After spending a fair amount of time going through the vocabulary we use daily that is frequently centered around dry land (which I recall focusing on in the first weeks), it is only after reading the introduction of The Ocean Reader: History, Culture, Politics by Eric Paul Roorda that I truly noticed the “anthropocentric” mentality humanity tends to have and just how senseless it sounds when the ocean “currently covers 71 percent of the world, a figure that is certain to rise along with sea level” (1). This advantage in regards to sheer size that the Ocean has over land and with that size gap increasing should be telling of the fact that humanity tends to ignore and neglect issues whether economic or environmental only until the damage has reached catastrophic levels which at that point, the problem is either irreversible or tremendously challenging to overcome.

Now, this dilemma involving living in harmony with nature is incredibly complex because at is mentioned in the reading, “Humans interact with that system in many ways. They relentlessly hunt sea creatures, taking 90 million tons of fish from it annually” (3). The interactions that occur between humans and animals are bound to have more disparities than similarities due to the evident power dynamic, but this is not to say that there is no hope or that humans are the only ones that can destroy or “save” the environment when it is also mentioned by Roorda that factors such as the ring of fire and the shifting of tectonic plates can significantly affect and alter Terra as we know it, and that is something we as humans can’t possibly control.