Blue at World Oceans Day 2019
A World Oceans Day Mermaid Tale
[plus reality]
Many tides ago, a magical mermaid [five foot human] named Lu decided to leave the sea [quit her day job] to start teaching the land people how to go Blue [protect the oceans].
Lu was VERY SCARED, as she had never breathed air [abandoned a steady paycheck] before. But she had spent four years exploring the seas to bring together proof of the damage the humans had done [got an overpriced marine biology degree and collected many bags of beach trash], and she spent years carefully studying the humans’ behavior [working in food service.] She felt ready to teach them how to do better.
Lu is on a mission to find the humans who love the sea most, so they can become leaders in the Blue movement to save and protect the ocean. She was advised by a very studious hermit crab named Bill [pure chance] to swim across the ocean [drive across the US], through the Pacific Garbage Patch [Los Angeles], to the Santa Barbara Channel. Bill the crab [Google Maps] told her the sunny coastal town of Santa Barbara was filled with sea-loving people and would be a great place to get started.
She landed on shore just in time for World Oceans Day, which is a human day to celebrate the ocean. She packed up her best shells [yes, literally shells] and headed to Pirate Bay [the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum] to find her humans.
At World Oceans Day, Lu decorated her table with her very best beach trash: cigarettes, spoons, and popped balloons! She brought driftwood, seaglass, and kelp [secondhand cardboard and art supplies from Art from Scrap] to display her message:
DO YOU TREAT THE SEA AS THE SEA TREATS YOU?
As the humans came by, Lu used her shells to teach them about the ways they are harming the sea. She realized that most of them knew they were causing harm, but they did not know what to do about it. “Well to start, we can do less harm to the sea with the power of our food choices,” Lu explained, as she cunningly pretended to be human too. “We buy and store food in plastic, we eat with plastic utensils, and we waste lots of food too. And we pull trillions of animals from the sea each year to eat, with plastic nets!” She told the humans how they can make kelp stew, sea-bean chili, and plankton burgers [plastic-free and plant based food] instead of eating sea creatures and food wrapped in plastic. She also got to meet Santa Barbara’s existing ocean protectors, like Heal the Ocean, and they compared their plastic beach trash collections.
Before returning to the sea, Lu decided to do some exploring of this sea-loving town of Santa Barbara. She tried a hamburger made of land plants [an Impossible Burger], and then stood in line for what felt like many tides at a place called McConnell’s to try a human invention called “nice cream.” It is a sweet creamy dessert made out of coconuts and other land plants. Lu pulled a spoon from her shell pouch and dug in too fast... which froze her gills [brain].
Although she was excited to get back in the water when the day was done, speaking to so many sea-loving humans at World Oceans Day 2019 lit a fire under Lu’s fins [feet]. As a reward for celebrating World Oceans Day, Lu put together a plastic free starter kit for her new human friends:
The Blue Movement has officially beached in Santa Barbara. Lu’s message to the sea-lovers: It’s time to Blue Yourself.
“World Oceans Day is a global holiday to acknowledge the necessity of protecting and respecting our oceans. If you missed this year’s celebration, perhaps try every other day of the year instead?”
Blue is now on Youtube!
Or should we say… BLUETUBE?
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