Twenty-one percent of royalties are being donated to the New England Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund. That percentage was chosen because it’s the percentage of oxygen in each breath we take. Over half of that oxygen comes from plants and algae in the ocean. The New England Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF) aims to protect and promote ocean biodiversity through funding of small-scale, time-sensitive, community-based programs. www.neaq.org/mcaf
More information about Ocean Country is available at:
lizcunningham.net/ocean_country_the_book/
with a tray of hot tea and a plate of teacakes. He knelt down adroitly and placed it in front of us and then silently vanished. The teacakes were carefully arranged on a round plate. I eyed them. My delicate Western gut had managed to get through nearly six weeks without getting sick.
Eat it! They’ve made this special for you.
Arman watched. I cautiously bit into a piece. It was delicious. Some kind of deep-fried green fruit. The crust was crumbly and laced with sugar. Arman smiled. I had no doubts he knew what had gone through my mind.
“When did you realize the oceans were in trouble?” I asked.
“Well, there were fewer fish,” he said “But it really began with questions.”
I reached for another teacake. Rikardo reached for one as well. We were famished.
“Simple questions,” Arman continued. “Why are there fewer fish? And I talk with scientists who come to study the ocean. They are worried that there are fewer fish too. Then I began to learn about the coral reef, about ecology, that the fish need the reef to live.”
“But when did you know that you had to do something? That you had to change?”
“When we began to be hungry. When it became hard to get enough to eat. The elders know it best, because they have seen the difference between now and many years ago. And we are divers, we see the life in the sea with our own eyes.” He pointed two fingers to his own eyes to stress the point. “In the past, fish were everywhere. We had special ceremonies of respect to the sea before we fished. We need to have that respect again, to care for the sea better.”
Before I said goodbye to Arman, I asked him if there was anything he would like me to tell people in the United States. “Please tell them that we are a proud people. We are great sailors and great boat builders and great fishermen. We need to take care of the ocean, because we have no land. The sea is our home.”
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