{"id":2499,"date":"2020-12-10T08:01:53","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T08:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writersrebel.com\/?p=2499"},"modified":"2020-12-09T21:49:01","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T21:49:01","slug":"read-tritons-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/read-tritons-call\/","title":{"rendered":"Read: TRITON\u2019S CALL<\/span>Romesh Gunesekera<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The real beauty of a coral reef is in the way it renews itself and creates the strongest of structures in the world with the most delicate of life forms. If the fragile polyps are damaged, the reef crumbles. You could say the same of us, and our world: that which is most fragile in us, and in our world, is what makes us \u2014 and gives us life. It is a lesson we, as humans, have been slow to learn.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ocean has been a presence for me since my earliest days. Growing up in Sri Lanka, going into the ocean was a regular outing. A Sunday sea bath, we\u2019d call it. It would be dipping in, not swimming, because the currents and the surf of the sea near Colombo would be too strong. Not everyone in Sri Lanka grows up by the sea even though it is an island. There were boys I met inland who had never seen the sea. It was a mystery to them. What does it look like? What does it sound like?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The sound of that surf pounding the beach was a drumbeat that has stayed with me; a pulse of the planet, a herald to the sea-god Triton rising from the waves, blowing his \u2018wreathed horn\u2019 and asking us to look after the sea so that it may look after us. But look after it is exactly what we, the most powerful species on the planet, have failed to do. And the cost is catastrophic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although recent alarm makes it seem as though human damage to the oceans has been sudden and new, people have known about it since at least the 1960s \u2014 the characters in my first novel, <\/span>Reef<\/span><\/i>, set in the sixties, worry about it. The difference is that back then people thought the damage was to marine life, to coral reefs, and to the state of the ocean. Not many realized it was a threat to our lives as well. Not until the tsunami of 2004, which showed the tragic cost of a broken reef. The ban on dynamiting fish, the attempts to control the pollution of coral reefs, marine preservation, and the too slow attempt to control plastic in the ocean, all may have started as initiatives to protect the life of the ocean, but now we can see they are necessary to protect life on earth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then, there is climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n

A two-degree change in the temperature of the ocean would mean not only the death of coral reefs but a trail of devastation that would lead up to all of us: a rise in sea levels; the drowning of islands \u2014 nations even; the loss of krill which would reduce fish stocks; a shift in ocean currents and the weird situation of having more plastic than fish in the seas becoming a reality even sooner than is already expected.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Twelve million tons of plastic go into the ocean every year, and that is according to the UK government. You can find graphics of this on-line at Oceana and other sites. Most startling is the idea that it is the equivalent of 16 shopping bags full of plastic for every metre of coastline in the world; a garbage truck full of plastic tipped into the sea every minute.<\/span><\/p>\n

But all this \u2014 the plastic, the overheating, the damage \u2014 is not inevitable. It happens not as a result of natural laws but as a result of thoughtless choices. And because of human laws that privilege narrow self-interest over global needs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n