1.8: Your Mission

Your mission, ocean explorer, if you decide to accept it, is to develop an understanding of our world ocean, the most important ecosystem on Earth. Through this understanding, I hope that you will dedicate yourself to becoming an ocean-literate person. In traveling these pages, I hope you will see how your life and the world ocean are intimately connected. Ultimately, I hope that what you learn here will inspire you to teach others about the world ocean. Together we can make our planet a more sustainable home for all beings, human and otherwise. As Sengalese conservationist Baba Dioum (b. 1937) so eloquently put it, “In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught” (Dioum 1968, as cited by Lotze 2020).

I hope you’ll join me. Full speed ahead!

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