This is complicated.

Climate change related issues, especially ones that involve the ocean are confusing, often misconstrued, and hold a lot of weight. most of the time, all issues have some sort of domino effect and it’s almost like everything is connected but not at the same time. Trying to find the “source” of what is destroying the ocean is pretty much impossible. Issues range from plastic straws to international commercial fishing and suddenly you can’t breathe and you can’t stop thinking about all of the ways we are completely screwed. It’s scary, right? I guess part of it should be. I’m not here to shame you for not doing enough, but I am here to try to get you to give a shit. So, where do we begin? That’s the hard part. The majority of people feel like they can’t make an impact, that there’s nothing left we can do, and that this is just an uncontrollable force that is going to kill us all. But that’s not true. If everyone agreed on one small thing to do every day that only took a couple minutes, we could start to reverse the affects of climate change. It’s shitty because that’s unrealistic. People hate being told what to do. The one thing about climate change that people don’t understand is that once it really starts to affect people physically, it will be too late. I have made the comparison of climate change to COVID in the sense that it doesn’t hurt you until it does. Our coastal communities are begging for help but these big corporations have the power. The money. Our reefs are dying, our oceans are warming, there’s overfishing, baby seal lions are dying on our beaches, our kelp forests are diminishing. The ocean will tell you when something is wrong. It’s been screaming at us for years. I know this is a lot to comprehend and even more to digest but and as much as I would love to sit here and give you a million things to do to change your day to day life, I’ll leave you with one thing:

Reef safe sunscreen! People at the beach use sunscreen. A lot of brands put harmful chemicals (for the ocean AND you) in their sunscreen. Since you’re literally at the beach a lottt of it goes straight into the ocean. We need to keep our reefs (the ones that are left) healthy. They are home to thousands of organisms. Some brands I recommend are Kokua Sun Care, Raw Elements, and Manga Organic. It’s small, but it’s a start. Remember to be conscious and be kind. Talk to you next week.