Today is World Ocean Day.  A day to reflect, celebrate, protect, and preserve our Earth’s life support system.  The ocean serves as the lungs of our planet and provide us with more than half the world’s oxygen. The ocean stores 50 times more carbon dioxide than our entire atmosphere. The ocean covers 70% of the Earth’s surface and regulates our climate and weather patterns from the equator to the poles for life as we know it. There is no substitute for this vast ecosystem!

As a SCUBA diver you are taught to never take for granted your life support system.  Proper maintenance and care are critical to help ensure your survival while underwater. The human race is failing our ocean, our planet, and our future existence by taking our one life support system for granted. Years of chronic over-fishing practices, pollution and habitat destruction have consumed our healthy ocean leaving approximately one-third of marine mammal, sharks and reef-forming corals threatened with extinction. The carbon dioxide emitted from our factories and vehicles have made the ocean more acidic. The changing climate is increasing the water temperature and decreasing oxygen in vast areas of the ocean, making them less habitable.

Scientist recommend conserving 30% of land and 30% of ocean by 2030 - referred to as 30x30!  Today only 15% of our lands and 7% of our ocean are protected globally. Please visit and educate yourself at www.campaignfornature.org and take action this World Ocean Day. We need leaders and elected officials that will take speedy action in the right direction. It is about working together state by state, nation by nation to align globally and create a sustainable future for our children and grandchildren.

Yes, these ARE unprecedented times and Mother Earth is SCREAMING at the top of her lungs to get our attention!  Are you listening?  Nature and people will share the same fate if we do not! Our natural world is disappearing at an alarming rate. From 2001 to 2017, the United States alone lost more than a football field’s worth of natural area to development every 30 seconds! Three-fourths of the planet’s lands and two-thirds of its marine environments are considered “severely altered” by human activity. When humans change the environment like this, we degrade natural animal habitats and squeeze their living space. Proximity to these animals increases our risk of contracting pathogens these animals carry as they jump species to species - like coronavirus. The cost of nature’s deterioration is also falling disproportionately on economically disadvantaged communities and communities of color. Sadly, all the chaos of 2020 has been self-inflicted, and we cannot sit back and be observers any longer - it is time to wake up and take action!

The natural world is being consumed by human greed.  Existence of humanity on Earth is threatened by humans – our life support system is in dire need of an overhaul.  Until we learn to work together as one race, for our one ocean and our one planet, our so-called “progress” is our ultimate demise.

I want to see my grandson enjoy the ocean and lands as much as I have. I certainly do not want him asking “why didn’t grandma’s generation do more while there was still time?” 

There is time - 30X30 is the objective!

​As I closed my work laptop on Friday March 6th for one last time, I had no real idea what would lie ahead for me. I had been so busy tying up loose ends before my last day of work and planning my upcoming travel I knew little about what was happening outside my own little world. Then my birthday outing on the 8th was cancelled wisely by my girlfriends out of fear for the elderly folks they cared for.  While at the time it seems to be a slight overreaction to some pandemic threat, I understood and respected their judgement.  I packed up the RV for what was to be a short visit to Spokane where I would help care for my grandson for a few weeks while my daughter finished her training and clinicals, meanwhile I started tuning into what was happening in the rest of the world and realized my timing to travel the world might be off… and now, I’m realizing my timing downright SUCKED!
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I arrived in Spokane on the March 11th and my oldest daughter joined us for the weekend as well. It was awesome having almost the whole family together! The next thing we knew, most of the world was shutting down and then our entire country was asked to practice social distancing.  Within days that request became a state mandate and our lives have been on hold along the rest of the world’s. My oldest made it back to Oregon and started working from home, while my youngest had her clinicals cancelled, later to be approved and started back up, only to be cancelled again just a few hours short of finishing.

I certainly did not think a pandemic would pretty much shutdown the world within only a matter of weeks.  I really wanted to slow my life down and take time to enjoy some travel, but NOT LIKE THIS!  I think I called it quits just a year or so too early, I mean I already had this remote work thing down to a science! Who would have guessed? Everyone is struggling now to some degree… I have friends closing businesses, others laid off and trying to navigate unemployment, and others trying to figure out these new work or school from home scenarios. Crazy times I never expected to see in my lifetime, but I am still alive! So many others are not as fortunate… It is heartbreaking and puts my travel wants into perspective rather quickly. So far 3 of my 5 major trips have been postponed and I anticipate the 4th to be postponed as well. I am holding out hope that my October trip will be doable but having my doubts as well.  I keep telling myself “postponed, NOT cancelled” and some days it helps my disposition while others not so much.

My grandson has been staying home with me and grandpa while his mom works. I was supposed to be relieving grandpa so he could head out on his trip but everything shutdown including campgrounds.  What are full-time RV’er to do? Another unintended consequence of the shutdown, but we will make the best of it here, together, very unexpectedly. So here we are with both RVs parked outside the house while we entertain our little human or depending on the situation, he is entertaining us! Lots of walks and bike rides to get us outside but I have seen the movie Cars more times than I care to admit. While my future plans or being reshaped daily, I think back to momma octopus and realize this is only an inconvenience. I am thankful to be here, safe, healthy and in good company.  I think I might even get to take a break and go diving for some much-needed bubble therapy next weekend.

I realize this is all new territory and nobody really knows how to best navigate this mess, and we still do not… This is not just a state or U.S. thing, most of the world is in shambles right now. This certainly should not be a political thing but sadly we have made it one. Frankly, some of society’s reactions have been downright sad and embarrassing, yet others have been uplifting, heroic and calm. Can we come together in kindness and not hostility?  Can we honor our life’s true needs and forego our wants for a while? I would like to believe our values have not been reduced to hording butt-wipe insight of a crisis. Can we treat one another better despite differing opinions?  I fear that until this virus sucks the life out of someone we love and smacks us upside the head directly, we will not be able to fathom the horrible reality others are dealing with right now… it is just too surreal. Will our opinions change then? Will our level of accountability change then? Will life’s needs vs. our wants finally be realized? The future leaves so many unanswered questions.

For now, this life of privilege and comfort has a few inconveniences for the foreseeable future… and for now, we are still alive. Let us make the best of it.

I cannot help but wonder…
Maybe I did not stop working a year too early… maybe I quit a year too late? 
I hope not.
 
Stay safe, healthy and most of all… be kind.

My camera vacuum safety seal alerted me to a potential leak, so I just took the GoPro for the day until I can attend to the camera.  I didn't have anything but my dive light, but I made it work for the most part.  I wanted to show my grandson the octopus mom and her eggs if they were visible… and I got lucky!  I was also able to guide a stand of octo-eggs back to mom. Not sure how they detached and ended up in front of the den?  I certainly hope it was an act of nature and not some idiot wielding a camera into the den doing damage!  I know once they start hatching she will "blow" them out of the den. Regardless, I felt it best to try and get them back into the den where they would be protected by their mom for a bit longer until they began to hatch.  So few babies make it, I wanted to try to keep the odds a little higher.  I suspect the hatching will be fairly soon as octomom was looking rather ghostly.

Here’s to octomom and relentless dedication to her babies!
Cheers!