Even the family that pioneered efforts to
protect the worlds’ oceans once believed you could throw garbage
overboard without consequence.
Jean-Michel Cousteau, environmental
filmmaker and son of famed marine conservationist Jacques Cousteau,
says when he was a small child and his father first took him scuba
diving, they too believed the “ocean was a bottomless receptacle for
whatever waste we didn’t want on land.”
In a new 3D documentary, Wonders of the Sea,
being released in Canada on Feb. 1, Jean-Michel Cousteau is hoping to
show the rest of the world why that thinking is so wrong.
The
documentary comes as many countries, including Canada, are struggling to
cut down on the garbage that is destroying the oceans, particularly
single-use plastics like soda bottles, grocery bags and food packaging,
and abandoned fishing nets and lines. Last year Canada tried to get the
G7 nations to sign an anti-plastics charter aiming that by 2030 all
plastics will be recycled, reused or burned for energy. Only five
joined, with Japan and the United States opting out.
Cousteau said
plastics are an issue but so are chemicals, including pharmaceuticals
that end up in the water. He also pointed to greenhouse gases, which the
ocean absorbs, warming the water and acidifying it. In the process
coral reefs, and the marine creatures that depend on them, are dying.
“We’re doing but we’re not doing enough,” he said. “We need to do a lot more. Everyone has to understand.”
He
said it’s not about criticizing people for their actions, but rather
educating them about their impact, much as he had to be educated
himself.
“When
I was a kid I was doing it too,” he said. “I had no knowledge, I had no
education. I would throw things in the ocean just like everyone else
would.”
His eye-opening came when his own childhood playground,
the harbour in Sanary Sur Mer in southern France, became dirtier, and
the octopus and fish he loved to swim with started disappearing.
“I was devastated to see where I grew up was being destroyed,” he said.
The
oceans, said Cousteau, are the difference between human survival and
extinction. Phytoplankton, one-celled organisms that live on the oceans’
surface, produce half the earth’s supply of oxygen. It means, Cousteau
notes in the film, “that every other breath you take is a gift from the
ocean.”
Likewise the oceans are part of the water cycle providing the other critical element to human survival.
“We
depend on the ocean, we depend on what’s in the ocean for the quality
of life of every species whether it’s on land or in the ocean — and that
is water,” said Cousteau. “No water, no life.”
Cousteau said
Canada’s ocean protection policies are notable, including its attempts
to save the Southern Resident Killer Whales. Those whales, two of which
are named after Cousteau’s famous father and his research vessel,
Calypso, are dying out. No new calf has survived in the last three
years.
A new calf spotted in early January has a 50 per cent chance of surviving.
The
Liberal government in Canada has been criticized by many marine
conservationists for pushing on with the new Trans Mountain pipeline
expansion despite its potential impact on the whales. A Federal Court of
Appeal decision last year tore up the government’s approval for the
expansion partly because it didn’t consider the impact on the whales
when giving the project the green light. Canada is now trying to redo
the consultation process to prove it is taking steps to protect the
whales.
Cousteau did not wade into that debate directly, but he
says oil is a problem for marine life, as are the thousands of boats
that traverse their habitat every day.
“I don’t want the oil
industry to go out of business,” he said. “I want them to invest all
their giant profits that they make into new sources of energy.”