Mission Blue

I recently watched an amazing movie for my AP environmental class in school and here is my response/review. PLEASE WATCH IT. SO SO GOOD. Learn more here (mission blue.org) The movie is on Netflix too!

When Sylvia Earle said “No ocean, no life. No ocean, no us.” she meant that as humans we often don’t classify ourselves or give ourselves the responsibility and equivalent relationship with Earth (as we do deer or snakes for example), and rather see Earth as a tool and a burial ground for waste and mistakes. Ms. Earle mentions how things are constantly being thrown over ships with little to no thought. Earle states that if we keep using the oceans as our trashcans, we won’t have any more ocean left. We used to think that there was nothing we could do to harm the oceans, but there is, and each action that humans take regarding fossil fuels and output of CO2 into the atmosphere affects the ocean drastically. As an example, in the film divers explored a remote coral sea off the coast of Australia and find that in the past 40 years, toxic chemicals and waste have destroyed and bleached an interdependent ecosystem so much that it is practically dead. Now, half of the coral systems are gone. She says that the ocean provides life. Without the coral the fish die. And we may depend on the fish for food, and so the humans die. The ocean also provides us with the ability for biogeochemical cycles to occur. Without the ocean our water would take a much longer time to cycle. In the movie environmentalists and marine experts stressed the connection between the treatment of our oceans and extreme weather and global warming. Scientists explained how the ocean regulates temperature and wind, and when humans mess with the fundamental makeup of the ocean by removing massive amounts of wildlife, storms can occur that wipe out populations by the thousands. This is a very direct correlation of no ocean (or an ocean out of balance), no us. As mentioned in the movie, the extraction of gargantuan amounts of marine wildlife for consumption by humans is so damaging to the world, and in turn, us. By removing unsustainable amounts of fish from the ocean, we are stabbing ourselves in the back, although the effects may not be so sudden. Some populations of fish have declined so dramatically because they are being killed before they reproduce, or their food is being killed and harvested. The disruption of this important food chain not only causes mass extinction underwater, but causes humans to have a resource that is not renewable nor efficient. When the ocean’s food web is off kilter, life is all a jumble, and as humans, we are life and we will get equally affected by our own mistakes.

Mission blue highly affected me and how I think about the oceans. I have never seen such a beautifully well done and educational movie about the toxicity and poisoning of our oceans. I know a lot about the fish industry and the cruelty on the animal side of things which was mentioned, but I am so grateful I got to glimpse this world that needs so much attention and love. I had a very very hard time watching the movie and would often find ways to distract myself from the blatant and harsh reality. This movie makes me want to volunteer and do more involving helping the ocean. I really loved the idea of a hope spot rather than a hot spot. This movie was really a call to action for people to start shifting toward a stewardship role in regards to their relationship with the environment. Earle also said how she is always learning and she can never stop healing the world, and I aspire to be just like her; constantly learning and healing.

The goal of the “real life mermaid” project was to explore the ocean floor of the virgin islands. The five marine biologists wanted to study the marine biology without having to waste time coming up for air. They lived in what looked like a submarine with tvs and modern accommodations. Although some scientists thought it was an absurd idea for women who were considered weak to embark on such a demanding exploration, the five female divers discovered many things about the ocean floor in the virgin islands. I would definitely want to do what they did because it almost seems like living in space. These women had to train to dive and live underwater for two weeks. And with the intense training, the women got to witness what it was like to live and discover with much more ease than would have been possible before. The women had the ability to explore, and then rest underwater, how cool is that!