All things bright and beautiful

All creatures great and small

All things wise and wonderful

The Lord God made them all.

--Sir Cecil Francis Alexander

Because it is so vast, we tend to think of the ocean as being indestructable. However, this is not the case. Just as we depend on the ocean for life, the ocean and the creatures that dwell therein, depend on us for survival. We contribute to the pollution of the ocean, as we contribute to the pollution of the earth. Smokestacks on factories, chimneys on houses, and exhaust pipes on our cars all put pollutants into the air. These pollutants are then washed back down to earth with the rain. Because so much of our land is being developed and paved over, much of this rain becomes waste water runoff. The runoff flows into streams and rivers, and the rivers flow into the ocean. This is just an illustration of one way that we contribute to the pollution of the ocean. We need to become more aware of how our actions impact the world around us, including the ocean.

Because of the ocean's importance to each of us, who live on planet earth, the United Nations has declared 1998, the Year of the Ocean. There are many wonderful sites on the Internet, dedicated to helping us become more aware of the ocean's importance in our lives. They can teach us how we can all help to protect this precious resource, the ocean.