For a long time
I watched the ocean
without understanding it.
I could see the enormous energy
the feel of water.
I was amazed at the deep blue color.
I breathed the air
of the vast open waters.
But in reality, I saw nothing.
Here in Shark Bay in Australia
the cliffs whisper to me
the history of the earth.
They are born from the ocean of life,
a vast graveyard arise
billions of skeletons of sea creatures
standing on the seabed have accumulated
when the earth itself was only ocean.
These organisms
created the air that I breathe
and the atmosphere that protects me.
I see strong tidal
cutting those tracks in the sand.
I do not see that this movement
is the source of all life.
I see how the wind shapes the dunes.
I do not see the profound relationship
between the earth and the sea.
I see how salt makes the earth white.
I do not see what the ocean brings to life
on the continents.
I see vast prairies
which colonize the depths
as I have never seen on land.
But at Shark Bay, there is more.
Here lies the origin of our story,
of us, humanity.
It starts here
with a colony of living fossils,
bacteria attached to the surface
of ocean life, the stromatolites.
I am a descendant
of this form of life,
whose birth dates
4 billion years.
I came from the ocean.
And now,
looking at the ocean,
I only see us, humanity.
We are seven billion people.
We have formed the world
in our image.
On the shores of the ocean
We have built large cities
where we live in millions.
We dug ports, flattened islands
to build factories.
The ocean has given us all mineral
resources of the globe.
We process materials, smelting steel,
cutting and chopping.
Hundred thousand ships
crisscrossing over the seas.
Everything that lives and grows on earth,
eventually comes into our iron grip.
We even carry the woods.
We constantly digging in the ocean
to nourish us.
We have become a super predator.
We put our lives in boxes.
We ship 600 million containers,
thanks to the ocean.
The ocean which gave us
the opportunity of globalization.
The planet is ours.
And how do we go from here?
I am aware
the consequences of my power.
Overfishing, global warming,
depletion of natural resources, pollution,
my actions have many consequences.
I know this
because I am able
to understand what is happening to me.
How did I reach this point
where I no longer see
what is happening around me?
To understand this,
we must go back to the beginning.
In the beginning the earth
itself was destroyed
and was plagued by violent convulsions.
The melting accompanied by
violent meteor impacts
from the solar system.
This battlefield created an atmosphere
which was stormy, red of nitrogen,
carbon and hydrogen.
And water vapor, which probably came from
ice comets of the galaxy...
The surface of the earth
was like a huge bubble
which was heated under pressure
to more than 700C.
Then the fire cooled
and the vapors condensed
to produce the greatest of all earthly
floods.
That was four billion years ago.
The flood covered almost all
the earth's crust.
The water washed over the prehistoric rocks,
loaded with salt,
so that it eroded.
The earth was a world of salt water.
This water was called the ocean.
An ocean planet was born.
During the Ice Age,
700 million years ago,
the temperature dropped.
The planet remained white
20 million years ago
and then began to melt
by a powerful greenhouse effect
that was created
by the carbon of the volcanoes.
There were several ice ages
which were interspersed with heat.
From this period
comes the vast icy areas
to the north and south poles of the globe.
These areas act as chillers
in a huge climate machine.
Close to the equator
the sun heats the ocean,
which seems to boil.
This contrasts
between the hot and cold regions
generates powerful airflow.
These are the winds
which are essential in this story.
The cold, heavy winds descend
from the polar regions
and collide with warm, light air
of the equator.
These winds, which rotate
by the rotation of the earth,
forming giant vortices.
If the winds come into contact
with the ocean, they push the water.
They generate strong currents
capable of moving millions of
cubic meters of water through the ocean.
The ocean is everywhere
furrowed by whirlpools,
some of which run for years.
This movement spreads heat
from the surface of the blue planet.
The warm water from the tropics
rises toward the poles.
This water cools, becomes even more compact
and is loaded with salt
back into the depths.
The water travels through the depths
towards the bottom of the ocean,
propelled by its own weight.
It brings with it the polar cold.
Ultimately, it collides against the bottom
and returns to the waters
to the surface, where the weather warms up.
It takes 1,000 years for one drop of water
to complete this ocean cycle.
These flows have created
a temperate climate on earth.
Thanks to this,
it is a living planet.
When the sun is powerful
and flows are rising to the surface
there is an extraordinary phenomenon,
so immense that it is
visible from space,
It is called a "bloom",
an explosion of life.
This life that appears,
is known as plankton,
"Floating life"
because it cannot move by itself,
instead following the currents.
This "blooms" comes from
the energy of the sun.
They occur between the surface
and the first hundred meters,
to where the rays of the sun
can penetrate the ocean.
The tiny algae that appear
form an immense marine prairie
floating in the water.
The biomass produced every year
represents half
of the vegetation on earth.
Some microalgae
resemble distant galaxies.
They are protists -
unicellular, very old organisms.
Most consists of only a cell
surrounded by a silicate
or calcium carbonate skeleton.
At this level,
The distinction
between plant and animal is unclear.
Some of these green cells
have limbs that they push upstream,
to increase
the surface facing the sun..
All these microalgae consume carbon
and provide oxygen in return.
Half of the air we breathe,
comes from the microalgae.
The ocean is the blue heart of the planet.
The plant bloom
trigger another explosion of life,
of billions of herbivorous animals
that feed on the sea prairie.
These animals are only a
few millimeters in size, often even smaller.
They are classified as jellyfish,
crustaceans, cells, shellfish, larvae,
thousands of groups of species.
The most important of these
are the innumerable krill,
the small shrimp that graze algea
day and night.
And copepods, water fleas,
which are kind of jumping
with their limbs to move forward.
The copepods are pursued
by carnivores in the plankton,
especially by arrowhead predators
who are voracious
and armed with teeth of silicon.
Every moment of life
is an act of survival.
Prey and predators alternate
constantly
and there is always a bigger
predator to swallow the previous ones.
This huge food chain nourishes all
organisms, from small to large.
The plankton is an open book
where we can read
the history of the ocean.
For 3 billion years
life evolved here
in this sea prairie.
Some very old species,
as the gelatinous animals,
can only occur in the ocean.
In perfect harmony
with the fluid environment
they possess an elastic body
which they simultaneously
can absorb food and move.
Sometimes, they cling to each other
and form a huge chain making it
easier to move along with the flow.
It looks chaotic,
but every living creature
is organized down to the smallest detail.
These explosions of life
eventually disappear,
consumed by lack of food sources
or eradicated by an invisible enemy,
an attack by a virus.
Billions of viruses,
whose biological role is
in the regulation of any explosion of life.
Nature does not support excess.
At the end of the winter
mackerel have left their hibernation
in the depths of the ocean.
They come to the surface
looking for the sea prairie.
As many fish species,
they feed on this invisible plankton,
The food chain
interconnects the species.
The fish have no leader,
but still know to maneuver
in perfect formation.
Each fish is continually aware
of the presence of its neighbors,
and respects their distance.
This self-organization
is a fundamental law of the group.
It allows them to hunt as a school
and increase the chances
to find an area rich in food.
The first to find one,
may guide the other
with a single movement.
The food chain
takes another turn.
The sailfish is the fastest
fish in the ocean.
It feeds on other fish,
not plankton.
The dorsal offers exceptional stability
to achieve its goal.
A sailfish of 100 pounds consume
in his life 1000 pounds mackerel,
who consumed 10,000 pounds
zooplankton
that grazed 100,000 pounds
phytoplankton.
For every pound of swordfish,
must be 1000 times more of the sea prairie.
The food chain is a relentless hierarchy,
a pyramid structure.
Some species prefer to help each other.
Manta rays only eat plankton.
The wingspan of six meters
provides protection for other fish.
They, in return, rid their host
of smaller fish parasites.
Others opt for the whale shark,
the biggest of all fish.
The traveler travels the entire ocean,
also in search of plankton.
it's the longest fishing trip,
in search for the smallest catch.
Solidarity also plays a role
in this liquid immensity,
4000 meters deep,
that covers two thirds of the planet.
Sometimes this journey
is interrupted by land...
Here at Raja Ampat in Indonesia
land appeared when the ocean
withdrew two billion years ago.
These limestone hills were
once at the bottom of the ocean.
As in Shark Bay, Australia,
they are made of
billions of plankton skeletons
which accumulated in the geographical
era when the ocean covered the planet.
As the water receded,
erosion carved the rock
to a lush sanctuary.
A labyrinth of 1500 islands
of fossilized plankton.
The archipelago of Raja Ampat.
is the heart of a region
rich in biodiversity.
Here lives more than
1400 species of fish,
and a quarter of all marine species.
The source of this extraordinary diversity
is again life itself.
In contact with the land surface,
something wonderful happened.
Part of the plankton left
nomadic life and settled here.
The marine life decided
to create a new world.
That was only 500 million years ago.
A revolution in the ocean.
This family of plankton
created the coral reefs.
Coral is an animal
that we rarely see.
What we see during the day,
is the calcium carbonate skeleton
which serves as shelter,
a skeleton that looks like a tree,
branches or leaves.
To survive in these nutrition-poor,
oligotrophic waters,
coral provides shelter to
aalgae that feeds on sunlight.
The algae are the driving force
of the construction
with the aim of getting
the best place in the sun.
Each coral struggles against his neighbors
to get more sunlight,
a few millimeters per year.
The petrified forest
is the most populous ecosystem
on the ocean planet.
Here you can hide, and hunt.
Each has its own territory.
Everything is coded to live.
Even the color of the fish is an ornament
camouflage or deception...
Just like a beautiful maritime city,
the gates are crowded.
They come from far away
to get rid of their parasites
because only the reef provides enough
diversity to ensure such a service.
Millions of years of evolution
have enabled each species
to find a place and a role
in this coral metropolis.
The scorpion fish camouflages itself
while the spider crabs
let themselves be colonize by shellfish
and becomes invisible
if thay do not move.
We hide from predators...
Just as in any metropolis
there is no spontaneous life in the reef.
There are codes, social precepts
which should be respected
if you do not want to end up
in the belly of a neighbor.
Hiding has become an art
for these octopuses
the color and texture of their skin
change
to deceive their attackers.
Despite the risks
of this collective existence
a number of species
use the reef as a nursery.
Of the entire ocean
it is still the best place
for raising a family.
Cuttlefish protect their eggs
by hiding them as deeply as possible
in the branches of the coral
so other fish can not eat them.
The tentacles of the anemones
are poisonous, even deadly.
It is exactly for this reason
that clownfish have chosen to live there.
They become immune at an early age
from rubbing against the tentacles.
These natural vaccinations
enables them to use
the anemone as a refuge.
For those who do not know the reef,
this marvelous city
is actually full of traps.
The Xeniidae is no flower, but a coral.
Lacking a coral skeleton,
animal plankton entangles
in its tentacles.
At night the reef
becomes even more dangerous.
The living part of the coral,
the polyp,
is invisible during the day,
and only appears at night.
It hunts with his tentacles.
Motionless in the reef,
it uses ocean currents
to catch its prey.
Woe to him who drift nearby.
The tentacles paralyze everything
that they touch,
by injecting a deadly poison.
Sometimes even a digestive juice
so powerful
that it seems to dissolve life.
The reef is a dangerous predator.
Once caught, the victim can
not escape from his arms,
pulling it slowly to his mouth,
where it will be consumed.
Once a year, at exactly the same time,
at the full moon of spring
there is an extraordinary event,
The reef is in a reproductive phase.
It is striking sexual behavior.
The reef makes millions of eggs.
These eggs, called gametes,
males and females, merging,
give birth to larvae -
the future of the coral reefs.
This spawning occurs
once in the year,
it only lasts a few hours,
and relies on perfect timing
between all the corals of the same species.
The larvae are dispersed by the flow
for several days and nights.
They set out to conquer
a new space.
The larvae that survive, fasten
to new walls in the seabed,
to perpetuate the vast
coral city that gave birth.
It is a continuous expansion.
For 500 million years,
coral grows, dies and grows again.
They have forged an empire
visible from space.
The largest living structure
of the planet.
All fauna of the ocean
is closely or remotely connected
with these oases of life.
In Polynesia
groupers make a long journey
to lay their eggs
on the side of the reef.
The huge gathering
for these, usually solitary, animals
is to protect their offspring.
But this meeting is also visited
by gray sharks on the prowl.
During their lives,
female groupers begin
to change sex
and become males
once reaching above
a certain weight and age.
They spawn by leaps and bounds,
mixing seeds.
The females, which have been weakened by
spawning, are an easy prey.
The shark attack.
They will kill some grouper
but, paradoxically, this predation
is vital to the entire species
that would otherwise reproduce
too fast and become too large.
Again, nature does not tolerate excess.
There is always a regulator
hovering over another.
Hammerhead sharks
are formidable hunters.
They appeared 20 million years ago
and are top predators.
The hammer-shaped head serves as a fin
and promotes agility.
The position of the eyes, wide apart,
offers a 3D vision.
They hunt fish...
and other sharks.
It is as if predation dictated
the evolution of the species.
And here we come into the picture.
Here we are, man.
The last link in the chain of life.
We have no predator above us.
We fish for all living things,
Millions of sharks each year.
Often, just for the value of the fins.
We started here,
on the other side of the ocean mirror.
We occupied the emerging land.
A long time ago,
we built villages to protect us,
as they still exist
at San Blas in Panama.
We can not swim like fish,
So we devised boats
to move around the oceans.
Then we built a world
like other species before us
had built.
To build our cities,
we constructed bridges between islands,
We overcame the ocean through land.
We learned to dig through mountains,
divert rivers
and even create new islands.
We built an empire
even greater than the coral reefs.
Our walls, our giant cities,
can be seen from the air.
Through our intelligence, we, the weak
humanity, actually become strong.
Rich or poor,
half of our population
lives within 100 kilometers of water.
Almost the entire population
Sub-Saharan Africa
is concentrated on the coastline.
The city of Lagos in Nigeria alone
has 17 million inhabitants.
There are more than 100,000 people
in the slums on the coast.
The population here has migrated,
and has no land to claim,
So they turn towards the sea.
We are more than seven billion people.
With every second that ticks by,
there are two more people on the planet
that must be fed.
And we're hungry,
So we turn naturally
to the ocean to feed us.
Three billion people are directly
dependent on marine resources.
For nearly a billion people
fish is the only source
of animal proteins.
The ocean
forms the core of our survival.
Four million of our fishing boats
depart daily to conquer the ocean.
Most boats are only
small boats such as this,
discharged every morning
on the coast of Senegal.
Fishing was for us
from the start a family affair,
from generation to generation
it was carried and passed on.
Although it is a dangerous profession,
when the earth runs for food,
the poorest always turn toward the ocean.
Total worldwide,
counting indirect jobs
and families
fishing sustains
500 million people.
Here I see the abundance of the ocean,
able to feed an entire people.
Since the beginning of our history
We have collected
natural seaweed on the coast.
They have been around 3 billion
and a half years.
We have learned to cultivate the sea
as we cultivated the land.
Seaweed require only six weeks
before it can be harvested.
It only need sunlight
and the movements of the currents.
Today, in Bali in Indonesia,
we cultivate seaweed and we extract
a nutritious gelatine.
This form of agriculture
produces 15 million tons of seaweed
that is exported worldwide.
Brown, green and red seaweed
serves all purposes,
medicine, textiles, fertilizer, food.
We make small farms of the sea,
transforming it to estuaries and
aquaculture fields.
There are more than 530.000 hectares of the globe
dedicated to the cultivation of seaweed,
thus providing millions sea farmers
their livelihood.
In South Korea's Wando archipelago,
there are more than 200 islands transformed
to seaweed farms.
These beautiful paintings
are huge nets spread out in the sun,
used for crop drying.
Of the 30,000 species of seaweed
which grow in the sea,
there are around 50 edible.
Here we cultivate kelp,
large seaweed that can
grow to three meters in length.
In Asia, seaweed is a
basic source of food.
These sugar-sweetened leaves contain
proteins, mineral salts and vitamins.
We have fished for the last 40,000 years,
continually improving on our equipment
and technique.
Once again my strength comes
from my intelligence,
which compensates for my weaknesses.
It allowed me to imagine
nets more elaborate, increasingly effective.
What changed everything,
was the invention of the deep sea trawl,
a large network with a funnel-shaped
opening like the mouth of the whale shark.
Our nets are so large
some 40 km long.
Fishing has become an industry.
It is no longer a family affair,
but investment and technology.
In order to increase our catch,
fishermen have formed flotillas.
Then whole factories went out to sea.
We use probes, radar,
and focus all our resources
on the hunt for marine life.
Each year we catch
90 million tons of fish, worldwide.
Half of this catch is made by only one
percent of our fishing boats.
Our trawlers, our trawls and nets are
so great that we do not choose our catch.
We take what comes,
and sort it later
depending on the market value of the fish.
Peruvian anchovy,
Alaskan pollock, Atlantic herring,
we capture it all.
There is no limit to our hunting,
except the set fishing quotas.
But who can avoid
going over it?
Worldwide, 80% of commercial fish stocks
are fully exploited
or over-exploited.
Our fishing has reached a ceiling.
The biological limit is reached.
How did it come to this?
Through our intensive fishing
millions of fish are sacrificed.
This is wasteful,
what is rejected after the catch,
or fish
who are crushed in our nets.
Fish that died for nothing.
As the surface stock is exhausted,
I fish deeper.
Our fishing trawlers are now
at more than 3000 meters.
I fish blind,
fauna that I barely know.
The fauna of the abyss,
who lives alone in the dark.
At that depth
the light disappears gradually.
There dwells life in this absence of light.
And what a life!
Around 100 meters below are ctenophores.
These gelatinous creatures
have luminous organs
to deter their enemies.
Deeper, at 1000 meters below the
surface, in the twilight of the ocean,
we find the siphonophores.
They are the largest species of plankton.
Some are up to 50 meters.
Their bodies are not distributed,
but grouped.
On one side is their stomach
and on the other the swim bladders
they use to float.
In between there is a net that they inflate
to catch any food falling from the surface.
Descend into the depths is like
traveling in a biological time machine.
There are perhaps 2000 species
of live fish in the depth.
A terrifying bestiary.
The Viperfish can eat things
greater than itself.
Or Saccopharynx - deep sea eels
who swallow everything that comes along.
Survival is difficult at 1500 meters depth.
Around 3000 meters there is no light.
It is the realm of the squid,
a prehistoric cousin of the octopus.
This octopus has blue blood
loaded with copper.
The huge eyes detect the slightest variation
in contrast above him, towards the surface.
His vision is fully adjusted
to the shadows.
If debris lands on the bottom,
crabs, eels and carnivorous sponges
gorge themselves.
Invisible in the mud, billions
of bacteria break down the remains.
The species here live slower,
and gets older -
sometimes up to 150 years old -
because of the extreme pressure
at 4000 m depth,
at the bottom of the ocean.
There is little oxygen.
And yet here we are.
In this world we barely know.
We are here because we are afraid
to run out of a substance.
We are looking to feed
our addiction to oil.
The ocean seems to be made of water.
But in reality it is an alliance
between life, chemistry and geology.
All waste, the corpses,
particles of seaweed
which originate from the surface,
every tiny cell of the ocean
ends his life here in the "marine snow".
Over millions of years
carbon, in the form of plankton,
has built up on the bottom of the seas.
It accumulates in thick layers
and forms rocks which we call limestone
and that peaks up stabbing
each lower level of the sea.
Sometimes it happens that such piles of
corpses does not form a rock,
but gradually merges into one organic
substance, sticky and black.
Oil!
It occurs almost everywhere
on the seabed and on land,
where the ocean
once covered the planet.
We began pumping pockets in
shallow places.
But these supplies are running out
and we look farther and deeper.
Now we are exploring deposits at
up to 7000 meters depth.
The last oil reserves for tomorrow
are found in the most
inaccessible areas of the sea.
This fire is burning plankton,
burning life.
We have 20,000 oil platforms
in the seas of the world.
Every year we burn the equivalent
of one million years plankton.
Our industrial revolution has taken
the planet 100 million years to make.
We transport each year two billion tons
of oil aboard our supertankers,
which are the largest moving
constructions that exist.
Oil is the main source of energy
for our civilization.
This energy propels me forward
to all boundaries.
Who else dwell
that in this gigantic ship's holds
a part of the biogeological history
of the ocean is transported?
This revolution has changed our lives.
But also that of the planet.
We need our transport so badly
we have divided America into two
to connect the seas.
We created the Panama Canal,
a cut of 80 kilometers
through the jungle.
It allows each year 13,000 ships
to go faster, farther.
Every 45 minutes
a ship crosses the mountain.
To feed the locks of my channel
we created a huge lake,
Lake Gatun, which stores rainwater.
If there is little rain, it can entail
technical problems.
Raw materials, gasoline,
factory ships,
car transport, cruise ships,
an infinite variety
of vessels.
We carry three quarters
of our merchandise over the ocean.
The flagship of all our boats is
the container ship,
on which thousands of
identical metal boxes are transported.
The riches of the world
from our power plants,
gives me wealth
and means
to turn our villages
into huge cities.
Here in Panama there was only jungle.
Today the money is flowing with the tide.
Rotterdam, Durban,
San Francisco, Singapore,
our ships weaving a web
between the continents.
The ocean brings our cities
together into a single world.
All sea routes come together in Asia.
Of the top 50 ports in the world
there are 11 in China.
And the most important is Shanghai.
The city lies at the end
of a 34 km long bridge,
on an island in the open sea, which was
razed to build a deep water port.
At the kilometer long wharf
giant cranes are each year unloading
30 million containers
which are to be changed,
re-used, or stored.
Who knows where our containers go
and what's inside?
Container transport is just a game.
Empty boxes to be filled,
full boxes to be emptied.
We have 600 million containers
on the ocean circulation.
They are the link
in the world we have created.
The ocean gave us globalization.
The demand is so great
that our container fleet
has tripled in less than 10 years.
There are at this moment
three thousand cargo ships being built
in Korea, China and Japan
which provide 90% of world production.
Everything here is oversized.
Gigantic shipyards
with more than 10,000 employees
renew and expand the existing units.
We build ships
that are more than 400 meters long,
the size of four football fields.
This relentless growth
of the shipping industry
is a reaction
to another industrial need.
The world factories have moved here.
The ocean also made globalization
of our industries possible.
A single ship can bring a whole forest
to the factories,
which turn it into paper, boards,
furniture, finished products.
China is the world's largest importer
of timber.
Thanks to the oceans, no forest is safe.
More than 500 tonnes of raw materials
comes every year by sea to Shanghai.
Stocks of iron ore, coal, wood, copper,
rare minerals
we tear from the planet.
Near the harbor,
other factories
produce steel and chemicals
to make materials
that others build, compose
and package
for export all over the world.
The lives of seven billion people
is connected to this part of the world.
What can fishermen still catch
from the waste from the factory
at the heart of this degenerate world?
Our tentacle-like cities
grow like mushrooms.
Shanghai is a symbol
of our impetuous rush.
Twenty-three million people live
in this megalopolis.
More than 6.000 skyscrapers
shoot into the air.
and 20.000 new projects
are in development,
a frenzy of construction
reaching into the heavens.
Every country in the world dreams
the rate of growth of Shanghai and China.
The city sprawls across the country,
but its fortune is thanks
to the fact that it meets the ocean.
The ocean planet is my planet.
But if we're ever wrong?
The ocean whence we came,
now seems so far away.
Within only 200 years
we violently disturbed four
billion years of natural history.
We never see the beauty of life anymore,
but only what it can do to our species,
what it can produce for us.
Everything around us is alive,
and suffers our existence.
We all leave our traces
wherever we go.
It is said that sperm whales dreams
with their head upside down.
But are not we all dreaming,
to think that we can continue
with this insane growth
without any consequences?
Hundreds of our ships
sail continuously
across the seas of our planet.
The more our needs expand,
the more numerous our machines are.
Whatever we do,
our industrial civilization
destroys the natural world around it.
The risk of pollution becames
a threat to all our neighborhoods.
Our giant engines burning
tons of gas per hour.
We spit everywhere polluting materials
the sky and the ocean.
In the polar regions
the permanent ice cap melts
as a result of global warming.
In those regions are no factories,
no machines,
and yet this warming is caused
by our own carbon emissions.
Fossil energy, oil
that we need for our civilization,
heats the ocean.
But the melting of the Arctic
has another, more serious consequence.
In the north, by melting
of the permanent ice sheet,
dark waters are revealed.
The water absorbs the sun's heat,
which used to be reflected by the ice.
And the phenomenon is growing.
The ocean itself accelerates global warming.
In Greenland,
just as in the Arctic,
land-based glaciers melt.
As they melt, trickling streams of
fresh water flows into a salty sea..
The great movement of ocean currents,
this stream that circles the globe
and regulates the climate,
gradually becomes clogged.
What will be the consequences?
None of us has lived through
such a change to find out.
More than 20,000 kilometers away,
far away from the polar regions,
Climate chaos is already being felt.
It is not visible at the surface.
To see it, we need to go reef diving
in the tropics,
such as near the Blue Hole in Belize,
the second largest coral reef in the world.
Corals are very sensitive
to temperature changes.
A difference of only one degree for
a few weeks is enough to kill them.
Then only
a reef of white skeletons remains.
These bleachings intensified recently.
Scientists worry.
A quarter of the corals on the planet
died within 50 years.
The immediate problem is not their death,
but rather the impact of their disappearance.
They die and leave nothing behind.
The sea is a desert oasis.
Further offshore, the vastness of the ocean
hides something else.
After the corals, the other critical
factor is the health of the plankton.
More and more
scientific missions on this ocean
are just beginning to discover
more effects.
They try to understand
what will change in marine life.
The life that feeds us.
It seems that the plankton,
the basis for all food chains
are moving towards polar regions,
where the water is still moderate.
In 50 years it has moved
1200 km further north.
This redistribution of plankton
has effects on marine life.
Every year the Cownose Ray migrates
between Brazil and the temperate zones
in search of food.
Every year, the journey brings them a little
higher, slightly more to the north.
The global warming
disturbs the ecology of the ocean.
With this change,
our fisheries change.
But I know
that we can not stop fishing.
In Chile, where one quarter
of world tonnage is fished,
the sea is the income for thousands of
traditional fishermen and their families.
Many have large debts
to pay for their boats.
The commercial species are scarce,
So they fish for what remains.
Previously we ate no Chilean sardine
or Peruvian anchovies.
But now we fish more
than 10 million tons each year.
This is an extraordinary attack
on a single species,
the only one still living in these waters.
Along the coast of Chile
a powerful flow rises
from the bottom of the ocean.
It is rich in plankton
and sardines flourish.
This is an upwelling flow.
It circulates the water
and provides nutrients.
Seals and birds hunt the small
fish around the rising water of life.
The Chileans fishing with trawls,
very long tubes that are closed,
collect just over 40 tonnes per load.
Five hundred thousand fish in each net
is sucked into the machine.
Sardines live only a few years,
so they reproduce rapidly.
This is the last bluefish
still surviving
even as catches increase.
But we do not eat this fish.
We catch it to make flour out of it.
Fish flour that we feed farmed fish.
In total, 25 million tons of fish
annually is grown,
of which the most
comes from Norway and Chile.
We grow only species
with a high market value,
such as sea bream, sea bass and salmon.
You need several kilos of sardines
to produce one kilo of farmed fish.
Our farms are an industry that is
based on a natural food source.
But what do we do if
there are no sardines anymore?
And as our food sources run out, we
continuously push our luck further and further.
The open sea is a free zone.
Two-thirds of the ocean belongs to everyone
and therefore belongs
to the first to use it.
Off the coast of West Africa
shipowning thugs make poor fishermen
plunder the last areas that are rich in fish.
Aboard their wrecks,
these men are left to themselves,
refueled once a month,
if they are lucky.
Men and boats who seem
to have no value to anyone.
In Mauritania, port of Nouadhibou
degenerated to a graveyard
of pirate fishing.
Hundreds of boats off the coast
seized, abandoned wrecks,
probably already replaced
by other vessels.
The pirate ships gather
in less supervised areas,
as the African sector.
At sea, these illegal vessels
reload their cargoes on board
of authorized vessels
so their catch can be legally sold
on international markets.
In the worst-case estimates, illegal fishing amounts
to as much as 26 million tonnes of catch,
a quarter of the global total.
Gain dominion over the seas.
In the sea,
90% of large predators has disappeared.
One of the last of these,
Atlantic bluefin tuna,
is on the brink of extinction.
Yet they are legally fished
in the Mediterranean,
one of the last refuges of
this species, where they reproduce.
The tuna are caught in a very large net
that is closed like a pen.
The catch is caught alive
and fattened in a nursery
before slaughter
and sales on international markets.
This fish is a luxury food source.
A top quality tuna weighs 300 kilos
and can sell for more
than 500,000 euros.
Corruption and lies prevail everywhere.
The tuna fishing fleets benefit from
millions of euros in European subsidies.
We respect no quotas,
We take no precautions
for the preservation of the species.
At this rate, the extinction of the tuna
is a matter of a few years..
We plunder the common good
because it belongs to no one
and it seems vast.
But what remains for tomorrow?
There are, at the time,
400 marine areas declared dead,
empty of food sources,
or unable to sustain life.
Other species are rapidly
increasing in number.
Jellyfish have existed for
almost one billion years on Earth.
They have survived all known
extinctions of species.
The red tuna was one of their predators.
The disappearance of this tuna upsets
a millennial-old balance.
Scientists and fishermen find that
across the ocean jellyfish are increasing.
The ocean is a gelatinous mass
and this imbalance
is a trap that awaits us.
Far from land, far away from where we live,
the ocean hides
another fact for us.
The currents spread
our chemicals,
polluters of our industrial creation,
all over the world.
On average, there are more than
46,000 pieces of plastic waste
per square kilometer sea water.
That which kills these birds,
comes out of our houses,
even though we're
thousands of kilometers away.
Annually, we pour six billion pounds
of plastic waste in the sea.
Plastic does not degrade,
but micro-fragments.
What that birds eat, the fish eat,
eventually ends up on our plates
while we dig the ocean to fish,
for our fisheries.
By polluting this world,
we poison ourselves, too.
The ocean is so vast that we thought
that it was an inexhaustible source.
We were wrong.
The ocean planet has actually
a limit to its renewal,
which we should learn to respect.
That's why since the dawn of time,
everything on earth
respects the rhythms and limits.
That is the origin of the famous law
of natural balance.
I would like to stay on earth.
I want to be there tomorrow.
I have long looked for these fish.
I think I'm like them:
I develop myself through
consensus in a group.
Even if I understand what happens to us,
I can not choose
the way things radically change.
But perhaps that our collective consciousness
can trigger a chain reaction...
and save our species.
I want to believe
that we can react in time.
Twenty years ago in Rio,
people came together for a large
conference on the future of the Earth.
That was in 1992.
In that year,
our leaders voted on
2500 recommendations
to protect the planet.
I believed that it was a symbolic beginning
of a new era.
But it was actually
the beginning of a long road...
What has happened since?
There have been other conferences,
other world summits,
ultimately with very little result.
The risk of an unpopular decision,
competition, corruption, passivity
have blocked any action.
But we, humanity,
have in the past 20 years
made an enormous leap forward.
Public awareness has evolved.
We are now concerned about the environment.
But that's not enough.
Time is gaining on us.
With this rate
we are moving towards a catastrophe.
Even in the heart of the city
Rio, overlooking the ocean,
I am forbidden to enter the sea
because of disgusting pollution.
We had a pool built into
the most beautiful bay in the world to swim,
but that has become very dangerous
for our health.
In Rio, we have, as elsewhere in the world,
a giant statue of Christ put up,
a symbol of eternity,
to protect ourselves.
He looks thoughtfully out over the ocean,
but what can he do for us?
No religion or belief
will save us.
It is not a time to believe
in heavenly promises.
Only with our intelligence, we can
foresee the future and prepare.
We can still
change direction.
There is still time for a humanistic
and responsible stewardship,
for our ocean planet to continue.
THERE ARE SOLUTIONS
RESPECT QUOTAS
STOP FUNDING
FOR INDUSTRIAL FISHERIES
PERMANENTLY BAN DEEP SEA FISHING
PROMOTE SMALL-SCALE FISHERIES
BUY ONLY THINGS WITH AN ECO LABEL
ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE FISHING
POLLUTION MANAGEMEN CONTINUE DEEP SEA EXPLORATION
MAINTAIN THE ANTARCTIC TREATY
MAKE A TREATY
FOR SPAWNING AREAS
80% OF BIODIVERSITY IN THE SEA
IS STILL UNKNOWN
WE MUST INVEST IN RESEARCH
AND PROTECTING OUR SEAS
GENETIC HERITAGE
PROTECT ALL ECOSYSTEMS
SO MARINE LIFE CAN BE RESTORED
IN 2012 THE PROTECTED AREAS
WAS ONLY 1% OF THE OCEAN
LET'S PROTECT 20% OF THE OCEAN
BY 2020
IT IS TIME FOR AN INTERNATIONAL
STEWARDSHIP TO BEGIN
NOW LET'S AC With our deepest thanks to all those who
already work for the welfare of the ocean.
MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM
RESEARCH INSTITUTE
"TUNA LOOTERS"
THE TARA TEAM
ALL INTERPRETING BY SIMON YAM
ALL PILOTS
For more information about the oceans:
goodplanet.org