Below the Surface ~ World Oceans Day

Arnhem Mermaids, ready to make a splash for the planet?

June 8 is World Oceans Day - a day we get to celebrate and honour the ocean that connects us all 🌏

We could write the ocean a love sonnet every day of the week and still not convey the meaning and extent of our love for the sea.

It gives us oxygen, regulates climate and is home to countless creatures. On the more abstract front, it gifts spiritual and emotional nourishment in abundance.

For these reasons as well as many others, we’re so very excited to celebrate World Oceans Days ~

a day that provides a unique opportunity to honour, help protect, and conserve our world’s shared ocean.

This day closely corresponds to World Environment Day, a United Nations day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment.

It’s the "people's day" for doing something to take care of the Earth. That something can be local, national or global. It can be a solo action or involve a crowd.

In honour of these important events, the Arnhem team organised a beach clean. The experience was an incredibly heartening one.

We were reminded that, as serious and confronting as the state of our oceans are, where there is dedication and unity there is hope.

Our team scoured the beaches and dunes uncovering plastics, glass, cigarette butts, bottle caps, fishing line and other unidentified non-organic items.

Discovering rubbish disguised by such beauty challenged us to exercise even more care when it comes to the way we choose, consume and discard items.

Rubbish damages the ocean on a number of fronts:

~ it prevents us from enjoying the pleasure that results from taking in the beauty of an unspoiled beach;

~ it kills and poisons many bird, fish and marine mammal species through plastic entanglement and ingestion;

~ recent research even indicates that these plastic molecules are making their way to our bodies via seafood consumption.

Instigators of World Oceans Day have given us a few simple yet powerful ways of taking positive action for the ocean:

✨Change perspective – think about what the ocean means to you and what it has to offer all of us.

Understanding its deep and profound significance will inevitably inspire us to conserve it for present and future generations.

✨Learn – discover the wealth of diverse and beautiful ocean creatures and habitats, how our daily actions affect them, and how we are all interconnected.

✨ Change our ways – we are all linked to, and through, the ocean!

By taking care of your backyard and helping in your community, you are acting as a caretaker of our ocean.

Making small modifications to your everyday habits will make a difference, and involving your family, friends, and community will benefit our blue planet even more!

✨Celebrate – whether you live inland or on the coast, we are all connected to the ocean.

Take the time to think about how the ocean affects you, and how you affect the ocean, and then organise or participate in activities that celebrate our ocean.

This year’s UN designated theme is ocean and gender, in recognition that gender equality is a key aspect of sustainability. Here are a few little stats:

24% of parliamentarians and 38% of marine scientists are women

Women constitute half the workforce yet earn 64% of men’s wages in aquaculture. They also have less access to decision-making roles.

It raises the question, how might the ocean benefit from inviting and honouring more female input?

And could imbalances in marine ecosystems in some way reflect a gender imbalance?

Such interesting and important (sea)food for thought!

It was a wonderful feeling to make a small yet meaningful positive impact on the ocean today.

We felt challenged to make ocean-mindfulness a daily habit- to ensure our everyday choices and mindset reflect our love for the ocean and our dependence on it.

Working together, we can and will protect our shared ocean 🌏💚