By Benjamin Jealous
BlackPress of America
https://blackpressusa.com
My parents’ marriage was against the law in Maryland in 1966, so they moved west. By the time I was born in 1973, they had settled in Monterey County, California, the same year the last cannery on Cannery Row shut down. The Hovden Cannery closed its doors, marking the end of an era. Where it stood, the Monterey Bay Aquarium would eventually rise, a monument to what we’d lost and hoped to restore.
When I was 12, in 1985, I became a guide at that aquarium—the youngest in my class. Standing in a building literally constructed on cannery ruins, I told visitors about kelp forests, sea otters, and the remarkable return of the sardines. Through the 1980s and 1990s, they came back. The ocean, given a chance to rest, proved resilient.
As a kid who often felt out of place in the local community, the ocean was my refuge. I learned that the ocean can be a patient teacher. But the lesson she’s teaching now, according to leading scientists, is one humanity may never recover from. Worse, its impact will be felt across the entire nation—first with rising seafood costs, then with far more serious consequences.
Last week, scientists announced the world has reached its first climate tipping point. Coral reefs—supporting a quarter of all marine life and nearly a billion people—are in widespread, irreversible collapse. Since 2023, over 80% of the world’s reefs have suffered the worst mass bleaching event ever recorded. Underwater explosions of color and life are turning into bleached wastelands.
