Our Great Ocean Blue
/World Oceans Day
Each year, on June 8, we celebrate our planet’s oceans. It’s a day to call attention to this vast resource and the importance of restoring and keeping its ecosystem healthy.
Here’s a quote from the World Oceans Day website:
“A healthy world ocean is critical to our survival. Every year, World Oceans Day provides a unique opportunity to honor, help protect, and conserve our world’s shared ocean.
The ocean is important because it:
Generates most of the oxygen we breathe
Helps feed us
Regulates our climate
Cleans the water we drink
Offers a pharmacopoeia of medicines
Provides limitless inspiration !”
World Oceans Day started out with encouragement from Canada in 1992. This country is acutely aware of the our oceans as it has three different oceans on its borders, a feat no other country can mimic. For example, while England is entirely surrounded by an ocean, that ocean is essentially the same one.
In 2008, the United Nations officially recognized World Oceans Day. Today, it’s an opportunity to celebrate our oceans and to learn how we can protect our natural resource.
Our Wide Oceans
Over 96% of all of Earth’s water exists in the oceans. If we expand our awareness, we see that even our oceans are in flux and constant change. It’s just that we’re so tiny and our perspective so limited, we don’t perceive it. This quote from USGS reveals that our oceans are, indeed, in flux over wide expanses of time.
“Of course, nothing involving the water cycle is really permanent, even the amount of water in the oceans. Over the “short term” of hundreds of years the oceans’ volumes don’t change much. But the amount of water in the oceans does change over the long term. During the last Ice Age, sea levels were lower, which allowed humans to cross over to North America from Asia at the (now underwater) Bering Strait.
During colder climatic periods more ice caps and glaciers form, and enough of the global water supply accumulates as ice to lessen the amounts in other parts of the water cycle. The reverse is true during warm periods. During the last ice age glaciers covered almost one-third of Earth’s land mass, with the result being that the oceans were about 400 feet (122 meters) lower than today. During the last global “warm spell,” about 125,000 years ago, the seas were about 18 feet (5.5. meters) higher than they are now. About three million years ago the oceans could have been up to 165 feet (50 meters) higher.”
We don’t how many different species call the ocean their home. Currently, scientists know of around 226,000 ocean species.
It could be that more than 90% of the ocean’s species are still undiscovered. Some scientists estimate that there are anywhere between a few hundred thousand to a few million more to be discovered. Well, that’s quite a range!
The Beginning Of Our Oceans
You have to go back in time, far, far, back in time to find the origins of our oceans. In fact, you’ve got to start with alien origins. Our oceans fell from the sky, but not as rain.
We truly all are star-dust.
Those little molecules of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms that make up water were floating in a planetary nebula into which our Sun was born. The water molecules came together by chance on carbon and silicon dust grains. Our precious water fell to earth in frozen lumps from space. (Just as a reference, the rings around Saturn are composed of dust and ice.) Our planet was also pummeled by comets and asteroids that were rich in alien water.
Planet Earth is the original Goldilocks story. In relation to the Sun, we’re in the perfect place to maintain our oceans.
Unlike Venus which is too close to the Sun. The solar radiation tears apart the water oxygen and hydrogen molecules. Hydrogen slips off into space. Goodbye, water.
And unlike Mars which is too far from the Sun. There isn’t enough solar radiation to keep water moving. All the water there turned into runaway glaciers.
We’ve got just the right balance to maintain our oceans. Not too hot, not too cold.
To read more about the watery space journey of our oceans to Earth, please click on this link: Alien Origins of Earth’s Oceans.
Connect To Our Oceans
In our awareness, we reflect on our deep connection to salt water, all the way down to our own bodies which are filled with saline water. We can take the time to learn more about specific oceanic mammals and creatures – there are many to choose from. How about starfish, seahorses, or the different types of whales? Or what about those deep ocean creatures that don’t see the light because they live so far down in the ocean’s depths?
Celebrate Our Oceans
On World Oceans Day, we remind everyone of the major role the oceans have in everyday life. They are the lungs of our planet, providing most of the oxygen we breathe.
June 8 is a day to celebrate together the beauty, the wealth and the promise of the ocean. And to remind ourselves to care for the oceans, every day, throughout the year.
