Restoring a healthy ocean is possible, if we have the political will to grow the solutions faster than the problems When I was 15 my mother took my sister and me to Key West, Florida, for my sister’s 18th birthday. Crossing the two- lane overseas highway I looked out at the clear blue, turquoise and […]
Saved by the Sea on Utne
Journalist, diver and conservation activist David Helvarg reflects on a lifelong appreciation of all things oceanic. July 15th 2015 Every person has their own reasons for becoming involved in the causes they hold dear. For David Helvarg, the sea—whether the Long Island Sound of his youth, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, or the icy waters around […]
Saved by the Sea
“Our bodies, like the planet, are 71 percent salt water, our blood exactly as salty as the sea.” Every person has their own reasons for becoming involved in the causes they hold dear. For David Helvarg, the sea—whether the Long Island Sound of his youth, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, or the icy waters around Antarctica—makes […]
Can We Save Ocean Fish?
I respect my friend Sylvia Earle’s refusal to eat seafood, as well as the famed ocean scientist’s argument that no market hunting has ever been sustainable. Still, there’s nothing as delicious to me as a wild salmon I’ve caught myself, or raw oysters from cold waters with their fresh briny sea flavor, or fried calamari with […]
Why A New Writers Group Wants to Save the Seas
Writers for the Sea is a new organization that was formed on June 8—World Oceans Day—and is going to make a splash, if not set off a new wave, in literature. What prompted the creation of Writers for the Sea? “Who hears the fishes when they cry?” asked Henry David Thoreau in 1839. The following […]