TED talks: Sylvia Earle’s TED Prize wish to protect our oceans

Tomorrow is World Oceans Day – a UN initiative that aims to celebrate and enhance understanding planet Earth’s oceans. To that end, this week’s featured TED talk is from legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle.

Filmed in February 2009, she shares some fascinating anecdotes and images from her long career – while also revealing some disturbing statistics regarding our oceans’ rather rapid decline.

Her message goes to the very heart of why we’re called Blue & Green Tomorrow. Our planet is more blue than green and the green movement has always been too land-centric for our tastes.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams’ description of Earth as a ‘blue-green planet’ always resonated and we’re not sure we’d like to live on an entirely green one.

In the video, Earle says, “I’m haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls ‘tomorrow’s child’, asking why we didn’t do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.”

To watch this video on the TED website, click here.