Ocean Atlas: The girl who carries the ocean

It was at the end of a long reporting day when Hayley-Jo Carr, a research scientist with the Perry Institute for Marine Science, suggested we make one more stop off the island of New Providence in the Bahamas.

I had already spent hours learning about her team’s conservation work for this week’s cover story. We had just wrapped up a visit to one of her coral nurseries, an ephemeral-looking underwater landscape of shipwrecks and reefs and even a shark gliding underneath us. (“Sharkie!” one of her colleagues yelled excitedly, which prompted the others to paddle enthusiastically toward the animal for a better view. There are times in journalism when you realize you are not with your people.) 

As is often the case with reporting trips, there had been a lot for me to absorb that day – scientific details about coral reefs and resilience, new calculations about climate change and its impact on the oceans, the intricacies of marine ecosystems and Caribbean politics. Still, I was eager to see the scene she had described for me: an underwater sculpture garden off the coast of a long-abandoned cotton plantation. The main figure was called Ocean Atlas, a massive, cement representation of a Bahamian girl lifting up the water. It was a reference to Atlas from Greek mythology, a Titan who held the heavens. 

When we arrived at the right spot, I followed the researchers into the glass-clear water. I saw the sculpture – wondrous, silent, huge. I saw why Ms. Carr had wanted to bring me here.  

For weeks, I had interviewed academics and advocates about coral, a crucial ecosystem under threat globally. I could see this wasn’t just a story about helping endangered species. Instead, this was the sort of piece that we love the most at the Monitor – a tale of shifting thought and evolving values. 

When I first started reporting about conservation from southern Africa in the mid-2000s, the environmental community was split between two main philosophies: “fortress conservation,” or the idea that protecting nature means blocking it off from humans, and “community conservation,” the belief that people who live in an ecosystem should decide what happens there. There is still a debate between these two basic approaches – one we see play out in gatherings like the recent United Nations biodiversity conference, or the new “30 by 30” call for governments to set aside 30% of the Earth’s surface as protected areas by 2030. 

But Ocean Atlas, crouched near the coral nurseries, reflects another way – one where responsibility and humility meet resilience and cooperation. With the impacts of human-caused climate change ever more apparent, more people I interview are telling me that collaboration with nature is necessary – not by blocking it off or ignoring it, but by recognizing we are part of it. My cover story focuses on the ways scientists in the Bahamas are grappling with this, but the theme of wholeness, and the trickiness of balancing unique responsibility with universal connection, underlies much of the Monitor’s journalism. 

The original Atlas, remember, was holding up the sky as punishment. Ocean Atlas is doing so because she realizes she must. She is part of the ecosystem now – literally, as coral is starting to grow on her surface. She is, in her own unique way, an example of human struggle, of the ocean, and of wholeness and hope.