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Aquatic invasive species are destroying the environment, damaging fisheries, and costing American taxpayers billions of dollars annually.

The tragedy is that there is so much more incentive - money - to destroy the ecology than there is to preserve it.

Explorers tend to be the aggressive types - why else would they risk scurvy, mutiny and other bad things to go out there? So, you could say that any aliens that are actually moving and interested in going somewhere are likely to be more aggressive. But who knows?

So much of the habitat destruction and pollution is based on the simple principle that we somehow have been given free license over other species to degrade the planet.

If we emit massive quantities of untested chemicals into the environment, some of them are bound to end up in places that surprise us, doing things that endanger us.

Over and over, nature shows that it's a really tough adversary. That's why it's important that we invest in laboratories, disease detectives, research, mosquito control, the public health system around the world to find, stop, track, prevent health threats.

As an explorer, I know firsthand there are many places in the ocean so full of life that they should be protected. Coral reefs and mangrove coastlines are stressed already by climate change and ocean acidification, and poor planning will just make their plight worse.

Our oceans are facing innumerable threats - from overfishing and pollution to ocean acidification and invasive species - yet we haven't had a blueprint for its use and development, incredible as that seems.

The thing that scares me is a place like the Amazon - which is the size of the continental U.S. and mostly unexplored and has a different ecosystem, there are so many things in there that can kill you.

There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.