One of my favorite things about being the ocean is being surrounded by schools of fish. I love when they are swimming all around you like thousands of butterflies dancing on the wind. It doesn’t happen very often.
On Gab Gab reef I see a school of Convict Surgeon fish now and then. At fish eye I saw some other surgeon fish once. However, most of the time there are not fabulous schools of fish swimming around me.
I am pretty new to life in the ocean. I grew up in mountains in California, and then in the desert in Arizona. I have not had much opportunity to even be near an ocean. When I was, it was usually a trip down to Rocky Point where we just splashed in the waves a little.
When I put a snorkel on for the first time and saw what was under the water, it was amazing. I went from someone afraid to swim to someone that never wanted to do anything else again. I fell in love with the coral, and the fish, and the turtles.
Of course, then summer came and the coral bleached. I looked into it and found that the coral has been bleaching and dying off a little more every year. I started to look at what I had thought to be rocks, and realize that it was actually dead coral. Now, I have come to realize that my time being able to appreciate the ocean is short. There is simply too much CO2 in the air and water, and all the coral planting in the world can’t save our reefs.
I regret not having the chance to see them before they began to die. More than that, I regret that there will probably be nothing left to see in my lifetime. It’s a tragedy that has left my husband and I sobbing on a beach more than once when we really saw how bad it is.
However, there are still schools of fish sometimes. There are still manta rays and turtles sometimes. There is still beauty to see, and I am grateful and I feel privileged to have that opportunity. Between this blog and my YouTube channel, I am doing my best to share what I see. I know that not everyone gets the chance to see the reefs, and I hope that I help them connect with the ocean and the animals and plants that live there, even if it is from afar.
The ocean is a beautiful place, and I wish that we could save it. That said, I know scientists have said that it is too late. I know that they have said we surpassed the levels of CO2 that will melt the polar ice caps. I know we are already in the middle of a massive extinction (the Holocene extinction.)
However, anything you can do helps. Life often finds a way when no one thought it could, and if we reduce the amount of plastic that we use and try to consume less as a species, some life in the oceans might survive. Whatever you can do, please do it. If you can afford to put Testla roof tiles on your house, do it. If you can buy and use cloth bags for shopping, do it. If you can stop buying single use products, you should.
We should all be doing whatever we can, even if it’s not enough to save every species of coral and fish. If we can save anything, we have to try.
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