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The visibility was perhaps the best on the planet.
Water clarity was measured in excess of 1,000 feet
because there is no phytoplankton and no current.
Buoyancy was initially a challenge because the water is
so clear there aren’t any visual referents floating in the
water column.
SF:
I’m not so naive as to believe that beautiful
images are enough to effect change. There had
to be political consensus as well. How did that
happen?
JW:
Once I had assembled the imagery I started to
publish articles and, eventually, a coffee-table book,
The Last Ocean
. All this time I was doing talks and
presentations — first to family and friends, then to their
friends, then to donors and as a guest speaker. I started
a website, and I helped build the Last Ocean Charitable
Trust, which Young founded in New Zealand. We were
finding allies, such as the Antarctic and Southern Ocean
Alliance (ASOC), building a community and developing
a voice. At the time, one big issue was that there was
no consolidated paper that fleshed out the state of
the Ross Sea and could be used as a base for making a
Ross Sea marine protected area (MPA) proposal. Our
solution was to organize and fund a symposium at the
2009 International Marine Conservation Congress
(IMCC) with top Ross Sea scientists from different
disciplines. Ainley incorporated the work of all into a
massive 100-page bioregionalization paper used as the
basis in the eventual development of the Ross Sea MPA
proposal, and it is still the definitive paper on the Ross
Sea ecosystem. I am a coauthor and am very proud of
this contribution.
Throughout this project I have continued
fundraising, both for my own work and as
contributions to other aspects of the process. In
all I have raised more than $1 million and received
incredible support from individuals and organizations,
including the Pew Fellows Program in Marine
Conservation, Dan Cohen, the Ocean Foundation and
most recently the Safina Center. New NGOs were
formed and joined the fight. The Antarctic Ocean
Alliance (AOA) got celebrities involved, including
Leonardo DiCaprio, and collected more than a million
signatures on a petition to protect the Southern Ocean.
The Pew Charitable Trusts applied its formidable
strength to the issue and used the work in other
creative ways, including distributing copies of my book
directly to Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic
Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) delegates and to
help inform and inspire U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry, who became the linchpin of the whole process
at the
end.
SF:
I’m hearing that the images might have been
a touchstone, but it took a movement with the
engagement of many, including Secretary Kerry.
JW:
That’s absolutely true. Ainley really started the
ball rolling; together we gave it an initial big push, and
then we were able to help keep it rolling as we worked
with more and more partners — the images were used
all over the world. The establishment of the Ross Sea
MPA involved thousands of dedicated people, fighting
battles in boardrooms and scientific journals and in the
media. It has been a very long, bumpy ride. I will say
this: I am proud. When Ainley and I started working
on this, one of the first meetings we had was with
Polly Penhale at the National Science Foundation. She
told us, and I can nearly quote: “An MPA will likely
never happen, but if it does, it will take a decade.” That
was in 2005, so she was wrong. It took 11 years. I am
mostly proud because I didn’t let go, and I left it all
on the field, as they say. There were too many dead
ends to count. I chased ideas until they died, and then
rebooted and changed direction.
I’ll also say this: The fight is not over, even for the
Ross Sea. The MPA is far from perfect: It leaves the
controversial toothfish fishery largely untouched
and leaves important toothfish habitat outside the
boundary of the MPA. But it was an incredible,
improbable, almost inconceivable step forward. It was
a peace treaty. Since the beginning I have believed that
a Ross Sea MPA would be a keystone in the fight to
redefine our relationship with the ocean.
Some time ago Sylvia Earle quipped, “If we can’t
protect the Ross Sea, what can we protect?” But I like
to think of it the other way around: If we can manage
to protect the Ross Sea, to assemble a consensus of
two-dozen nations in defense of the last pristine place,
what
can’t
we do? I believe that the floodgates have
finally opened, and the rest of my life will be devoted to
increasing the flow. I had been working on the Ross Sea
issue for 10 years before I really understood what was at
stake. The birth of my daughter pulled everything into
focus for me. I knew what I was fighting for literally
from the moment she was born.
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“IF WE CAN’T PROTECT THE ROSS SEA,
WHAT CAN WE PROTECT?”