The power of the stories we tell about the ocean

The ocean is not yet cooked. That is the first thing marine biologist Helen Scales wants to clarify. On a scale from raw to brûlée, we are in the middle — a place of big changes, but not a done deal. This matters because the stories we tell about the ocean shape what we do with it, and the dominant narrative has long been one of inevitable decline. Scales argues that a different story is emerging, one where the ocean is not just a victim but a character with agency, and where humans are capable of changing their minds.

The real threats and a false assumption

Scales organizes the major human impacts on the ocean into three familiar categories: overfishing, pollution, and climate change. To these, she adds a looming threat that is not yet happening but could be catastrophic: deep-sea mining. The target is polymetallic nodules — rocks that look like lumps of coal, formed over millions of years on the abyssal plain, rich in metals needed for batteries and electronics. Mining them would bring habitat destruction, species extinction, and pollution to one of the last great wildernesses on Earth. Scales warns that this is a fight we still have a chance to push back on.