There is not a well-funded campaign among scientists to say, "Look, here's the evidence. You can read it yourself. Here are the facts. We're not making this up."

We still have 10 percent of the sharks. We still have half of the coral reefs. However, if we wait another 50 years, opportunities might well be gone.

When I was 12, we moved from New Jersey to Florida. The Gulf of Mexico was literally my backyard. Every day, I could see the ocean. At low tide I went out and played in seagrass meadows that used to come right up to the shore, filled with tiny seahorses, pipefish and soft corals. There was so much life! But then I witnessed the change, the loss of the shoreline, the loss of the mangrove trees, the loss of the seagrass meadows. Shallow bay areas were turned into parking lots.

In the past few decades, Earth's natural systems have endured more pressure than in all preceding human history.

No creature on Earth ever has organized themselves in ways that we have, with the capacity to alter the nature of nature the way we have.

We are all together in this, we are all together in this single living ecosystem called planet earth.

We have been far too aggressive about extracting ocean wildlife, not appreciating that there are limits and even points of no return.