The health of the oceans is synonymous with the health of the planet, and the changes needed to combat global environmental degradation “begin with personal choices about how we want to live,” argues underwater photographer and National Geographic icon David Doubilet.
I always say that this is an ‘ocean planet’, not a terrestrial planet. [os oceanos cobrem cerca de 71% da superfície da Terra] and it is necessary to be aware that the changes suffered by the oceans are directly linked to our survival. When we talk about climate change, we have to remember that the oceans regulate the climate”, says David Doubilet in an interview with Lusa.
To the author of 12 books documenting marine ecosystems in the world’s oceans and a photographer for National Geographic magazine for 50 years, the future depends on personal decisions such as opting for solar energy to heat bath water, going to work in a car that does not use fossil fuels or reducing the use of plastics on a daily basis, “small steps that may require some sacrifices”, but also “exercising the greatest power that citizens have, which is the power to vote for change and elect leaders capable of taking the necessary steps”.
The call is shared by Jennifer Hayes, a biologist, photojournalist and life and work partner of David Doubilet, who tells Lusa that “it is frustrating to see and hear speeches that do not translate into concrete decisions or actions, that do not translate into changes , but there will have to come a time when politicians cannot avoid making difficult decisionseven unpopular. They are afraid of making these decisions and losing votes, but they will have to be made.”
“The ‘climate crisis’ that has become a buzzword in speeches is an ‘ocean crisis.’ If the evolution of climate change persists, it is not only the melting of the polar ice cap and the loss of some ‘coastal real estate development area’ that is at stake, since we will move on to scenarios that we still only see in movies today, the disturbance of ocean currents at a point where the entire system that makes the Earth habitable stops working,” warns Jennifer Hayes.
With Lisbon preparing to host the second United Nations Conference on the Oceans between June 27 and July 1, Jennifer Hayes leaves the message to the political leaders who will be in the Portuguese capital with the task of advancing concrete measures to protect the oceans that “listen”. scientists and make decisions based on science. It can be a hard road, but rulers cannot ignore science“.
David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes are currently working on the ‘Coral Through the Lens of Time’ project – which they presented Tuesday in Lisbon at a National Geographic event that brought together explorers and communicators dedicated to environmental issues – in which, through the Juxtaposition of photographs from their archives taken 10 or 20 years ago with current photographs taken in the same places present a ‘before and after’, testimony to the changes, almost always degradation, that the oceans are suffering.
What the project intends, says Doubilet, is “provide evidence” of the effects of climate change“because the most difficult thing to convince people is to present tangible evidence of these phenomena and here what we do is show the changes and the speed with which they happen”.
“Images have the power to open people’s eyes, to convince unbelievers. That is why we insist on showing what is underwater, invisible to most people”, says the photographer with more than 26,000 hours underwater, and adds that the changes he has witnessed are “wake-up calls, which call the world to wake up. .
“The death of corals in increasingly large areas, the unprecedented warming recorded in the Arctic or the populations of penguins in Antarctica displaced by changes in their habitat caused by climate change are these calls for attention,” he says.
However, David Doubilet sees signs of hope in the reaction of the younger generation, who, he says, “are taking these issues very seriously. Apathy towards the impacts of climate change is more widespread in older generations.”
“I want to believe that there is more to this world than a Greta Thunberg (the Swedish teenager who started a global movement to denounce government inaction on the climate crisis), young people who stand up and expose the foolishness of ignoring the warning signs . of the planet that allows the existence of humanity”, adds Jennifer Hayes.
“Can we make the necessary change? I don’t know. It’s too late? I don’t know either, but I know it’s never too late to try,” says 75-year-old David Doubilet, who took the first underwater photograph of him when he was 12.
Source: Observadora
