Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.

By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.

I hope for your help to explore and protect the wild ocean in ways that will restore the health and, in so doing, secure hope for humankind. Health to the ocean means health for us.

We humans have this idea that the ocean is so big, so vast, so resilient that it doesn't matter what we do to it. That may have been true 1,000 years ago. But in the last 100, especially the last 50 years, we have destroyed the assets that make our lives possible.

We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently.

When you are a child you learn your alphabet, your numbers, but increasingly, we must learn from the earliest stages that the highest priority has to be to maintain the world as a safe place for humankind.

It's an appreciation for life generally, every bit of life, the smallest creature that lives in the intestines of termites that make termite life possible - to the leaves that turn out oxygen and grab carbon dioxide and with water make simple sugars that feed much of the world. I mean, these are everyday miracles.