they are making their way to reality but it is slow because there are enough of us saying we got to do this. Our policy makers will respond if they are pushed, if they are asked, if they are voted in or out of office. That's part of our job to see that, those who represent us are really representing what we care about. In 1972, this nation enacted the national marine sanctuaries act that now embarrasses that 18,000 square miles recently increased by the 140,000 square miles of a national monuments that is partly administrated as a national sanctuary. These are signs of hope, we have begun down the track of caring, these are good intensions, we have got a long way to go. Much more needs to be done here in California until recently 156,000 square miles of terrestrial California were protected well of about a six percent of that amount was protected for the ocean, but owing to actions just this past year that percentage of ocean is zooming up ward and if we do our job we will see a change through such actions in the next decade, the next five decades. The time that we can influence the children coming along who - that is their time. Johann Wolfgann von Georthe years ago said, it's simply not enough to understand, but to act. So with knowing, comes caring, you might not care even if you know. But I can tell you for sure you won't care if you don't know, it starts with understanding and that's what I hope that during the time we have got, we can share some thoughts and ideas about better understanding, where we are in the greatest scheme of things, why the ocean matters, what we can do to make a difference. Recognizing that a fraction of the ocean may be five percent, some say less than one percent of the ocean has even been seen. Let alone explode means, we have got a long way to go. That doesn't account the part that's exploited, that's a much bigger fraction, much of the oceans has already been transformed by trolling, by dumping things into the ocean, that we don't know how to recover. The chemical changes in the sea are some thing we should be worried about, we should be taking actions to do every thing we can to pull back and at least turn off the specked to do every thing we can to let the natural systems recover and take positive actions to help things along. W have yet to learn what the limits are and what we can safely get away with with respect to our treatment of the sea. It's like being in the midst of a big experiment. But back to the business of knowing, with knowing comes caring, and with caring there is hope that we will find an enduring place for ourselves with in the natural systems that sustain us that keep us alive, that's never again perhaps we have a chance to get it right. Thank you.