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The speaker represents civil society and shares a personal passion for the ocean, tracing her fascination from Jacques Cousteau to becoming a deep worker submersible pilot. On a first dive, she saw a plastic hanger at the bottom of the ocean, which steered her toward focusing on the high seas, the 45% of the planet that belongs to everyone as our global commons under UNCLOS. She notes the historical arc from May and Emperor Justinius through the Magna Carta to the Law of the Sea Convention in 1982. The high seas are under peril for many reasons, including the shrinking Arctic ice and the opening of the northern passage, which will require future discussion and focus.
Why we should care about the ocean: billions of tons of fish are caught each year, and about a third of the fish harvested are used to feed livestock, such as chickens, making them taste more like fish. She highlights unsustainable fishing practices and the aid of advanced extractive technologies. She references a map of one of the largest fishing nets in the world capable of containing 12 Boeing 747s. The World Bank estimates that poor ocean management leads to approximately $50,000,000,000 in lost revenue annually. She mentions a real example: tuna was sold last year for $1,700,000. She also points to Palau’s policy—closing its waters to shark finning and fin soup—and how it transformed a fin-related value from about $200 per fin into tourism-generated value of about $1,900,000 over their lifetime, a point raised by the President.
The Teramar project is introduced to connect people to the global oceans, the high seas, and to make the oceans belong to everyone. It offers a passport, a daily online newspaper, an education platform, a government structure, and a way to connect to oceans as never before. The phrase “Fish do not vote, but we do” emphasizes civic engagement in ocean stewardship. The aim is for every politician to end up with a policy framework and a decision on how they treat the oceans, with the hope that sustainability will be ensured because “without money at the bottom, and without [it] it’s not going to work.”
She advocates for the United Nations to lead, calling it the right place with global reach to create a sustainable development goal for the UN, a planetary mandate for the next fifteen years on how we treat our oceans. She urges all people—7,000,000,000 of us—to sign up, obtain a passport, and make our voices heard so that the UN and ambassadors understand what we want, and so that politicians know that “no sustainable ocean means we won’t vote them back into power.”