How do You See the Sea?

If the sea was a child, then would you be outraged?

Will it take the personification of the sea as a child to make society change its ways?

What would you do to save the sea, if the sea was a child?

What would you say to those who turn and look away, because if you look away from the sea, what will you see? What would be left of us without the sea?

Seventy-percent of our planet is covered by oceans, which do not belong to the one-percent to do as they please. They're our oceans, and it is all our responsibility to protect the sea as if it was a child.

Give the sea a child's voice; if a corporation can be a person, we need to consider the sea a person too. See the sea as a child and then you begin to see the problems we face; the problems created by the human race.

If the sea was a child, if you heard it cry, would you rush to water's edge to be by its side?

We can't allow people to cover their ears when the sea weeps and sobs, as oil constantly seeps from the depths of the drilled abyss and the broken hulls of tanker ships.

Make the oil companies pay; pay to clean the beaches, the wetlands, the marine life and birds. Never forget the oil soaked birds struggling to be free, struggling to fly, and struggling to escape man's devastation of the sea.

Heavy metals, nitrates and a storm water flow of who knows what, a toxic soup seeping into the sea from factories -- overwhelming, overpowering, overcoming the sea as a child.

Don't let big oil, chemical, and plastic off the hook; never accept that this is the way it has to be. Stand up for the sea -- speak for the sea as a child.

Make the consumers watch, they drive the market; never let them close their eyes as calm deep blue turns blood red from the kill of a whaler's harpoon. When seals are clubbed and killed and sharks are finned and dolphins driven to slaughter in Taiji cove -- make them watch; make them see what they are doing to the sea.

Make the politicians listen; make them rethink their votes, don't let them turn away. Make them see what their laws and regulations and policies have done to the sea.

Be vigilant in your seafood watch as bottom trawling, drift nets, gill nets, and incidental catches continue, with factory ships and whaling ships, some of the worst inventions of man yet.

Hold nations accountable for their impact on fisheries. Don't let them over fish to extinction; never let them off the hook, the hook that indiscriminately trolls. Make their leaders feel the urgency; make their citizens understand the suffering, the pain and despair of the sea as a child.

If the sea was a child what would you do to protect humpbacks, grays, and orcas too, leatherbacks, dolphins and fins of blue? How many more otters and seals and sea lions will be indiscriminately killed, before we collectively stop the rape of nature's blue?

Marine habitat devastation, diminishing polar caps and bears alike, can it really be that no one from that other political party cares about global warming and rising oceans taking back man's shore? Or is this denial just politics as usual, a dangerous ignorance we can't allow anymore!

Ocean acidification, coral suffocation, the very color of life being taken from the sea; bleached from blue, once luminous colors too, now lifeless and gray.

Ocean gyres, a garbage patch and tsunami debris, plastic pollution abounds in the sea. It breaks down smaller and smaller but never goes away, leaching toxins and damaging marine ecosystems.

These little pieces of plastic, once making life so convenient for us, are mistaken for food by birds and marine life which starve and die; their stomachs filled with the symbols of our throw-away society.

Single-use bags and styrofoam to-go; reduce, reuse, recycle and refuse by just saying no!

A vibrant sea is a healthy sea and a matter of environmental justice and respect. It demands stewardship of the ocean and our coasts through policies that treat the sea as if it was a child.

If the sea was a child, it should be wrapped in a security blanket of blue where sanctuaries abound and marine protected areas surround, the sea as a child.

The future is in the hands of our youth, the next wave for change. Budding young scientists and aspiring marine biologists on the verge of great discovery in tide pools filled with all the childlike wonder of sea stars, sea anemones, sea sponges and barnacles, hermit crabs, limpets and snails.

The sea is in good hands when it is in the hand of a child, but the sea as a child still needs our help as adults. If we treat the sea as a child now, it will sustain and nurture us and our children and their children beyond.

If you see the sea as a child, then you should be outraged at what you see! And if you can't see the benefit of seeing the sea as a child, you need to see some more.

If not now, when? If not this, what? If not us, who -- who will speak for the sea as a child?

If the sea was a child, what would you do to save the sea?

Originally published in the Huffington Post for World Oceans Day