Saturday, June 8th is World Oceans Day. In honor of the day, we are sharing messages of hope from our team of Oceanic Ambassadors.
Maxwel Hohn
@maxwelhohn
“Every time I slip into the Ocean, it’s like going home” — Sylvia Earle.
In many ways the Ocean is the quintessential essence of life. Amongst the whelks to whales we owe our very existence on earth to the tiny phytoplankton that create up to 85% of the worlds oxygen.
Lured into the ocean through snorkelling and scuba diving, I thrive on every moment I can spend underwater exploring this vast blue world.
As a species thriving on this beautiful planet we call home, we need to understand the consequences of our impacts. We need to reduce the amount of emissions we put into the atmosphere, protect our oceans and support innovation and science in our day to day choices.
If we join together to exercise our care and support for this planet, the planet will care and support us in turn!
Benja Iglesis
@benjaiglesisimages
The Ocean is the only place on the world that I’m in peace.
Thanks to the Ocean I have been able to meet great people, have amazing friends and share my passion for photography and filmmaking all around the world. I could not survive without being in the water. I try every day to spread the word on how important it is to protect and educate divers and people about how fragile the Ocean is, without it we can’t survive. I can see that the new generations are more aware of how bad we have treated the Ocean on the past decades, they are trying to create a consciousness about the environment, I think they understand that if we don’t do anything, we don’t have a future. I been lucky enough to work in the underwater world for the past three decades and I hope we will wake up and try to do more every day. You don’t need to change the planet just encourage your neighbor to be more aware of what he/she does to reduce pollution on the community. Together we make a difference, one step at a time.
This is one of the most important images in my career because is nothing more humbling than swimming with gentle giants.
Aloha Have a great day!!
Martin Strmiska
@martin.strmiska
Coral recovering after massive bleaching event in Great Barrier Reef, Australia.
As humanity we can be very destructive. Our actions cause major injuries to oceans and their inhabitants. But nature never gives up. Just like mother loves her kids, she concentrates all remaining power to raise and protect her children, the oceans try to recover from injuries. Corals, the Ocean’s children, suffered and died at Great Barrier Reef. After three year from the massive coral bleaching event, new generation of corals raise from the ashes. The Oceans have lots of power to help their children, but they call for help now. Let’s listen to that voice and take action!
To me Ocean means the deepest and purest source of positive energy. It also provides me with huge portion motivation for my work. For more than half of my life I have been in close relationship with the Ocean. With my photography I no longer want just manifest its beauty, but I also want to motivate people to protect it.
I collect trash every time I am in the water, on the boat, on the beach. I also provide my imagery to various conservation organizations.
Lemon sharks, Tiger Beach, Bahamas
From sharks we have made our enemies. Movies, stories and legends mistakenly manifest the ability to hunt and kill and they still come up with honest, friendly smile.
For me, the sharks represent the guards of the balance in the Ocean. The balance between power to kill and love.
To me Ocean means the deepest and purest source of positive energy. It also provides me with huge portion motivation for my work. For more than half of my life I have been in close relationship with the Ocean. With my photography I no longer want just manifest its beauty, but I also want to motivate people to protect it.
Joe Platko
@hiimjoe88
My life has always revolved around the ocean. Some of my first memories are of tidepooling with my family along the central coast, getting those first glimpses of what lived beneath the waves. That instilled a desire to continually learn about and document this hidden world, and to pass that on to others.
Living in Monterey, you can see the positive impact conservation efforts have had. Many species who’s numbers had previously been greatly reduced, such as otters and gray whales, are now thriving. It brings hope that other populations can also be saved. However, we must be willing to change our ways of life for these goals to be realized.
Karim Iliya
@karimiliya
No matter how much time I spend in the ocean it never sees to amaze it. It is a place full of mysteries, where gravity and time stop, and giants glide through the blue like birds. The more time I spend in the ocean, the more I realize how many more secrets it holds. At this pressing time on our planet, it is more important than ever to work towards protecting our oceans and the animals and marine ecosystems within them. For me, this is through photography and video, to try and convey the beauty and importance of these places, as well as taking people to swim with humpbacks so that they may develop an appreciation and connection towards the oceans. The ocean is vast and I am hopeful about its resilience and its future. It’s not too late to do our part.
Kadu Pinheiro
@kadupinheiro
This pod off dolphins in Bimini represent a lot of my feelings about the oceans:
Life, the ocean for me is the cradle of all existence on earth, it feeds us and, since the beginnings of mankind we launch into it in a journey of discovery.
The ocean made me travel, made me see the world, took me to places I always dreamed of in my childish reveries, and my retribution is to register and share in the best possible way through my work as a photographer. The wonders I had the opportunity to see and live through my images, touching people and influencing the world, so that this fragile and mysterious environment can be preserved and admired.
Today I find myself more optimistic seeing so many people around me worrying about the health of the oceans and their inhabitants, the issue of plastic is increasingly in evidence and people are beginning to change their behavior in relation to what they can do to contribute to better world.
Mel Trevino
@watermelodie
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have.Think of what you can do with that there is…” Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
I’ve been in the water since I was I child, being a former diver (Olympic diving) for the Mexican National Team then by becoming a Scuba Diver and focusing my professional career around diving, I gained a whole new perspective of the power of the ocean, that is waiting for us all to discover and preserve it.
The lack of information about what the ocean does for us and what we can do to preserve it is huge, due to the current circumstances; this is a big opportunity for everyone to spread the word about good practices and how one step at a time we can create consciousness in other people’s minds. I’m a believer that there’s no empty word said towards education and preservation. I personally stopped eating fish and any other product from the ocean a couple years ago; I don’t buy plastic water bottles and none of our establishments do either. We use renewable energy, and we did a bold project to reduce and treat the water that at some point gets back to the ocean, we don’t sell any products from the sea and I try to give my best self to the people I spend time with and spread my passion about the ocean and how we can help to preserve it.
I feel very enthusiastic about how the younger generations are worried and focused on the future of our amazingly beautiful ecosystems and the passion put into efforts to preserve it. I’ve been invited to some universities to talk about what we do, our passion linked to nature, and ways to preserve it; and every day I see people more involved and well informed about the impact we have on those amazing creatures living in our oceans and those unique ecosystems, I say our oceans because they are ours, meaning our home (even though you have never been to the sea) — and basically it is, our oceans are responsible of the production of more of 85% of the oxygen of planet earth, meaning in hard numbers if that percentage of oxygen drops significantly because of the lack of production of the phytoplankton that lives in our very own oceans we all would “disappear” in a snap, if that’s not an enough reason to protect it then I don’t know what would be…
To conclude, we are so fragile that even at the surface (by keeping on living like there is no tomorrow) or depth (with a mix of gases) we are just one step from making a mistake that may end our time in this beautiful amazing world… Same with our planet, our wildlife and our ocean; we are just one step from ditching all the amazingness of this world either because we ignored the real deal or because we think it’s going to last forever and clearly it will not. The good part is that we are also one step closer to protecting what we love.
Connor Gallagher
@connorgallagherproductions
I owe so much of my life entirely to the ocean. Images of television of pulsing coral reefs and towering golden kelp forests sparked my dream to not only explore this magical part of our planet, but to also try and do its beauty justice with my camera. My first job out of college immediately placed me in the pacific ocean every day, surrounded by passionate folks who loved the ocean as much as I did. Many of my very best friends came from a shared love for getting in or on the ocean purely to see what was there and enjoy its existence.
For anyone curious with a taste for adventure, there’s nothing more dynamic than a place that constantly surprises. In the ocean, it feels like anything is possible, which is we continually return to the same dive sites day after day, year after year. There’s always a chance for an entirely new encounter or simply viewing familiar places in a novel way. While the ocean faces unprecedented challenges today, much of it remains one of the last great wildernesses on the planet.
I often say that in my relative short life, I’ve watched the ocean face some of its most intense threats, and it frequently feels like it’s losing those battles. However, in recent years, I’ve witnessed a shift in how the public sees these issues both on the ground and online. I have a lot of hope, and images like this keep that hope alive. This image is from Cabo Pulmo in Mexico, where a community decided overfishing was a threat to their livelihoods, and decided to protect their local bay. The results have been incredible, and it’s easily one of the most productive places in this hemisphere. The ocean is incredibly resilient given the opportunity, and we should make every effort possible to give it that chance.
William Drumm
@williamdrumm
The ocean is what courses through my veins every day. When I awake in the morning, I connect cross the web with thousands of other people across the planet, who also have these salty arteries. I live in Denver, Colorado, so sometimes it’s hard to stay connected with the ocean over time and distance. But ever since I was a boy, I have known that the ocean is where my soul resides.
Because of this, I have shaped my profession around the ocean, and scuba diving particularly. Today I work fulltime for Huish Outdoors, where we make scuba diving equipment that allows people to experience and get to know the ocean as I do.
It is so easy to become disconnected from the ocean and nature in general when living in the city. But the older I get, the more I realize that it’s up to us, every single one of us to change our own habits and help others change theirs to more sustainable ones. We all must first make personal changes in our daily lives, like minimizing plastic use, eating less or no meat, and creating less waste. It is then up to us to support our friends and families and those around us to take similar actions. This extends to your work, where I believe we should all try to shape our company culture towards more environmentally responsible practices. Change starts on a personal level, then grows to family and friends, then colleagues and eventually the community and the world.
Thinking about it this way really makes me smile. Big changes start with little actions.
— William Drumm
Christian Miller
@christian_miller_photo
I used to think i can make an impact by saving individual animals. Now this has all shifted to protecting their environment. As a diver you know better than anybody else what is on the line and I believe we should be on the front line to protect the Oceans.
Every second breath we take is generated by the Ocean. No Ocean — No Air — No Life.