A Day to Thank Our Lifeline

What would the earth look like if there were no oceans here? Probably brown for all that sand and dust, or maybe even red with the rocks. To remember that we are the inhabitants of the blue planet, the world decided to celebrate Ocean Day on 8th June.

Home to Marine Life; Source: Yuvamauritius.com

A blue and green dot in the endless space of non-existence - that is how those who have seen the earth from outside describe it. When the Voyager turned back one last time to see its motherland, a Pale Blue Dot was what it saw. Blue! A colour that defines the earth - the colour of the oceans on the face of the earth.

Much before humans took birth, even before the dinosaurs ruled the land, there were oceans. The endless seas that existed at the infancy of the earth were where life first emerged. All our ancestors, till the last point, can be traced to the oceans of the world.

Forget imagining life without oceans, life might never have existed if there were no endless salty water reservoirs. They are the blood of our Earth, without which this planet would not have been what it is today. Or we might not have been here to understand the significance of everything around us.

Even today, if the oceans are somehow removed from the surface of the earth, all life as we know it will collapse and there will be an endless doom.

For billions and billions of years, they have served the earth and its inhabitants. Though the waters take up 70% of the total surface cover of the Earth, without them the earth's clock would stop. Almost 96% of all water on the earth is found in the oceans. They are the most important component of the earth's survival kit.

Even after being the largest geological feature on earth, 95% of the ocean remains unexplored. The most mysterious and beautiful places on the earth, exist in the darkness of waters thousands of feet below the ground level, where life exists in silence in unimaginable conditions, as evidence of what miracles can happen on the blue planet.

Given their significance, the important people of the Earth who had gathered for the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro decided that something must be done to celebrate the oceans of the world. They wanted to recognize the role of oceans in human lives, something that the creatures of land often forget which is evident when we dump most of the human waste into the oceans, thus threatening their existence.

For sixteen years they thought and thought and finally in 2008, the United Nations General Assembly decided 8th June would be the perfect date to celebrate the waters. In 2009, the world celebrated its first World Ocean Day.

While most of us might think that trees give us all the oxygen we need, in reality, oceans are the lungs of the planet. Most of the oxygen that we breathe comes from the waters!

The home to the majority of earth's biodiversity and corals of exotic beauty, the main source of protein for the world, the reason for the world's economic growth and expansion; is disrespected across the world. Over the years, oceans have become our dump houses and in an effort to beautify our lands, humans have forgotten to conserve the blue of the blue planet.

Our technologically advanced modern lifestyles are becoming a threat to that one link that connects us with the beginning of life on the one planet in the solar system. The blood of the earth is polluted now. World Ocean Day is a reminder of the importance of the oceans and a warning of what might happen if humans ignore their actions.