1 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I'm a marine biologist 2 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 here to talk to you about the crisis in our oceans, 3 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but this time perhaps not with a message you've heard before, 4 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because I want to tell you that if the survival of the oceans 5 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 depended only on people like me, 6 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 scientists trading in publications, 7 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we'd be in even worse trouble than we are. 8 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Because, as a scientist, 9 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the most important things that I've learned 10 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 about keeping our oceans healthy and productive 11 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 have come not from academia but from fishermen and women 12 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 living in some of the poorest countries on Earth. 13 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I've learned that as a conservationist, 14 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the most important question is not, "how do we keep people out?" 15 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but rather, "how do we make sure that coastal people throughout the world 16 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 have enough to eat?" 17 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Our oceans are every bit as critical to our own survival 18 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 as our atmosphere, our forests or our soils. 19 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Their staggering productivity ranks fisheries with farming 20 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 as a mainstay of food production 21 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 for humanity. 22 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Yet, something's gone badly wrong. 23 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're accelerating into an extinction emergency, 24 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 one that my field has so far failed abysmally to tackle.