Abstract

Although 71% of the planet is covered by ocean, we suffer from oceanic blindness; we tend to underestimate its importance and significance. We live in ignorance of how our actions affect the health of the ocean, its resources, and the increasingly fragile sustainability of the many activities that depend on it. The ocean is the life support and the lung of the Earth. Earle (2009) declared “Far and away, the greatest threat to the ocean, and thus to ourselves, is ignorance.” We are not fully aware of the unprecedented pressure we are subjecting the ocean to, and caring for our ocean is one of the keys in developing a strategy to reduce or mitigate the effects of climate change. Oceanic blindness is widely extended in Chile. Children grow up under the premise that our country is a “long and narrow strip of land,” a wrong premise that prevents them from approaching the ocean. In fact, Chile is more sea than land, with a coastline that exceeds 83,500 km, equivalent to twice the equator.