A Credo for the World Ocean

Pick one thing that you think should and can be done, within your place and your capacity, and pursue it with relentless intensity using any all means available.

I am often asked to describe the purpose of the World Ocean Observatory, to articulate a credo by which to guide our actions.

In an attempt at response, here is a list of intentions:

• To change the way we see the world;
• To focus perspective and motivation beyond self to others, beyond consumption to conservation, beyond conflict to civility, beyond denial and intolerance to acknowledgement and engagement;
• To celebrate the continuum of water, from fresh to salt, from the mountain-top to the abyssal plain, as locus of and process for a new system of values, structures, and behaviors;
• To promote the connections between the ocean and human health, food, energy, security, community, and culture as a dynamic system uniting land and sea;
• To extend knowledge to action through the promotion of science, policy, education and communication as a mean for global unification and peace;
• To build a circle of Citizen of the Ocean worldwide as a constituency for political will and social change;
• To advance a vision of a new hydraulic society as a response to the existential challenge of climate change and as a transformational model for human relation and endeavor united and sustained by water;
• To articulate a plan by which to relate the asset value of the ocean to global finance, law, governance, cooperation, equity, and justice as an evolutionary process toward a viable, benevolent, enduring society;
• To shift public understanding and engagement to support of such a plan for the near and long-term benefit of future generations, indeed for all mankind;
• To advance the conservation and sustainability of oceanic systems as the best methodology for and political response to our critical need for transformational change;
• To embrace water, the most essential natural resource on earth, as the primary force for the future of our selves, families, communities, and nation states, for the continuity of human enterprise, creativity, and survival.

I am often asked, What can I do? There is a suggestion of hopelessness in the question, as if the problems are too large, one individual’s ability to act effectively too small as to paralyze any possibility of successful engagement.

My answer: Pick one thing.

Pick one thing that you think should and can be done, within your place and your capacity, and pursue it with relentless intensity using any all means available. You see such determination around us often, one person on a mission to create, organize, finance, pursue what may seem an impossible goal, yet achieved one way or another as an outcome, a realization of intent that drives change for the better.

World Ocean Observatory’s goals may seem too ambitious, too grandiose to be possible. I argue not. The fact is that the information required to achieve incremental progress is readily available; the technology via radio, podcast, and social media offers economical, efficient, and effective means to amplify any message, virtually unlimited broadcast that can, and does, reach measurably millions worldwide through audio, video, social platforms, and creative collaborations and networks for messaging and connection. Through our resource catalog of ocean information and through the success in 2024 with the World Ocean Explorer virtual immersion project, we are transmitting ideas, stimulating connections heretofore impossible, now real, often with enthusiastic reply and endorsement — a link one to one that adds up to millions.

We are so privileged to have such an opportunity: to express our views freely and with effect. We vote: an equally powerful collective act of intention. We meet to share and apply ideas, toward goals local and abroad. We come together to organize an event, to support an institution, to share our aspirations through collective engagement and responsibility. We make change, however incremental, however impossible at first it may seem.

Pick one thing.

World Ocean Observatory is my choice. A credo? A plan of action? To change the way we see the world? Why not? To embrace water, the most essential natural resource on earth, as the primary force for the future of our selves, families, communities, and nation states, for the continuity of human enterprise, creativity, and survival? Why not? The connection we know and feel in this moment through airwaves and Internet as a means to share ideas and innovations worldwide? Why not?

Why not indeed. Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a Citizen of the Ocean.

PETER NEILL is founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based resource for science-based information and educational resources committed to the health and future of climate and ocean. Peter is host of World Ocean Radio, a weekly syndicated radio show and podcast upon which this blog is inspired.