OceanCore
Ocean Conservation Education Awareness Now
Who Am I?
Lynn Sutherland & Kaiona
Hi! My name is Lynn Sutherland. I am the daughter of both an inspiring marine ecologist and a dedicated registered nurse. I was raised with the ocean as my playground, always curious and always wanting to help or heal. When I grew up (Ha!), I wanted to make sure future generations could have the same ocean experience I did when I was young, so I earned a Masters in Coastal Environmental Management from Duke University. After moving to Hawaii, I discovered a love for live setting inquiry-based teaching, a real need for translating science into useful information that everyone can understand and apply, and an even greater need for practical and visible pollution solutions. From this, OceanCore was born. Enjoy! Learn! And Share Knowledge Forward!
The Story Of OceanCore
My family and I moved to Hawaii in 2010 and we were SO excited to have the opportunity to explore and enjoy this beautiful place and we did! On one of our first “road trips” - kinda funny to call them that when it’s such a small island - we ended up at a beautiful bay.
It looks great, right? All the stuff on the sand is supposed to be there, it looks the way you think it should...right? In 2017 my mom came for one of her visits and I thought it’d be great to take her up to the same beautiful calm bay, so we drove up, got our stuff out and went to find a spot to plant ourselves for a while. As soon as we reached the beach that plan changed, because this is what we found…
None of us could sit and enjoy the beach with all the mess so we decided to go back to the car where we exchanged our lounging gear for the beach clean-up kit we always keep in the car, just in case. This was absolutely a just in case kind of a situation. We spent the entire afternoon cleaning and managed to fill two large trash bags full of garbage.
… AFTER Cleanup ~ January 2017
The majority of it was plastic and lots of pieces were clearly identifiable as things we use. We felt better, but not much because we were only able to clean a small part of the beach. We reflected on how much our beaches have changed over the years and why. Then my mom asked the million dollar question, “what can we do about this?” Even with a degree in Coastal Environmental Management I didn’t have a good answer for her, or myself. As I looked around, it became clear no one else had the answer either. There were plenty of other people on the beach that day and aside from us, there was only one other family even attempting to clean up. I wondered how had we gotten to a place where people enjoyed their beach day snuggling up to a mangy old shoe, toothbrush or water bottle, or we just no longer noticed all the rubbish. How can you build a sandcastle and not notice the multicolored sand, I mean, since when did Mother Nature make multicolored sand? Spoiler Alert: She doesn’t, humans do.
When I got home and started doing some research, I quickly found my answer. There was a LOT of information, much of it in pieces, unconnected, spread across many websites and a dizzying array of well intended organizations, and lots of it was in science-speak which is not known to everyone. The majority of the information focused on the problem and at the end you were left with only a vague solution like, “use less plastic”. I thought, how is anyone supposed to figure this out, who has the time and what the heck does “use less plastic” really mean, what does that look like and how do we actually do that?!? OceanCore was born to help answer those very questions.
My hope is…
To energize everyone to live a planet-healthy lifestyle.
To ensure our kids know how to do things differently so they’re not faced with unsolvable problems.
As a growing community, to say to our elected & business leaders what’s important to humanity and what we want based on what we buy and do!
For OceanCore to eventually act as a portal to basic marine biology and the many solutions to heal her – accessed by everyone and connected to as many doing the ocean’s work as possible!
If you’re wondering how any of the small shifts OceanCore will share with you could possibly make a difference?? I invite you to imagine... if everyone that was on the beach that day had pitched in and helped clean up, think about the difference that would have made for that particular mess... about the difference that Could be made for our ocean-planet if everyone pitches in and makes whatever changes or shifts they are able to!! Transformational.
“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
William James