"[Sea] turtles don't think about their next generation, but they risk and provide all they can to ensure that there will be one. Meanwhile, we profess to love our offspring above all else, yet above all else it is they from whom we daily steal. We cannot learn to be more like turtles but from turtles we could learn to be more human. That is the wisdom carried within one hundred million years of survival. What turtles could learn from us, I can't imagine." (Carl Safina, Voyage of the Turtle)
For decades Carl Safina — consummate environmental journalist and activist — has traveled the world following the migrations of sea turtles and other endangered species — and figuring out how to apply their lessons to the human experience. When he is not trekking across the globe he follows the arc of seasons from the The View from Lazy Point, his home on the eastern tip Long Island. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Carl about his journeys far and near, finding solace and delight in the power and resilience of living things, giving hope that we can learn to embody our connection with the natural world before we discover that we have destroyed it.
Carl Safina is a prominent ecologist and marine conservationist and president of Blue Ocean Institute, an environmental organization based in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. A winner of the prestigious Pew Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship and Guggenheim Fellowship, Safina has written five books — Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas; Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival; Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur; Nina Delmar: The Great Whale Rescue; The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World, and due out in April of 2011, A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout. Safina’s new TV series, Saving the Ocean, premiered on PBS in April 2011.
Follow more of Carl's adventures on his blog.
- KBOO