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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Karen McVeigh in Nice, France

Is the ocean ‘having a moment’? This was the UN summit where the world woke up to the decline of the seas

Calm waters in the central Pacific ocean.
Calm waters in the Pacific Ocean. Pacific island nations, who contribute least and stand to suffer most from the effects of the climate crisis, welcomed the chance to put their case at the ocean summit in Nice. Photograph: Paul Hilton/Greenpeace

The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope … and we are all in the same boat.” So said Jacques Cousteau, the French explorer, oceanographer and pioneering film-maker, who notably pivoted from merely sharing his underwater world to sounding the alarm over its destruction.

Half a century later, David Attenborough, a year shy of his 100th birthday, followed Cousteau’s trajectory. In the naturalist’s acclaimed new film, Ocean, which highlights the destructive fishing practice of bottom trawling, he says he has come to the realisation that the “most important place on Earth is not on land but at sea”.

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