Reporting from Dive Into Your Imagination

I'm visiting the Dive Into Your Imagination crew today and it's good to be back!  As soon as the ocean appeared on the side of the 101 freeway I felt renewed and happy.

Dive Into Your Imagination has been doing some awesome stuff... Annie is one of the few people who have seen the garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  All of the videos they have been creating and putting out are completely amazing and informative.

It's really strange for me to go from a super eco-friendly place like Santa Barbara, to Palmdale where it seems like the information isn't reaching.  My house is full of plastic water bottles, plastic silverware... tons of single use plastic.  I go to the grocery store and see people buying packages upon packages of plastic water bottles... and I don't know what to do about it.  It's not like people that live further from the coast refuse to reduce their use of plastic... they just don't know anything about it!

One of the biggest environmental issues today is one of the least known about... Fish populations are in a huge decline and we are stealing tons of fish from countries that rely on it.  This means people in Africa who rely on fish for their livelihood barely catch anything.  We are driving poverty in so many nations.  We are destroying an ecosystem that makes up 70% of our planet and gives us 50-90% of our oxygen!!!  How is this issue the least paid attention to in this green eco-movement?

How do we reach people that don't already love the ocean and get them to want to protect it? How do we get people to understand that no matter how far away from the ocean you live, you still live in a watershed that will eventually reach the ocean... and in the short-term that watershed, which is our drinking water, is becoming polluted with harmful runoff, plastic, and other debris?

The problem is just so intimidating, and I sometimes feel little hope- look at the rainforests... ever since we were kids we heard about saving trees, not using as much paper.. but rainforests are still being destroyed for our use and for agriculture, which leaves the soil uninhabitable after the crops are harvested.  What hope is there for the ocean when nothing has been done about issues we've been hearing about for years and years?

Become a fan of Dive Into Your Imagination!