The ocean. The big blue beating heart of our planet. As Australians, it is core to our very being. We paddle on it, camp by it, swim, and dive in it. Every day we are awed by its beauty, soothed by its rhythms, nourished by its bounty. For the millions of us who surf it, the ocean is a deep source of joy, of adventure, and of mental solace in these challenging and uncertain times. Perhaps no other activity connects us more intimately with the rhythms of our natural world. Surfing is embedded in the intricate and timeless dance between the ocean, land, and atmosphere, in the exchange of energy between wind and waves, and in the sacred balance of our Earth System. But as more and more of us surfers are recognising, those rhythms are changing. Through our relentless burning of fossil fuels, we have pushed things out of balance, threatening not only the activity we love but all life as we know it. When thinking about climate change, not many people immediately think of the ocean. Least of all how rising global temperatures may impact their favourite surf break. Our minds are more likely to turn to heatwaves, fires, and floods. But in reality, the ocean is at the very heart of the climate change story. In a very real sense, climate change is ocean change. Indeed, focusing on the ocean is a great way to get to grips with our climate crisis: why things are changing so rapidly, the impacts of these changes, and perhaps most importantly, the solutions. The French Pacific throwing up its own version of the Arc de Triomphe. Surely our oceans deserve as much protection as our famous structures. We can think of the ocean as the engine of the global climate system. All life depends on the water cycle that starts in the ocean, powered by the energy of the sun. The ocean’s currents distribute heat and moisture around the planet, creating the stable climate and weather patterns that have enabled human societies to flourish. We need the ocean in other fundamental ways too: more than half of the oxygen we breath is produced from the ocean. Each year, through the burning of coal, oil, and gas, we’ve been releasing billions of tonnes of carbon from long-term storage deep in the Earth’s crust into the atmosphere, thickening up the blanket of greenhouse … Read more