The ocean is the source of all life.

When I say “all” life I include humans and human civilization. Lots of folks think human technology is somehow beyond nature, unfettered by the constraints of biology. Listen—if you can keep from retching—to our TechBro Overlords talk about themselves and their view of humanity’s future. They are not constrained by reality. They think that they will carry on even if the Earth is a smoldering wasteland.

Physics sets the stage for a bio-chemical miracle: sunlight hits the planet, nicely filtered by the atmosphere. Phytoplankton then do that thing we all learned about in science class: photosynthesis.

This enormous collection of diverse marine micro-organisms is the base of the oceanic food web. All marine life depends on them.

Phytoplankton are the most important thing in the world. Really. If the oceans die, we die. All of us. We can’t replace the oxygen they create, we can’t cycle the carbon on the scale they can, and we can’t feed the fish. And since the fish feed us we are doomed if the phytoplankton have a bad decade or two.

We know more about Mars than we do about the oceans. That’s a catastrophic mis-allocation of resources!

Let’s put our AI geniuses to work on ecology and environmental sciences. On oceanography and marine biology. On sustainable fishing and aquaculture. Let’s get these geeks outside!

Our tech has turned us all inward and made us all practicing narcissists. AI promises more of the same. The hunger for bigger, better, faster, newer, trendier, etc., will never be satisfied. And now we are so desperate that we are turning on our Mother:

There are enough minerals in the waste piles and waste streams of terrestrial mines to supply our needs. But that sort of work isn’t glamorous. Robots patrolling the seafloor is sci-fi stuff and people love that shit.

Seafloor mining is good way for companies to be out of sight and to hide their messes. Very few folks will ever have access to these places! Terrestrial mining at least has oversight. There’s at least a chance of good environmental practices. We don’t need to mine the ocean bottoms. The opportunity to damage the most important ecosystems on earth should give us pause.

The oceans are the Mother of us all. We should love our Mother, not tear apart her innards.