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Week 10: The History of the Ocean

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In reading “The Blue Humanities”, I was very intrigued by the discussion of the unfolding history of the ocean, a place becoming more and more widely studied.

 “More is known about the dark side of the moon than is known about the depths of the oceans,” writes the sea explorer David Helvarg. Yet large numbers of people know the sea in other ways, through the arts and literature. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, fiction has been imagining undersea worlds that explorers were unable to reach.

This short passage from the preface to the text stood out to me in particular. We have been studying pieces of literature all year that have unraveled the history of how the ocean has been viewed for centuries. For a long time, fiction was all we had to tie ourselves back to the ocean from which we evolved at the beginning of time. Time after time, our fiction has been proven to be accurate in many ways. We discussed in class how Hans Christian Andersen’s description of a living sea floor was outlandish at the time, but almost completely accurate from a modern, scientific perspective. Now that we can reach these depths and have the technology to truly understand the sea and all that has transpired there, who knows what new fiction will be stirred up? I don’t believe that the scientific exploration of the seas and discovering the “true” history of the oceans will stop mankind from thinking up oceanic stories to enchant generations. Sure, we may know more about the moon than our oceans, but that hasn’t stopped the continuous flow of “moon media”. After all, even when we have explanations for, or seem to be able to grasp a concept or space (practically a non-human one), we still find ways to pull art and literature from them.

Week 10: Seeing the Ocean As a Place

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In this weeks’s reading of The Ocean Reader, the author exposes how terracentrism, our land-centered worldview, has pet us from recognizing the ocean as a dynamic and vulnerable place that requires human awareness and action. They write how human struggle to “…think of the Ocean as a place” largely because we cannot visibly shape the sea in a meaningful manner in the same way we alter the land. We can plow or pave the earth but changes to the ocean tend to happen out of sight, creating an illusion that it is “changeless, inexhaustible, and impervious to the onslaught of harvesters”. This misunderstanding has greatly contributed to the staggering overuse of the oceans resources each year, such as the 90 million tons of fish.

By introducing the concept of terracentrism, the text calls out the bias that treats the ocean as secondary to land when it in reality covers more than the majority of the planet. The idea that human actions can’t truly affect it due to its vastness has allowed environmental harm to go unchecked. A small but symbolic decision to capitalize the ocean pushes the reader to rethink this bias and view it from a new perspective. Rather than seeing it as a generic feature of the globe, the author argues that capitalizing the term recognizes the ocean as proper place with respect equal to that of continents and nations.

Ultimately, this passage calls for a shift in how we see the world. The ocean is not the empty space we tend to think it as, rather, it is a living interconnected system that is facing an unprecedented crisis. Acknowledging the ocean as a place is the first step to take in protecting the future we share with it.

Unity with the Ocean

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For this post I will be talking about “The Blue Humanities” (Humanities: The Journal of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Web. 2013).

The article discusses the changing perception of the ocean among those in the Western world, more specifically in America and middle-class Americans. To some extent, the ocean probably provides more harmony with nature than land does. As the article puts it, “A passion for yachting developed on both sides of the Atlantic in the later nineteenth century, and, by the early twentieth century, swimming had become very popular”. While it depends on the person, you technically see a lot of land scenery all the time, living your life. So the ocean is new. But there is a difference in how people enjoy the land’s nature in comparison to the ocean’s nature. I’ve personally heard and seen online posts that often say you have to separate from civilization (aka human progress) to reconnect with nature. You’ll have to go somewhere deep, without any structures, roads, cars, etc. But with the ocean, there’s an immediate connection, and you don’t have to go somewhere devoid of civilization to fully enjoy. This brings to mind the perception that man is separate from nature.

To quote Paterson-Hamilton from the article, “Often it seems that the more people become urbanized, the more they want about them talismans of nature on their walls, their shelves, their keyrings”. There is a desire to connect with nature, and the ocean is a good place that allows one to see urbanized areas (coastal towns/cities, for example) alongside the refreshing breeze and hear the gentle waves of the ocean. Thus, there is no separation but rather unity.

The Archive of the Ocean

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In “Blue Humanities,” John Gillis explains the early perceptions and relationships to the ocean and how the exploration of this environment in modern times leads to a fascination with its history and all that lies below it. By learning more about this previously unexplored environment and shifting perceptions about it, this allows humans to care about the ocean since it is part of our history and home on this Earth.

As a result of the ocean being thought of as “an unfathomable abyss, impenetrable and unknowable “(Gillis 5), there is no personal connection to this part of the Earth because it is simply a resource used for food and transportation. There is no need to truly care about the health and well-being of the ocean since it is seemingly unimportant because of its “impenetrable” nature that makes it difficult for scientists to explore and understand what lies below its depths. The ocean becomes a never-ending resource where sailors go around “extracting the wealth of the seas” (Gillis 5) and not caring about the impact that the sea and humans have on each other. It doesn’t matter if people are overfishing its inhabitants and polluting the waters because humans are seen as separate from the ocean, giving them no incentive to worry about what happens to it.

With the advancement of technology and scientific methods, scientists are then able to uncover “the discovery of the temporal and spatial depth of the sea” and even “recognize that waters gave birth to all life on earth, including our own” (Gillis 5). Here, the author formulates a shift in perception since the ocean is now a “living thing” that has deep ties to humans and our origin instead of remaining a dark void. Humans can no longer separate themselves from the ocean because it is part of our history and can tell us about the evolution of the Earth and those who call it home. We can see parts of ourselves in the ever-evolving ocean knowing that our livelihoods are intertwined, and allows it to develop into “a place of spiritual and physical recreation”(Gillis 6) for people. Subsequently, this becomes important because it changes the way humans interact with the ocean and those who live below it. This connection entices humans to see the ocean as more than just an asset, but as a place that provides meaning for us because it allows us to better understand ourselves and our past since it “gave birth to all life on earth.” We have more reason to care about this vast element because it is an archive of history that is often forgotten. If we don’t see the ocean as a place that needs to be preserved and cared for, then humans lose a section of history that can tell us more about who we are as a species and how the environment evolves through time.