Transcriber: Denise RQ Reviewer: Lena Clemente
Can we go?
Alright!
There we are.
Whoops! I hope I didn't hit the wrong one.
"When one man, for whatever reason,
has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life,
he has no right to keep it to himself."
-- Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
My grandfather, pioneer, oceanographer
and of course, filmmaker, held the keys
to opening up the undersea world to the rest of us.
It's thanks to him,
his 134 award-winning films and documentaries,
and 72 books
that hundreds of millions of people around the world
have been able to dive virtually in this fantastic realm.
It's also thanks to him that the next two generations,
my father, and my sister and I, and my cousins
have picked up where he left off.
This year marks the 100th birthday commemoration of my grandfather's
and we are proud to say
that we're on expeditions all over the world,
and continuing on in his footsteps;
and instead of describing
the kind of beauty, and majesty, and mystery
that we see in our everyday lives on expedition,
I'd like to take you on 1 minute-dive.
(Music)
(Video)
[Of ocean exploration]
[passed through generations]
[Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Fabien Cousteau,]
[Céline Cousteau.]
(End of video)
Thanks to Ocean Futures and PBS, we are able to also share
our experiences around the world
with people who don't get a chance to go out and see what's going on
in our one and only life support system:
our ocean planet.
The oceans are a phenomenal place.
Not only do the oceans encompass 99% of our world's total biodiversity
as opposed to our two-dimensional thinking saying 72%,
but they also house almost 95% of the world's life.
The oceans are quite literally the circulatory system of life,
and as such, whatever happens in the ocean, happens to us.
The issues that we are facing
are very complex,
but if we can compartmentalize
and see the major issues as 3 systems:
the changing climate regardless of whether you believe in it or not,
we are as a species emitting gases out there
that create not only weather patterns, and of course, increasing temperatures,
by also ocean acidification which is a huge problem,
the loss of natural resources
which in and of itself is very alarming,
and something that we're all here for today,
which is ocean pollution or pollution of our planet in general.
This is a wonderful little pictograph of what's happening in our Pacific Ocean,
and although I've to say slightly inaccurate,
there are a lot of validities in this.
Most of the garbage we see floating out in the North Pacific,
about 80% of it, comes from land-based sources.
And the vast majority of that, of course,
is single-use plastics, that stuff floats.
Just to give you an idea of the volume of what we're talking about,
the reason why I says is inaccurate is actually the debris field
is the size of Canada, not the size of Texas or 3 Spains.
It sounds impressive;
unfortunately, only a couple of these areas
are about 20 meters deep of garbage;
most of it is plastic soup which is hard to see.
Yet, even better news, unfortunately,
is that there's a gyre in every ocean
to the tune of 2.4 million pounds of plastic
being dumped in our oceans every single hour.
So that's the enormity of the problem.
As my father mentioned,
we've gone to some of the most remote places in the world
and have been privileged to see the beauty of it,
and unfortunately, we've also seen
what human impact has on places that are thousands of miles
from where any human being has ever been.
Within 15 minutes, my father's picked up that pile of lighters on a beach
stemming from all sorts of different countries.
Here, in Samoa, in one of the most beautiful reefs,
I found a suitcase; and fortunately, there was nothing in it.
And of course, animals such as the monk seal
are surrounded by our debris.
If the things that we see are a an enormous problem,
and we might be able to address them fairly easily
because we can, like Dianna was saying
we can just refuse or reduce;
but the stuff we don't see, or the stuff that we see very little of
is what worries me the most.
something that it's impossible to take out of our water system.
This is what gets into the food chain,
and ultimately, what is going to end up in our plates.
The flag bearers of the oceans' health
are apex predators,
are some of the first signs of the suffering out there.
From whales being entangled,
dolphins, turtles, etc., being choked and drowned
to albatross;
- this one in Kure, the last island on the Hawaiian chain,
1,200 miles from anywhere -
where we see 16 pieces of plastic in the chicks' stomach.
We're losing about one million or so apex predators every year just to plastics
and that's just the apex predators.
There are hundreds of millions of lower-order animals
I'm sure that are suffering the same fate.
But what does that mean to us?
I look at this - this is a little collage of photos
that I found around not just ours,
of how we treat our planet, our one and only life support system.
It's an alarming depiction
but I related to when I was growing up;
and my room, if my mother ever saw my room look like this
I would be grounded until I cleaned it up.
Who's going to clean up the mess that's out there?
We all have to.
But more importantly, we have to stop the mess,
because beach cleanups are essential,
but until we stop creating the mess in the first place
we're just going to be picking up other people's garbage.
My grandfather also said, "People protect what they love."
But how can people protect what they don't understand?
And that's the key: we have to start seeing human beings
as the potential solution, and not just the problem,
we need to educate, and empower,
and have us restore the health of our one and only life support system.
Thank you.
(Applause)