As you look into the mirror, like any day, you don’t realize you’ve forgotten how you used to look. The ocean stares back from the mirror, anonymous and urgent. It rages while you sleep, calling out to you from the past, the present, and the future.
I don’t remember the exact moment when the Ocean captured me, but I know I belong to it. The story is not as romantic as me staring hopefully into the horizon. Since I can’t pin down the moment properly, it might’ve happened while Samuel Jackson delivered his brave speech before dying à la hollywood in Deep Blue Sea (poor Russell, also, if you haven’t already seen this movie, I highly recommend it, it’s awesome and absurd… like most shark movies).
I don’t remember when the Ocean captured me, but I remember when I recognized that it had… when I accepted that it had.
I had just read these words:
“Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course. It happened to me at Le Mourillon on that summer’s day, when my eyes were opened on the sea.” — Captain J. Y. Cousteau, from The Silent World.
There was so much I didn’t understand, and so much more I didn’t think I could understand. The whole idea of a scientific career seemed unrealistic.
Yet here I am: it’s five years later and I’m on the brink of obtaining my degree on Marine Sciences. It’s been five years since I crossed the Atlantic and left my country to come to the Canary Islands, a remote, volcanic archipelago by western Africa. Not the most remote though, and it’s similar to being in Spain as the islands are part of the Kingdom of Spain.
I could go on and on about the many wonders that habit these islands, as I could about the ones on my island of origin, the Dominican Republic, and I will, but not on this entry. There’s something more urgent I need to talk to you about. I need to talk to you about us.
If you see it as data tightly fitted into a table or a graphic, it might not seem familiar, and why should it? Many numbers and symbols bunched together, it all seems very black and white, distant, boring. But the facts are there: the earth is changing, the climate is changing.
It might seem like a problem that doesn’t belong to you, but believe me, you belong to it, and so does your fate.
I tried explaining the effects of climate change to a guy I met at Starbucks, and even though he was super receptive and interested, I felt that the way I was talking about it was too far from becoming something that everybody could understand. My speech was technical and extensive, and it made me realize that I need to tell it like it is, like a story.
The story is already there, we just need to tell it.
Because it’s not the story of how the oceans and our climate are going to hell, it’s the story of how we are going to hell. Narratives can be drawing and interesting, so that’s what I will humbly try to construct, so you can finally look at it and realize how you, and all of us, are protagonists. Maybe antagonists. I like to believe that there’s still time for us to become heroes. Our species is amazing, and every day solutions of every kind pop up. But we don’t have enough time, or money. Putting money into climate change research is literally the same as buying time.
So, if you can look away from Johnny Depp’s defamation trial, your twitter feed, or Candy Crush for a second(it’s not like I can sometimes!), I’d like to tell you the story of how our earth has changed, and how it could change. I’ll try to turn complex scientific phenomena into your narrative. One you won’t be able to look away from, hopefully.
I’ll also talk about my experiences here as a student, traveller, and human! This blog won’t be exclusively about anything, but I can guarantee that 99.9999% of time it will be related to the Sea.
Follow me into this journey, my journey and yours. Ask questions. Don’t be content with what you know, or what you think you know. Dig deeper, go further. I’ll hold your hand.
