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Oceans are one of the most important things in the world now and that is a national security threat of the United States of America, to be honest with you. That is why seeing the habitat destroyed is so short-sighted by us.

The ocean is our planet's life support system, yet in my travels and at home, I've seen its degradation firsthand.

We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.

We need to do a better job of keeping oceans healthy.

A healthy ocean is vital to our economy and well-being. We need clean and healthy oceans to sustain tourism and fisheries.

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.

Since oceans are the life support system of our planet, regulating the climate, providing most of our oxygen and feeding over a billion people, what's bad for oceans is bad for us - very bad.

As a child, I was aware of the widely-held attitude that the ocean is so big, so resilient that we could use the sea as the ultimate place to dispose of anything we did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.

There's a lot to be said about what's happening to our ocean, big companies polluting it with their oil and all the raw garbage that's being spilled in there.

We've built, drilled, and shipped indiscriminately across our oceans, with little consideration for the natural environment that is critical to the health of many of our other ocean uses, like food and recreation.