To my dear friend, Ocean, I am sorry you’re sick.

To my dear friend, Ocean,

We have been friends for a while, you and I, but I have never written to you before- and I must apologise for that. Growing up together, you were such a huge part of my life. Many people have fond memories of hanging out with you and their family and friends as children, but my fondest memories of you are from my angsty teenage years and early twenties. As soon as my friends and I could drive, I came to see you whenever possible. One of my most vivid memories with you is driving late at night to see you after finishing a shift at my first hospitality job, swimming in my work uniform after 10 pm. I saw you a lot at that time, walking along your sandy coastline most nights, battling the wind on winter evenings and eagerly heading towards the ice cream shop backlit by magnificent sunsets on warm summer nights. You were always there, for angsty rants, juicy catch ups, awkward “I love yous”, and planning for the future. Honestly, Ocean, I can’t imagine my life without you.

As well as hanging out, you also helped me through the early stages of my career, as I participated in reef watch programs, surveyed your shallow waters at university, and took my first venture, Heroic Tourism, to the reef to capture imagery for my website. Snorkelling at any chance I got in my summer breaks and weekends also helped me to understand the differences between reef ecosystems and equipped me to truly understand what I was seeing when perusing the reefs you have in Thailand, Madagascar, Fiji, and around Australia. Everything I knew about fish, molluscs, and cetaceans I learnt from your South Australian coastlines, and I built on this fundamental knowledge with every reef I visited.

When I moved inland a few years ago, I missed you the most out of everyone I left behind. When people asked me how I was finding Melbourne, I would tell them that I was happy despite being so landlocked. Whenever I felt too sad in life or consumed by eco grief, I would return to you. No matter the temperature, I would wander into your frothy waves and let you hold me. Two years ago, I took a whole month off just to hang out with you, and you taught me the importance of reciprocity. You showed me that if I kept fighting for the health of the Earth and all of the Earth Carers within, you would so lovingly take care of me in return. Thank you for that, by the way.

Only now, you, my dear friend, are sick. I missed you so much that when I was preparing to return home, I arranged a place to stay that was as close to you as possible. I didn’t want to believe you were sick, so seeing you when I arrived, foaming at the mouth, tears welled in my eyes. I looked at you, so unwell, and felt such a deep sadness and a cavernous sense of injustice.

Ocean, I know that I have been a bad friend in receiving news of your algal bloom, and I apologise deeply for that. I should have felt a deep sense of injustice for you, but I instead felt a deep injustice for myself. I know that I am selfish to expect you to be around whenever I want to hang out, that you will be there when I need you, and that you will always be there to care for me. You have supported me through a long and arduous conservation career, my journey in caring for Earth Carers, and you have even led me to a role in climate action. Even still, I thought I deserved your companionship because I do this work, and because I care so deeply for you. The truth is, Ocean, that you deserve to heal, and the true injustice of your illness is not that I can’t enjoy our friendship in the ways I used to. No, the real injustice is that people made you sick, and your wonderful marine life are now sick and dying too. That is a huge weight to bear, and I want to hold space for you in this time and reassure you that these deaths are not your fault.

On returning to visit you, I was excited to see another dear friend, Pelican, hanging out with you. Only, my excitement dissipated when I looked down around my feet to see why Pelican was here. Pelican was lunching on some of the hundreds of juvenile leather jackets scattered along your coastline. You looked healthy until I saw them all, and my heart sank for you. I remember the first time I ever went snorkelling with a school group, and I saw a large adult blue-tailed leather jacket swimming below me, glowing vibrant blue with its pointed unicorn horn keeping me floating at a cautious distance. I viscerally remember the awe of that moment and how it sparked an endless desire in me to keep coming back to you to experience and witness the other world that you keep hidden within you. Now, the future of this other world, and hundreds of offspring of adults like the one I saw, were lying lifeless around my toes.

As I walked along your coastline, side-stepping fish, it struck me as important that I am here for you after you have been there for me on so many occasions. After all, you did teach me reciprocity and the importance of looking after each other. Coming to see you each day whilst I’m back has become an important ritual, and though your air is not always easy to breathe, and your loss is not easy to witness, like all good commitments, it is important that we are there for eachother in sickness and in health.

Whilst visiting you today, I stopped at a juvinile leather jacket that was flapping around on the sand as the waves teased, but never drew him in. I know he may not survive you right now with his small gills, but I couldn’t just let him suffocate, lying on the sand in front of me. As I gave him back to you, I hoped he could find enough oxygen somewhere in your body to survive. Grabing a piece of rubbish I saw along your shoreline, I hoped that the words that I have often uttered about small actions amounting to big changes are true. Maybe at the very least, these minute ways of showing my care for you is better than abandoning you, as so many have, when you are no longer able to serve their needs.

Some people say a disaster like this is important to make people wake up and care about the consequences of our actions, but honestly Ocean, I think the Covid-19 pandemic showed us that disasters happen, are important and invoke action, but then after a while they wane from consciousness. What we have seen is that no matter how formidable a disaster is, people seem to forget what has happened when they are no-longer impacted. Even more troubling, in the world of environmentalism, nothing is ever anyone’s fault. At least the pandemic could be traced back to a delicious bat.

Here amongst humans, the story goes that individual behaviour shouldn’t be blamed because the big organisations are polluting at larger scales. Big organisations can’t be blamed because government regulations should be stronger and more robust. Governments can’t be blamed because people didn’t vote the right people or policies in, and society as a whole can’t be blamed because nature and the weather does what it wants, how were we to know that these things would happen?!

Ocean, I respect you enough to aknowledge that even though I live hundreds of kilometers away from where you are hurting, I am responsible for your illness. You see, I live in a society where we use pesticides to grow our food. Organic food is more expensive and I am living through a cost of living crisis so even though I hate to admit it, I nearly always prioritise cheaper groceries over organic ones. I can’t deny that I am not a contributer to fuelling a market that leaches nutrients into the waterways that meet you. I am a renter without the ability to fully electrify my home and so I use gas for my stove and hot water, and my car is only a hybrid, not fully electric, so I am also responsible for contributing to your warming temperature through the burning of fossil fuels. Though I attend webinar after webinar about electrification, and I read book after book about climate change, I find myself primed to contribute to your sickness as a side effect of the society I live in. By these measures, in many ways, we are all complicit in making you feel this way just by participation in our daily lives. Because of this, I have little tollerance for those who think they aren’t a part of the problem, or the solution.

I am emboldened to take responsibility for the ways in which I hurt you, because the more I work across conservation and climate action projects, and the more I talk to friends and family who are impacted by your illness, the more I see the multitude of ways in which the deflection of responsibility is the default. In my life and my career, I hope that I can encourage collective responsibility and action in persuit of your health because, my dear Ocean, you aren’t just home when you’re healthy, and a place to abandon when you’re not.

As summer approaches, I honestly don’t think many people will know how to experience the hotter months without you as you are synonymous with holidays, Christmas, and sunshine. As we leave greater and greater imprints on our world, the truth is that we will need to start getting used to the sacrifices that come with the decisions we are making. Many of which, we often pretend don’t exist, or won’t exist in our lifetimes. Remember when I said that I was grappling with injustice before? It is true that often the people deserving of experiencing these consequences are rich and powerful enough not to have to. Regardless, I do suspect, my dear Ocean, that at least your neighbours won’t take you for granted anymore.

My friend, I am deeply sorry that despite my best efforts, career choices, and advocacy, I find myself to be a small cog in a large machine that I worry will continue to harm you into the future. To sit with notion this hollows me out far more than I am able to articulate, which, I suppose is why many people choose not to sit with their own contributions to your pain. But alas, I cannot succumb to another debilitating bout of grief because it is your turn now, and my turn to be here for you in all the ways in which I am able. I promise to keep visiting you every day that I am here, and holding space for your pain and loss. After all you have done for me, it is the very least that I can do for you.

I hope that you feel better soon,

Love Jessie