Home is something important to all of us. It’s where we feel safe and where we spend time with friends and family, the people we love. I’m so lucky to have a home, and even more lucky to know that when I go away, it will still be there when I get back.
That isn’t the reality for so many sea creatures, like the turtle I voiced in Aardman’s latest animated creation, Turtle Journey, made in collaboration with Greenpeace.
It would be reassuring to imagine that the oceans are too incomprehensibly vast for us humans to have an impact, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Exploitation and destruction of the ocean is destroying marine habitats at a rate never before witnessed in human history. Our destruction has pushed our oceans into crisis, driven countless species to extinction and brought many more to the brink.
Industrial fishing is sucking the oceans dry, over 90% of global fish populations are either fully fished or overfished. Our changing climate is heating up the ocean forcing many marine species to leave their homes for new waters. The ocean is acidifying as it absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere. New industries like deep sea mining are threatening pristine, unexplored ecosystems, once far from human activity but now a new frontier for destructive extraction. Coral reefs are being bleached at an unprecedented rate. The list could go on.
Like the myriad of sea creatures that call the oceans home, we all rely on our planet’s oceans in some way. The global oceans are one of the few things on this planet that are shared. Beyond national borders lies an enormous expanse of ocean that is ungoverned and unmanaged, home to countless species of marine life like the turtle mother I’m proud to have voiced in this film.
To protect something so vast requires action on a global scale. Fortunately, a solution is at hand. The United Nations is discussing a new Global Ocean Treaty, which would create a way of governing our vast oceans. It would ensure that the damage being caused to them by human activity – beyond the horizon, and far from the eyes of the world – is reined in.
Greenpeace is campaigning for 30% of the world’s oceans to be fully protected by 2030. Scientists have been calling for this level of protection for years, and finally the world’s governments seem to be listening, with a group of nations from Portugal to Vanuatu, the UK to Costa Rica, coming together to form a Global Ocean Alliance.This alliance must prioritise securing a Global Ocean Treaty that is capable of delivering the necessary level of protection called for by scientists.
A strong new treaty would pave the way for the protection of a third of the oceans on this blue planet of ours. I hope our animation shows people the scale of the crisis, and inspires more of us to act and speak up for ocean protection by signing Greenpeace’s petition. Our oceans are in crisis, and we need to save them.