Word: oceanic
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...same time, it defines and characterizes the earth--one flowing body of water, with different names and climates, and covering almost 75% of the planet. The oceans encompass 97% by volume of all the earth's living space. Nearly half the world's population lives within 60 miles of the sea. The thing is in our forgotten history and our chromosomes, which may explain why people stare at the ocean with such sweet, vacant yearnings. Stare long enough, and you can embrace the whole world with your eyes. Even then, you are taking in only the surface...
...captain of the first team of women to live beneath the ocean's surface; the five aquanauts spent two weeks in an underwater laboratory off the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1970. She has gone on at least 50 expeditions and spent more than 6,000 hours undersea, including a record-setting solo descent to 3,000 ft. in a submersible craft known as Deep Rover. In the 1979 dive that gave her the royal nickname, she became the mirror image, and the equal, of the moonwalkers...
...book Sea Change and before legislators and others in power, she argues that the ocean gives us a 4 billion-year-old legacy--the living history of the world--and that we are blithely squandering our inheritance by way of pollution and overfishing. What is more: there is so much left to see in the oceans. The few existing manned submersibles can reach only half their depth. The benthic, or bottom-dwelling, plants and animals represent the least-known ecosystem on the planet. Earle feels personal responsibility for the ocean's future and safety. She takes fish personally. She once...
...brought my mom here before she died, to show her what kept me going to the ocean," she says. We come to a shovelnose guitarfish, named for obvious reasons. A grouper rows by, sculling with its pectorals. We take in the synchronized swimming of sardines and the pensive patrol of a leopard shark. She points out mackerel gleaming in the light. "I have been diving in shallows like these with the moon overhead," she says. Only half kidding, she adds, "I consider them all to be holy mackerel...
...just doing our thing," she says, "living, but living without the awareness of connections between what happens to the oceans and what happens to us." It has taken 10,000 years to face up to the fact that "we cannot make a living on a sustained basis from terrestrial wildlife. Not to say that we didn't try. We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature." Her worry now is that people are altering the ocean. If you want to eat fish, grow them, she argues, offering support for the burgeoning aquaculture industry--in which such delicacies as salmon...