Into the Dark Blue: A Medi(t)ation On The Oceans–Its Pain, Its Wonder, Its Wild, and Its Hope

Is an anthropomorphization of the oceans possible? And, why bother to do so? How are we to grasp the magnitude of what is going on in Ocean ecologies as urban dwellers seem far removed from such concerns? The following essay is an attempt to draw our species relationship to the Oceans closer by addressing several dimensions of existential life that enables us to "feel" and be affected by lifting a veil of disregard toward the silent scream that is now ringing throughout its depths. I start with its pain, which, as Nietzsche reminds us: "In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservations of a species" (1974, Aphorism # 318). To answer this "pain," I then turn to its wonder so that we may recognize what is being lost as the beauty of its diversity disappears. From there I raise the specter of its wild, evoking aspects of the new animism of personhood that has emerged, and I end on a hopeful note, calling on the artist as sorcerer to open a way for a future yet-to-come. It is a meditation-mediation with dread, love and hope. To begin then:

Its Pain

To say that the health of the oceans is in trouble is surely to state the obvious, an understatement with enormous consequences. The amount of scientific evidence is overwhelming; the string of scientific articles¹ are constantly interpreted and made accessible to the general public.² The Blue Humanities are a growing wave, given the increase of attention to conferences that are emerging, and an entire host of websites devoted to protecting the oceans (twenty-six are listed as Internet sites),³ perhaps an inappropriate pun given the precarious conditions that are being faced in what has been popularized as the Anthropocene and the "sixth extinction."

The litany of sorrows concerning the oceans seems both endless and complex. Stacey Alaimo, long known for her relentless queries over the health of the oceans, starts a chapter in her book by listing a litany of human-made disasters that lead up to an end-game of extinction: They are worth repeating as they identify the "pain" the oceans are experiencing: "Atomic testing. Dead zones. Oil 'spills.' Industrial fishing, overfishing, trawling, long lines, shark finning, whaling, Bycatch, by kill, ghost nest. Deep sea mining and drilling. Cruise ship sewerage. BP. Fukushima. Radioactive, plastic, and microplastic pollution. Sonic pollution. Climate change. Ocean acidification, Ecosystem collapse. Extinction" (2016b, 111). This "shock to thought" comes home with the first and most recent systematic analysis of marine wilderness around the world by a team of ocean scientists, environmentalists, ecologists, many from the Center for Conservation and Biodiversity Science, University of Queensland, who have found that only a fraction—13.2%—of the world's ocean is marine wilderness, 4.9 percent of which is within marine protected areas (MPA). These remaining areas are found primarily in the Arctic, Antarctic and around a few remote low populations in Pacific island nations (Jones et al. 2018). Impressively, 15 anthropogenic stressors were used to make such an assessment. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that don't break down in the environment and banned in the late 1970's, have turned up on the bottom floor of the ten-kilometer deep Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean, as well as in killer whales and dolphins in Western Europe. Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic suffer the same fate of toxin accumulation (Laird, et al. 2013; Jamieson, et al. 2017).

Plastic pollution of the oceans seems to be the most horrific, spectacular, dramatic, and devastating key anthropogenic stressor as its effects are so readily and baldly visible—sea animals and fish caught and entangled in nylon nets, wearing plastic choking collars as their bodies grow around them, or their movement stopped by being caught up in nylon ropes, effectively "drowning" them. It is estimated that 8 million tons of waste plastic ends up in the oceans each...