What the Ocean Remembers

[intro music, ocean and wind sounds]

Welcome to World Ocean Radio…

I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.

Once a week, I sit down to write these short reports and essays about the facets of the ocean, the myriad subjects that pertain to our purpose: to remind you of the timeless relation of the ocean to all things natural, to how and by what systems it provides us to live as a global civilization, presumably endless over time. Sometimes I am motivated by an event or something I have read that narrows the context and provides a precise example of something so broad, deep, and dynamic as the ocean itself.

Toda, I got to thinking of what the ocean remembers. When do our memories begin? Some would argue before birth, latent in our history, vivid in remembrance, and ongoing beyond any single moment, any single event, any single life, and singly human engagement in what we call history. If I asked the ocean to tell me a story, where would it begin? 4.4 billion years ago when Earth’s molten surface condensed water vapor into a volumetric system that now covers 70% of the planet’s surface and connects all things on land and sea? Would the story be told in the context of natural life becoming human life and human life becoming the source of feats and defeats that constitute constructions and deconstructions over time: the philosophic questions, the making of art, the heroic adventures, the choices made collectively in the name of progress, and the consequences of those choices, for better or for worse, over the full extent of what we call time?

Where would the ocean begin its story? With some underwater volcanic explosion? With some sub-aqueous atom encountering another? With some clumsy arrival on a rocky/sandy shore? With some accidental encounter with the possibility of food and exploration beyond the safety of the land? With some spiritual realization of some meaning beyond experience and the known?

The ocean remembers in the continuity of the marine life it supports. In the energy it acquires and stores from the sun. In the course of a first voyage, to feed and to settle, to explore and to learn, to seek and to understand. It incorporates the full spectrum of life as we, and our ancestors, have lived it. It is the stuff of myth, epic journeys, courageous survivals, human conflict, natural disaster, and the accumulated knowledge that has built what we call civilization. It is an endless telling that will be told with equal purpose and enduring value long after we are gone. The ocean stores energy and sustenance as both remembered and generated knowledge to come. It nurtures through its cycle of water, its circulation of food and weather, its embracing solace for our personal failures and its dynamic challenge to our imaginations. If in our ignorance we are destroying the land, we have still in our wisdom the possibility of sustaining the sea that connects all things, the opportunity for the wisdom of survival.

Last week, we had three generations here at home: a father, son, and grandson. There was a discontinuity of experience of course, but there was also the connectivity of discovery along the way. As an elder, I considered the distillation of career and the past. My son, middle-aged, considered the essential significance of creativity and engagement with community and social challenge. And my grandson was already engaged in learning: the substance of science, the notes of a recorder, and the pride of making something from nothing with his hands. It was all there as past, present, and future implication, as happiness and hope through inter-generational connection. If we fail, what of that disappointment will the ocean remember? If we succeed, the ocean will remember us in the wind, wave, and wonder of the future and the story will carry on, and on.

We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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[outro music, ocean and wind sounds]