Sea Ethic

(Continued)

immediately utilitarian perspectivejust one timerings hollow, compare it to our unquestioning acceptance of the rightness of songbirds or elephants. The difference arises not because wet animals have lesser attributes than dry ones. Rather it is because we have yet to extend our sense of community below the hightide line. Many still view the ocean as the blank space between continents.

We now need a "sea ethic."

Some will dismiss talk of ethics as too emotional, too much a luxury in pragmatic times. I answer that cynicism, apathy, and greed are in fact undiluted and unquenched emotions, far less rational and thoughtful than ethics, and certainly less nourishing. They are counterproductive selfish indulgences we truly can no longer afford.

A teacher with fresh vision once offered me the thought that fishes help connect the world because the waters they swim in wash on all shores. Such an expansive thought, helping as it does to gather the world together in our minds, does not require viewing the sea's inhabitants in unscientific terms. Recognizing our inter-relatedness does not imply notions of some unreal ocean utopia wherein all creatures swim at peace. No lions need lie down with lambs; mako sharks are welcome to attempt to bite swordfish in half, and swordfish may defend themselves violently. We can respectwe need finally to respectthe reality of the living oceans.

And it is a gentle and pleasant paradox that contemplating the connective, unifying power of the oceans can actually free our spirit. Simply by offering the sea's creatures membership in our own extended family of life we can broaden ourselves without simplifying or patronizing them. With such a mental gesturemerely a new selfconcept

we may complete the approach to living on Earth that began with the land ethic. Just as the land ethic grew into the conservation and environmental consciousness of the late twentieth century, the sea ethic will logically expand our view of wildlife and its values throughout the oceans.

So to embrace a sea ethic we need not idealize or distort the ocean's creatures. Indeed, up to now our view of the sea's living inhabitants can hardly have been more distorted. Instead, we have the opportunity to see them fully for the first time, as wild animals in their habitats, confronted with needs and dangers, equipped by evolution with the capacity and drive to manage and adapt and survive. The only prerequisites for taking this path are respectfulness and an extravagant desire for explorationboth impulses that build an elevated sense of vitality and purpose. The promise: that any honest inquiry into the reality of nature also yields

©1982 Bob Talbot

Orca whales are found in all oceans of the world.

insights about ourselves and the dramatic context of the human spirit.

For each of us, then, the challenge and opportunity is to cherish all life as the gift it is, envision it whole, seek to know it truly, and undertakewith our minds, hearts, and handsto restore its abundance. It is said that where there's life there's hope, and so no place can inspire us with more hopefulness than the great, lifemaking seathat singular, wondrous ocean covering the blue planet.

1998 has been designated by the United Nations as International Year of the Ocean. Let's take this opportunity to develop in ourselves and our communities a Sea Ethic that guides us to take care of the ocean as it takes care of us.

Dr. Carl Safina has been close to the sea all his life, as a fisherman and seabird scientist. He has served on the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, the Smithsonian Institution's Ocean Planet advisory board and the World Conservation Union's Shark Specialist Group. He is director of the National Audubon Society's Living Oceans Program and a lecturer at Yale University.