Asian Diver — October 2017

31

Mangroves store 50 times

more carbon in their

soil per square metre

than the same amount of

Amazon rainforest

Liz Cunningham is the author of

Ocean Country: One Woman’s Voyage

from Peril to Hope in Her Quest to

Save the Seas (North Atlantic Books)

and Talking Politics: Choosing the

President in the Television Age

(Praeger). This article is part of her

research for her upcoming book,

Every Breath, which is about breath

in marine mammals and aquatic

microbiomes. Visit her at:

http://www.lizcunningham.net

Twenty-one percent of Ocean

Country 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. Every

other breath is thanks to them.

http://www.neaq.org/mcaf

More information about mangrove

restoration can be found at the

Mangrove Action Network Web Site:

http://www.mangroveactionproject.org

and provides 60,000 mangrove seedlings
a year for restoration efforts.
There are all kinds of peace in the
world. The peace of reconciliation, the
peace of community. That night I got a
taste of the peace of restoration.
People make choices. They have
a reverence for what Nature provides
them with and the wherewithal to make
choices that support that. It speaks to
our capacity to act collectively, when we
know what we need to do to take care of
ourselves and our communities.
There were other choices that had
changed life in the village dramatically.
The village elders had elected to spend
funds granted by Bunaken National Park
on a well. In many parts of the world
people are trapped in a vicious circle
because of one simple thing: lack of
access to clean water. Whatever money
they make in a day, the lion’s share
of that is often spent on water.
The United Nations estimates that
one out of 10 people in the world
lack access to clean water. Drilling a
well for the village freed up resources
for things like education, food, and
health care.
I stayed in a small lodge nestled in
the jungle, Bahowo Lodge. The owners,

Phil and Paula Larcher, supported a

wide array of projects, among them a

health clinic, a village school, a school

bus, a sponsorship plan for students,

including university students, and costs

like replacing broken pumps for the well.

As a civilisation, we’ve suffered

from “infinite-titis” – the damaging

assumption that the ocean, the forests,

and our water supplies are infinite.

Now we are navigating a world of

limited and depleted resources. What

was happening in Bahowo was ample

evidence that there’s a resource that’s

not only not depleted, but in fact

underused: our capacity to change,

to innovate, and to come together

as communities. “What if” questions

unleash that capacity: What if we started

drawing on that resource as if it were

almost infinite? What would we do?

How would that change our world? AD

TOP North Sulawesi

boasts a large number

of active volcanoes

ABOVE Nyomen, standing,

with his close friend,

Arnold, who weaves his

own fishing nets by hand