Travellers are great appreciators of our natural world. But how many of us think to do what’s required to protect the places we love? Here, David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace APAC, writes that it’s time to step in and stand up for our wild places—and there’s no better place to start than our oceans.
I’m a dreadful swimmer with pale skin that practically burns next to a fridge door light, let alone under the bright sun. I was never a naturally beachy kid, but I was always excited when our school camps were held by the sea.
Like tens of thousands of other West Australians, I bunked down in dorms and chalets everywhere from Rottnest Island and Augusta to Point Peron and Kalbarri, mucking around with my friends as our teachers watched on—amused and exasperated.
Under vast skies we body-surfed, played hard-fought ball games on the shore, and shared in the ambivalences of friendships being forged and tested over long days and tired evenings.
Yet if the sea could have spoken to our young souls then, the tides would have told a story of their loss and sorrow. We youngsters took the sea as we found it; like every generation assuming that what we saw was simply normal. But the stark truth is that for decades, our oceans have been, and remain, depleted and polluted.
And when the current generation of young people face the waves, they do so in full sobering knowledge that ‘business-as-usual’ will mean the end of life in our oceans as we know it. It is a reality that our youth should not have to bear; that as a consequence of the unrestrained actions of vested interests treating our precious, vital oceans as nothing more than a resource to be pillaged, or a vast abyss for pollution to be dumped, our oceans are now in critical condition.
Irresponsible fishing practices on a staggering scale have led to more than one-third of the world’s fish stocks being classified as ‘overfished’—a grave precursor to declining fish populations and the eventual extinction of fish species.
Global heating, driven primarily by the burning of coal, oil and gas, has raised ocean temperatures to such an extent that records for ocean heat were broken every single day last year.
For the first time, the world established the Global Ocean Treaty, which aims to put 30 percent of the world’s oceans into protected areas by 2030. And so the global race to ratify is now on.
One of the most devastating consequences is the bleaching of coral reefs. These reefs not only dazzle the eyes and our imaginations, but they also sustain countless species and communities of people around the world. Caused primarily by changes in ocean temperatures, bleaching happens when stressed corals expel the marine algae living inside their tissues—without which they starve.
With enough time—decades, that is—a healthy reef can recover from coral bleaching and survive; but prolonged exposure to high temperatures or frequent bleaching events can leave reefs no chance to recover. The current trajectory of climate impacts means that we are on track for reefs to bleach annually by mid-century; just last year, planetary authorities declared that a global coral bleaching event was underway—the second in the last decade.
And then there’s the plastic. From larger items mistakenly eaten by seabirds to the microplastics entering our bodies through food and water, as many as 70 trillion pieces of plastic litter our oceans, jeopardising both the health of marine wildlife and human beings alike.
Plus the pollution. Our coastal waters are blighted by industrial pollution, including the vast infrastructure wreckage of offshore oil and gas companies and the tonnes of oil spilled from tankers into our oceans each year.
But if our seas could talk, then surely they can also sing; and not just in lamentation, but also in hope.
Some of the world’s greatest environmental campaigns have been won fighting for our oceans, showing that change is possible. Gone are the days of hunting whales to the brink of extinction; now, commercial hunting is banned by almost every country in the world. And although there are new threats, these great creatures are continuing to increase in number, making their triumphant return along Australian coasts every year.
In more hard-won news, driftnets are now banned, as is the dumping of radioactive waste at sea. And the establishment of marine sanctuaries in locations all over the world has demonstrated, emphatically, the ability of marine life to resurge if given half a chance to do so.
And in 2023, for the first time, the world established the Global Ocean Treaty, which aims to put 30 percent of the world’s oceans into protected areas by 2030. And so the global race to ratify is now on.
These past successes, achieved by great collaborative campaigns in which Greenpeace was proud to play our part, show that it is possible to do what is necessary for our oceans to flourish. We know what needs to be done.
In pursuit of our mission to secure an earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity, Greenpeace is working to attain every one of these outcomes.
The science is abundantly clear that in order to halt climate change—the number one threat to our oceans—we must transition away from coal, oil and gas at emergency speed and scale, and ban new fossil fuel projects.
On top of this nations can also: enact a Global Plastics Treaty, to create the planetary framework to end the scourge of plastics pollution; massive offshore polluters like Woodside must be stopped in their tracks; Australians have an incredible opportunity to secure the creation of a marine sanctuary over the life-rich deep waters of Lord Howe Rise and the South Tasman Sea; and deep sea mining— a new and potentially vast-scale threat—must not be allowed to start.
We need every country on earth, including Australia, to move quickly to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty, so that high seas sanctuaries can be established across huge swathes of our ocean.
In pursuit of our mission to secure an earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity, Greenpeace is working to attain every one of these outcomes. We are fuelled by the deepest truth—that all our fates depend on the living ecology of our planet.
Standing by the ocean sometimes, I imagine young people in a distant future participating in their own school camps beside the sea. I hope they can be caught up in themselves, in their own preoccupations, as teenagers must always be; but that one thing they no longer have to worry about is the health of life beneath the waves.
All because once upon a time, many years ago, the then-living generations won the campaigns that were necessary to protect our oceans from pollution and over-exploitation. So that the seas could resurge, and the kids of the future could stretch their eyes to far horizons, bright and wide, over wild seas full of life.
Save our oceans
If your love of the oceans means you want to get involved in protecting them, Greenpeace wants to hear from you. Find out how you can be a part of Greenpeace’s oceans campaigns here
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David Ritter is the CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific and a widely published commentator on politics, law, history and current affairs. He is also an author and speaker, focussing on the climate crisis in Australia and taking action through hope. Prior to joining Greenpeace, he worked as an academic and a lawyer in both commercial and native title practices.
