As of May 31, President Obama, President Trump, and many presidents before them have proclaimed June as the National Ocean Month — a month dedicated to spreading awareness of Earth’s oceans and coastal ecosystems. But not everyone is pleased with the direction our 45th president is setting us in, and the proof is in the proclamation.
While President Obama’s National Oceans Month Proclamation went into depth about how we should “redouble our efforts to preserve the health and resilience of our vast oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes”, Trump’s wasn’t nearly as environmentally conscious. Instead, Trump wrote about how we aren’t taking enough from our oceans. In his proclamation, our current president stated, “In the field of energy, we have just begun to tap the potential of our oceans’ oil and gas, wind, wave, and tidal resources to power the Nation. Side by side, the stark difference between the proclamations is obvious.
In Obama’s National Oceans Month Proclamation, his care for the largest ecosystem on our planet seemed clear as he called to “strengthen our ocean economy, and improve the health of our oceans.” And he also mentioned that “jeopardizing marine populations and degrading oceanic habitats, pollution poses a significant risk to all of our interconnected oceans”.
And on the other end, Trump’s National Ocean Month Proclamation merely addressed how “Growing global demand for seafood presents tremendous opportunities for expansion of our seafood exports.” And besides making a bluntly nationalistic statement that President Ronald Reagan’s creation of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone makes clear “America’s sovereign right to explore, exploit, conserve, and manage ocean resources extending 200 nautical miles from our shores,” it’s clear he doesn’t really have the oceans conservation in mind. In his portion on how “our offshore areas remain underutilized,” it’s obvious that he only really cares about the economic investment of our oceans and the profits they can make; not their own health or conservation.
But, we can let the final statements of the proclamations speak for themselves.
Obama called upon Americans “to take action to protect, conserve, and restore our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes.” While Trump called upon Americans to “reflect on the value and importance of the oceans not only to our security and economy, but also as a source of recreation, enjoyment, and relaxation.”
Say what you want about the recreation, enjoyment, and relaxation of our oceans, but only one of these statements talks about conservation. And when it comes to our oceans, what three words are more important- Recreation, Enjoyment, and Relaxation; or, Protect, Conserve, and Restore? And if Trump wants Americans to reflect on the importance of the security the oceans provide us, shouldn’t we repay the favor? This National Oceans Month, I call upon the reader. What security are we giving back to the ocean? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the oil spills harming marine life, unsustainable fishing or aquaculture; and of course climate change, which contributes to coral bleaching, stormy weather, temperature changes, altered lifestyles, rising sea levels, decreased mixing or ocean deoxygenation, and acidic oceans.
The ocean is our largest ecosystem. It makes up about 71 percent of the earth’s surface. Our oceans intrinsically tie us all together. There is more under the surface than recreation, there is more to our shores than enjoyment, and there is more importance to our oceans than relaxation. We cannot relax. We must fight to keep this vast system of life; that we all rely on, alive.
There’s so much more to the oceans than our profit. June is National Oceans Month. Let’s clean up our act and help our oceans do more than survive. Let’s help them thrive.
