The Ocean Is Alive: Re-visioning Our Relationship With The Living Ocean

260 Pages·2016·2.35 MB·English

by  Glenn, Edney

The Ocean Is Alive
Re-visioning Our Relationship With
The Living Ocean
Glenn Edney
First published 2016
By Ocean Spirit Ltd
PO Box 403027
Ngunguru 0154
RD3 Whangarei
Northland
New Zealand
Copyright © 2016 Glenn Edney Copyright © Ocean Spirit Ltd All images copyright © Glenn Edney
(except where acknowledged) The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved
Except for the purposes of fair review, or as brief quotations embodied within articles or publications, no
part of this work may be stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including recording or storage in any information retrieval system (except certified copies from the
publisher) without written permission from the publisher.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
Cover image by Glenn Edney
Cover Design by Ricky Harris, Eye On Design www.eyeondesign.co.nz
ISBN 978-0-473-35261-5
The author welcomes correspondence relating to the subject matter of this book or matters regarding Ocean
conservation and wellbeing.
For all my Teachers
In the Ocean and on Land
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
About The Author
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
Part One
The Living Ocean
1 Is the Ocean Really Alive?
2 Coming Into Being
3 Respiration: The Ocean’s Breath
4 Circulation
5 Metabolism
6 Sentient Ocean
7 Sentient Beings in a Sentient Ocean
8 I Feel Therefore I Am
9 Ocean Mind
Part Two
Re-visioning Our Relationship with the Living Ocean
10 Is the Ocean Really Dying?
11 Coming to our Senses
12 Finding Our Place
Chapter Notes and References
Selected Bibliography for Further Reading
Recommended Organisations and Websites
Index
About The Author
Glenn Edney is an Ocean ecologist, underwater naturalist, sailor and
professional diver. He has been exploring the Ocean and interacting with Ocean
life for more than 30 years. He has an MSc in Holistic Science from Schumacher
College and Plymouth University UK. His research is focused on understanding
the Ocean as a living system and the role she plays as the primary life support
system for our planet. He also has a strong interest in bringing together
traditional indigenous Ocean knowledge and modern scientific ecological
understanding. Together with his wife Janey they have founded Ocean Spirit,
with the aim of fostering a deeper and more harmonious relationship with the
living Ocean. They live with their daughter Sam and ‘Skupors’ the sailor dog on
the north east coast of New Zealand, overlooking the Pacific.
Acknowledgments
The writing of this book has been a two year project, but the journey of
discovery that initiated it started more than 40 years ago when I donned mask
and snorkel and looked beneath the Ocean’s surface for the first time. During
that time I have been inspired by the lives and work of many Ocean explorers,
scientists and naturalists.
The great Jacques-Yves Cousteau, pioneering Ocean explorer and co-
inventor of the aqualung, was my childhood hero and the inspiration for a
generation of Ocean explorers that followed. Among that generation, Dr. Sylvia
Earle epitomises the bringing together of science with the spirit of adventure that
has seen her emerge as one of the most important voices for the protection of the
Ocean. Early in my diving career I was fortunate to meet and work with Wade
and Jan Doak. Their work as underwater naturalists is unparalleled and their
freethinking (unencumbered by overly rigid scientific dogma) has led to many
unique insights into the lives of Ocean dwellers.
Wade and Jan introduced me to the design brilliance of Ocean sailor James
Wharram. His Polynesian inspired double voyaging canoes prove the skill and
wisdom of Oceania’s first human explorers, and have enabled many modern
sailors (including myself) to explore the Ocean realm. I am grateful to James and
his partner Hanneke for our Ocean conversations and their support for my work.
My journey of exploration took a landward turn when I went to Devon in
England to study with Gaian scientist and Deep Ecology practitioner, Dr.
Stephan Harding, head of Holistic Science at Schumacher College, and long-
time collaborator with the father of Gaia Theory, scientist and inventor, James
Lovelock. Stephan not only guided me through my research into the Ocean as a
living system but has become mentor and friend. I am extremely grateful to
Stephan for his critical review and corrections of the Gaian science presented in
this book. I also thank Phillip Franses, chaos and complexity theory tutor at the
college, for his feedback and uniquely ‘left field’ insights.
I wish to thank Professor Gerald Pollack for his comments on my
presentation of his groundbreaking research into the mysterious qualities of EZ
water, and for his kind permission to use some of the illustrations from his
excellent book The Fourth Phase of Water. Thanks also to Ethan Pollack for his
assistance in formatting the images I have used. I am also very grateful to Janet
Fernandez Skaalvik and Yannick Beaudoin from Grid-Arendal, and Paul Bown
from the Micropalaeontology Unit, University College London, for their help
with permissions for the use of images and diagrams throughout the book. I
would also like to acknowledge NOAA, NASA’s Earth Observatory,
Encyclopaedia Britannica online, wikimedia creative commons and PLOS One
online journal for making images and diagrams freely available. Special thanks
go to Ricky Harris from Eye On Design www.eyeondesign.co.nz for his
fantastic cover design. Likewise I wish to extend my gratitude to Deirdre Hyde,
www.deirdrehyde.com an amazing artist and environmental activist, for her
design of the Ocean Spirit logo.
It is one thing to sit down and write a manuscript, but turning that
manuscript into a book is always a collaborative process. In this I have been
blessed with the support of some very special people. Firstly, I want to thank my
dear friend Ben Sablerolle, who read the initial draft of the first six chapters and
offered enthusiastic but critical support. Likewise my friend and fellow writer,
Gill Coombs www.gillcoombs.co.uk provided timely advice as I entered into
the second half of the writing process.
I was extremely fortunate to have two highly skilled writers to edit and
proof read the final manuscript: Gill Coombs and Janey Pares Edney, my wife
and fellow Ocean explorer. Between them they have taken my raw words and
crafted them into a coherent and readable story. I am extremely fortunate to have
such a supportive, enthusiastic and open-minded partner to share this journey of
discovery with. It would not be possible without you.
Last, but certainly not least, I want to acknowledge and honour all the
Ocean beings who have taught me more about the Ocean than any lecture or
textbook could ever achieve. They are the true Ocean elders, and holders of an
Ocean wisdom that is as old as life itself. I hope I have done justice to your
teachings.
Prologue
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about the sea, whose gently
awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
– Herman Melville
Fins on, mask and snorkel in place, I ease myself gently from the bow of our
Polynesian inspired catamaran and slip silently into a blue world. A world so
familiar after all these years that it almost seems more natural to be in its
weightless, physical embrace than the thin, ethereal atmosphere above.
Floating only thirty metres away is a female humpback whale and her
month old calf. I’ve done this hundreds of times before but this time feels
different, as if I’m being drawn into the water by a force beyond my control,
overriding my methodical preparations. Her immense presence is calling me
forth; I could feel it even before I entered the water.
Twenty minutes earlier we had cleared the reef pass in front of our base on
the island of Foa, in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga. These waters are the
breeding grounds for a relic population of southern hemisphere humpback
whales, long hunted by European and American whalers and brought almost to
the point of extinction in the early 1960’s by illegal Russian whaling in the
humpback’s Antarctic feeding grounds. We’ve been living here for six years,
running a scuba diving and whale watching business, whose real purpose is to
fund my own passion for interacting with these Ocean giants.
With barely full sails in the morning breeze our catamaran was gliding
serenely through the calm clear waters under a cloudless, azure sky. To port, the
fringing reef and coconut palm-lined beaches offered a picture perfect backdrop,
but all eyes on board were focused seaward, scanning the horizon for the telltale
plume of misty breath that whalers of old would greet with an excited ‘thar she
blows’. Instead, the calm was shattered as the female humpback exploded
through the surface in a cascade of spray, thrusting her entire 40 ton bulk clear of
the water, before succumbing to the alien pull of gravity and crashing
thunderously back into the water barely a hundred metres in front of us.
Instinctively I spun the wheel to bring the boat up into the wind while my
partner, Janey, and our crew frantically lowered the sails. We were so close to
the whale that a collision seemed almost unavoidable and yet she calmly moved