When ocean biologist and president of 1planet1ocean, Dr.David Guggenheim, turned 50 years old last October, he wanted to do something creative for his birthday. His plan was to celebrate his 50th year visiting 50 states, and presenting 50 speeches to those wishing to hear about our oceans – from the self-proclaimed ocean doctor himself. A little more than three months later, Dr. Guggenheim stood in a lecture hall at the UWMC on Feb. 19, as part of his tour, The New Green is Blue: What the Oceans are Telling Us and Why it Matters.

“I’m taking messages in bottles from all the students that I’m visiting within all 50 states and bringing them back to D.C. with me,” Guggenheim said. “At the end of this journey, I’m going to deliver them to the Obama Administration.”

To say that Guggenheim’s journey to better the oceans began when he turned 50 would be incorrect. At 15, he received scuba lessons that changed his life…and his work apparel. “I really wear two hats, one being an adventurous type in a wetsuit, the other being this guy who lives in Washington, D.C. in a wool suit,” he said. “One thing I’m struck by is how much emotion there is amongst all of us about the oceans. Even people that have never seen the ocean,” said Guggenheim.

Louis and Clark may have been revolutionary in their explorations of the U.S., but today the forays of Guggenheim and other oceanographers continue to re-form the perspective of what our country really is. “200 years after Thomas Jefferson sent Louis and Clark out west, Ronald Reagan opened up the new chapter in the American frontier,” Guggenheim said. “I’m talking about the extension of our borders, our exclusive economic zone, our territorial waters, out to 200 miles.” Guggenheim showed that Reagan’s extension more than doubled the size of the United States.

“We don’t really think of ourselves as the ocean nation, but we are,” he said. Guggenheim stressed that our territory in the ocean is no less sacred than the land surrounded by it, although our government has not exemplified that sacredness in the past. “Up until even two years ago, it was less than one hundredth of one percent of the oceans that were fully protected. Where as with land, we’re somewhere around 10 or 20 percent that is protected.”

While there have been landmark cases of ocean conservation in the recent past, most notably the establishment of the Hawaiian Reserve in 2006, Guggenheim said that old time notions of the ocean must be defeated. “A lot of people still have that sense that the oceans are limitless,” he said. “We can’t possibly take too many fish out or we can’t dump too much into it.”

Guggenheim mentioned that the Clean Water Act under Nixon changed the main pollutants of the oceans. It is no longer coming from the iconic drain pumping out chemicals into a river. The biggest pollutant is now coming from fertilizers used on our front lawns. “It’s coming from the lawns of suburbia, and it’s coming from the farms of the heartland,” he stated. “There’s a strange competition of whose lawn is the greenest on the block.”

Guggenheim explained, “When excess fertilizer drains from the soil, it does the same thing it does (to oceans, lakes or rivers) on our lawn- it fosters plant growth like seaweed. The plants die and bacteria decomposes it, using the oxygen, and then there’s not enough oxygen to support the rest of that ecosystem.” The connection between fertilizer and lakes in Wisconsin is becoming a major problem, but the mark it has left in the Gulf of Mexico is unbelievable. “40 percent of the continental United States drain into the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “When you add up all of the agricultural waste that comes down the Mississippi, there is a dead zone the size of Massachusetts in the gulf.”

Our front lawns are not the only culprit, Guggenheim stressed. He stated that over the past hundred years, fishing practices have morphed into something that 19th century biologists could never have imagined. Thomas Henry Huxley, former English biologist and colleague of Charles Darwin, spoke of the world’s fisheries as an inexhaustible resource not worth regulating. It may have been true back in 1890, with cod and other bountiful fish seemingly jumping into fishermen’s hands. Today, it is certainly a different case. “In his day, that was probably a smart thing to say. We were fishing differently back then, in small skiffs with a hook and line,” Guggenheim said. “He (Huxley) could never imagine a headline like this: Canada Declares an End to Cod Fishing.” After the Canadian ban in 1992, two of the once endless cod stocks in Canada were put on the endangered species list.

The extreme changes in our fishing practices are never more apparent than when one sees a modern fishing vessel with nets larger than football fields, scooping out fish and decimating entire ecosystems. To say the least, it is a non-selective process, Guggenheim said. “If you think about it, if you wanted to catch squirrels, one way of doing it would be to drag a net from the sky through a suburban neighborhood. You would probably catch some squirrels, but you would also catch some lawsuits,” he explained. On average, 80 percent of what is caught on a shrimp trawler in the Gulf of Mexico is not shrimp; the catch is fish, dolphins, sharks, and other sea life thrown overboard and ultimately left to die. “That’s 80 percent waste. We don’t tolerate that sort of waste in other industries,” he said. “This is just accepted practice.”

Guggenheim spoke of a worldwide seafood industry crisis that does not jive with the average American’s everyday experience. “You go to Red Lobster or anyone that watches late night television (is) bombarded by these adds, ‘the shrimp feast is back’ – as much as you can eat.” He said that popular media reinforces the notion that the oceans are limitless, but the ignorance can’t last forever. “It is estimated that within 50 years all of the global fisheries will ultimately collapse. We’re living on borrowed time.” With U.S. fish stocks all but annihilated, seafood has become the second largest import in the U.S., accounting for an eight billion dollar deficit per year.

“Fish are not just fish. When we think about fish the first thing that pops into our head is that they’re just food,” said Guggenheim. “ Fish are a part of their ecosystem. They have a job to do down there.”

Another crucial entity to life in the oceans is coral. On an expedition to Alaska, Guggenheim was reminded of the wasteful practices he encountered in the Gulf of Mexico where the catch wasn’t mostly unused fish, it was coral. Guggenheim said that coral is the basis for a thriving ecosystem underwater, living up to 4,000 years. On a dive in the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, Guggenheim saw the path of a trawler that had recently gone through the ocean bottom. “It took everything out,” he said. “No coral, just scars from the net dragging on the bottom.” The scale of the trawlers net shocked him, hundreds of feet across and miles long.

Being an ocean explorer, Guggenheim said that coming across nets left by trawlers is a part of the job. “In the Hawaiian Islands there is a big problem. The Japanese cut their nets loose when they’re done,” said Guggenheim. “What happens is they get caught up in the current and end up washing into the Northwest Hawaiian Islands where monk seals, an endangered species, get entangled.” The monk seal is barely holding on in Hawaii, a species already extinct in the Caribbean, numbering close to a thousand left in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. The penalty for violating a monk seal can be as high as $20,000, but the ships that leave their nets in the ocean do not leave their name and number.

The changes found in the ocean may be noticed by scientists and biologists like Guggenheim, but the average person has nothing to base their perspectives of the ocean upon. Guggenheim mentioned the concept of shifting baselines, a term that he related to Christopher Columbus’ experience when entering Cuba. “Drawing nearer to Cuba, we saw sea turtles three to four feet long, with such vast numbers that they covered the sea,” Columbus wrote in a journal. A frequent visitor of Cuba, Guggenheim stated that the turtle population of today is nothing of the like. “Now, if I see a sea turtle, I consider myself pretty lucky.” Today, there is only one percent of the sea turtles that there were in Columbus’ time. “The numbers of sea turtles are inconceivable… because we grow up thinking that there aren’t that many,” he said. “We’re forgetting what the oceans used to look like.”

The future of the oceans is in our hands, Guggenheim said. Technology is at the cutting edge, but it needs the manpower and intuitive insight to correct the wrongs we have turned a blind eye to in the past. “We humans are capable of some pretty great things…but we have lagged way behind in the oceans,” he said.

Today and for the rest of his career, Guggenheim is focused on solutions. Getting tripped up in human faults of the past may be a common occurrence for some, especially in the field of science, but he finds a higher calling in the ocean. Guggenheim mentioned the rise in aquaculture, and the efficiency is promising for the future of fishing. “I went to Malaysia and Denmark, and I discovered that overseas, there’s a whole new generation of aquaculture that we didn’t know about,” he said. “(Their) system recirculates 99 percent of its water, uses no chemicals or antibiotics, and it produces very tasty fish.” Guggenheim said that he has prepared the fish eight different ways, and the entrée is completely free of mercury and other common chemicals found in fish.

“I’m now working to try to promote this type of technology here in the U.S. with a company based in Pittsburgh because I see this as not only viable, but it’s economical and sustainable,” said Guggenheim.

One way consumers can show their support of the oceans is by “choosing what they put in their mouth,” Guggenheim said. “I’ll say right now, it’s not easy. It’s hard to do the right thing.” He mentioned that by visiting montereybayaquarium.org, one can receive information on what seafood is practical to eat. For the iPod minded youth, there is an iPhone application to check when out for dinner.

When Guggenheim’s journey to visit each 50 states is all said and done, an even greater expedition will begin in Washington. He hopes the new administration will covet the oceans future as much as he does. “I was out there (at the Presidential Inauguration) with two million of my closest friends on the mall. What’s really great about this whole process, no matter who anybody voted for, is that young people were involved, paying attention and engaged. That gave me a lot of hope and inspiration.”

To sum up his experiences with students around the country, Guggenheim added, “To hear the voice of the next generation and what their hopes and what their dreams are about the oceans, I think it is very powerful. It’s an honor to carry those messages back.”

With only 40 percent of the oceans falling within territorial boundaries of a particular nation, the problems are of a global scale. Guggenheim stressed that our country must find mechanisms of diplomacy to match it. Wisconsin may not border the Pacific or the Atlantic, but Dr. David Guggenheim reminded us all that there is only one planet, and only one ocean. Follow the ocean doctor’s voyage at ocean-doctor.org.