Why must we be in constant battle with the ocean?

I recently learned to dive in the bay of Dakar. It was exciting. I’d started learning in a Leeds swimming pool and though I knew the ocean would feel different, I didn’t expect it to feel comfortable. It shouldn’t. It is not my element, and humans have long since left it to the rest of the ocean’s creatures. I also didn’t think the ocean would sound like my neck when I roll it during yoga: that same crackle.

With their remarkable sonar, dolphins can even tell when a human is pregnant

That the ocean is not quiet is one of the most pleasing revelations of the past century (I mean the ocean’s native noise, the fish songs and grunting and whistles – not ships’ propellers). But it is not the best revelation. That is the increasing understanding about the ocean’s inhabitants, no longer just Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘slimy things’. Snapping shrimp have ‘a special mechanism on their pincers to produce a shockwave that is powerful enough to stun or kill worms’. With their remarkable sonar, dolphins can even tell when a human is pregnant. It’s as though they have their own MRIs and X-rays, as well as getting high on pufferfish venom.

Human knowledge of the ocean and its life has expanded at the same rate that the risk to the ocean from humans has. This now puts us in a strange position, of being exposed to wondrous facts about those seven-tenths of the inaptly named Earth, while wondering how to save it from the pestilence that is humanity.