Dear friends,
Sometimes we grasp a reality with our mind, but we don’t manage to connect emotionally. When interviewing Okeanos fleet commander Peia Patai about his new foundation Te Puna Marama, he said something that I want to share with you because it highlights an inner path to take for ocean protection.
When Peia goes fishing, he always reminds himself of a proverb that the old people passed on to him: “Don’t turn your back on the ocean”. For many years, Peia said, he saw it as a warning. Turning your back on someone you fear can make you vulnerable. But then it dawned on him that it was a matter of respect to do the opposite: facing the ocean, carefully observing and understanding the marine environment, became the clue to his success as a sailor, a navigator, a leader and a fisherman. Getting to know and understand ocean environments not only takes away your fear, it fills you with respect and leads to the point where you do not want to conquer any more, but rather connect and work with that environment.
Okeanos will continue to support ocean and environmental awareness in diverse ways. In that sense, we invite you to meet Peia Patai and learn about his new foundation Te Puna Marama. We introduce Okeanos wave writer Michaela Vieser who develops a mindful language enabling us to connect to oceans, we share news about our youth initiative ´waves of action´ and introduce the ’17 Globals Goals’ international song project with a call for Pacific voices to join!