As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything we did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.

Why is it that scuba divers and surfers are some of the strongest advocates of ocean conservation? Because they've spent time in and around the ocean, and they've personally seen the beauty, the fragility, and even the degradation of our planet's blue heart.

When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.

If you think the ocean isn't important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system.

We're still under the weight of this impression that the ocean is too big to fail, that the planet is too big to fail.

I am driven by what I know; that the world I love is in trouble.

Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance. But we can do something about that.