EMPATHY WITH THE SEA

Many of us, in fact most of us, enjoy being by the sea. We enjoy living or staying on holiday by the sea, walking, paddling and swimming in the sea, this is a common Human trait. If you ask people why this is they will find it difficult to explain or put their finger on anything specific, they will say its just nice to be beside the sea and so we can assume it is inherent in human nature this attraction to the sea. There are those who take this love of the sea even further, the love of the sea so real it inevitably leads them to work on the sea and in doing so develop an empathy with the sea. And there are a few who take this empathy to a deeper level and have the ability to know, feel, touch the soul of and converse with the Sea as if it were a living entity, which they believe it is. The few with this capacity are scattered and mostly alone in this art, they could be Privateers, lone yachtsmen, fishermen alone in their dug out canoes on a vast ocean or even Pirates.

These few have no need for instrumentation such as GPS, depth finders or even a compass, like pidgeons or eels and so many other marine animals who know where north is. These few in full empathy know the direction home or where to find the fish, or how deep it is and what is on the bottom and so much more. They know these things because it is the Sea itself that tells them, directs and protects them. This happens because they are one. Being one with the sea also means being one with all the other marine life which itself are also one with the sea and enables then an understanding with them all and a level of conversation with those such as sea mammals,turtles and sea birds.

At the same time it is these few and these ability who are the translators of the voice and laments of the Sea. Scattered as they are it is almost impossible for any of them to speak on behalf of the Sea and to describe things that are indescribable without seeming to be mad. As one of the few I now have this opportunity to speak but how can I describe to the reader the moment when I stopped my ship because the Sea told me to stop or when I changed course because the Sea told me to do so and had I not done so would have been problematic. It's not easy for me to explain such a state of being so it's even harder for a poor lone fisherman in his canoe to explain these things.

So I am going to choose him, the smallest of us all, the lone fisherman to get this message across. To be alone on a small canoe bobbing up and down on an Ocean from dusk till dawn is an experience of a level of loneliness that most people could not withstand. Sitting in his canoe he is restricted of movement and almost always in the same position. If he uses a small sail it will be rolled in front of him and his paddle close at hand. Around him will be his fishing equipment which is always a hand line. Under his seat will be a small plastic bag to keep stuff dry, such as a lighter and cigarettes and behind him his fish compartment. As the ocean swells lift him up he can see the distant land and as he is lowered into the ocean troughs he sees nothing but the sea. From the minute he starts fishing he knows how many fish he will catch today but as with any fisherman he hopes to catch more.

He lowers his line measuredly down and down knowing exactly how far down to go and he waits, he is now fully connected to the sea both spiritually and physically, all he can see is sea and sky, all he can hear are possible sounds of marine animals or birds otherwise he is alone in silence. It may take 5 minutes or 25 minutes to catch his first fish but time to him is irrelevant, he has a time to start fishing and a time to stop and go home, the time in between is to him of little importance it's a time blur and without time he is that much deeper into a spiritual state.

After catching his first fish he enters into a more relaxed mindset knowing at least tonight he has food on the table. It is then that he thanks the sea for his fish and connects fully. He will tell the sea of his family, of his new baby, of his problems, of his needs and worries, he will lament, at times he will cry. His conversations are real knowing that the sea is listening to him and there is a two way conscience taking place and at times this will manifest itself physically by touches of the sea on his boat or a sudden flurry of fish catches that the sea had driven to his line.

There are times he will tell the sea of a birth or a happy event and the sea will be in empathy with him and strange currents and calms will speed his way home. He has no phone and cannot use a computer and has difficulty writing his name yet this lone fisherman can do things on a daily basis that no satellite or Nasa or University Professor or Scientist can do. Such a level of empathy cannot be one way so the fisherman will spend hours listening to the laments of the sea. She will tell him of her happiness, her sadness and her angers and pains and it is in these moments that the empathy and love are at their maximum, strange waves and patterns will surround the fisherman's boat but the boat will sit on a still flat calm and the fisherman will cry with the crying of the sea and so too will all the marine life around him cry.

Back home with his fish on dry land his day is socially valued by the weight of his catch. How can he explain the very existence of other values or even truly describe his day? So he decides it's better to stay silent and not end up with electrodes plugged into your head or suffer indignation or the anger of the local priest. Maybe tomorrow he will ask the sea about it, she will know. Yes she will know. Each year billions are spent on so called Climate change or save the planet orgs. Royalty, Nasa, Scientists, politicians and uncle Tom Cobly and all.

They all present themselves as 'Experts'. They all have numbers and figures from banks of computers and satellites and will need more funding and your donations to continue getting information. They have white coats and look important but have any of them spoken to the a lone fisherman? Have any of them actually been at sea? Empathy is a source of knowledge, to know without empathy is incomplete knowledge the distance between the establishments 'advanced' knowledge and the knowledge of the lone fisherman has become so great that it's long broken. This is like cutting off another root of Humanity. To save itself the establishment must somehow revalue and urgently reconnect to the vast and valuable knowledge of the lone fisherman before it is lost. That then is what I am attempting to do here, driven as I am in this responsibility.

Laments of the Seas.

Each sea has a personal lament, the Philippine sea will lament for a different reason to that of the South China sea or the Pacific, the North sea will lament for a different reason to the Atlantic and so on. Each lament is specific and has a different reason of being. Be it toxic or sound based each lament will also point to the cause of the pain just like we do and can manifest itself by pleading against toxic poisoning or by anger against sound disturbance. Toxic dumping, plastics and oil create a pleading lament as if the sea was being strangled and couldn't breathe and in effect that is exactly what is happening.

Toxic dumping:

There are seas where even now extreme toxic waste is being dumped and as these chemical drums erode or move over time everything dies and the currents spread this death.

Plastics:

Although a probable problem to marine life, a plastic bottle floating along is of little importance to the sea and she does not lament this but the tiny residue of what was in the bottle, especially cleaning materials, is the greater danger rather than the plastic itself, as this residue slowly dissipates it kills vital microbes a few centimeters under the surface.

Oil:

Disasters apart, every day on every sea hundreds of ships will wash their tanks at sea. This is illegal but I know it is happening all the time and right now. The oil that is washed out from the tanks to the sea forms a thin layer on the surface and kills a vital oxygen producing microbe that lives just under the surface. Each time this happens, just one ship will contaminate the equivalent of 3 hectares of rain forest. The chemicals used in the tank cleaning are also washed out and heavier than oil they form a layer just under the surface and kill other important microbes and plankton. The sea provides 60% of our oxygen and without these surface microbes the sea cannot breathe and eventually nor will we. These then are the laments that many such as I or the lone fisherman have heard so many times for years, however I never expected that a unified common lament would arise from all the world waters at the same time, until now that is. The sea adheres to the feminine principle, she is the mother and keeper of all things, without her there is only death.

She of course knows this and her unified lament is expressed in vanity such as, being overweight and heavy and not looking good, she is tired of pulling this extra load, playing with the land is no fun anymore and her decisions are out of her control as she is forced to move faster and outside of her natural life giving cycles. It seems that something much bigger than all the individual sea laments put together is upsetting the seas.

Something is making her heavy and sluggish and pulling her out of her normal cycles. The only thing that can do that is a change in gravitational forces, ie, either the sun or the moon have changed their gravitational force or a third party gravitational force has recently come into existence within the Solar system.