OCEAN CULTURAL LITERACY: Captivating the Global Public with the Power and ‘Magic’ of Oceans in Their Lives

Earth’s ocean is the global ‘engine’ driving planetary-scale and most regional-scale environmental variations. Equally important, the ocean provides a crucial underpinning for global economies and national securities. For tens of millennia the ocean has strongly influenced the evolution of human culture. For the past two centuries, human societies have been progressively affecting the character of the oceans. Whether positive or negative, we define all such Human-Ocean interactions as “Ocean Culture” During the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable DeveloDment (2021-2030), we are launching a novel 10-year public outreach effort focused on entraining many diverse sectors of the general populace with the crucial importance, complexity, and power of Ocean Culture. Through the Internet, we will share captivating stories, narratives, performances, and art forms illuminating the vast array of Human-Ocean interactions from our past, from our present, and projected into our future. The range of this content reaches far beyond Ocean Sciences. It weaves a broad spectrum of interlinked threads into an engaging tapestry of readily accessible human experiences, all made available via a hand-held device. Our objective is to inspire many different kinds of people across wide swathes of society to begin self-educating, following one or more facets that particularly capture their own personal interests. We believe that a potentially significant fraction of such citizens could emerge as more proactive members of our global society, exerting influence on their leaders to address major issues of planet-wide ocean resilience.