“A lot of people attack the sea. I make love to it.” —Jacques Cousteau
Lea Haratani has had a lifelong passion for the ocean, and every day she tries to show it. Some days, it means not eating fish. Other times, it’s all about taking a walk on the beach—or diving off the coast of Belize with Jim Simon, the vice president of one of the nation’s largest ocean conservation organizations, Oceana. She might also be found circulating petitions against offshore drilling with her children at Bookshop Santa Cruz, or organizing a fundraising event for Oceana at the Saint Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco.
Read more about Lea and ocean activism, featured in Good Times this week.
Below is the poem Lea wrote for the Hands Across the Sand event in Santa Cruz.
For the Gulf
On the occasion of “Hands Across the Sand”
By Lea Haratani
In these last days
we disemboweled the gut of the Gulf, and
missed the womb that could have birthed Venus
septicemia spreads
like tendrils
on her watery grave
In Japan death with honor is
called seppuku
Here we hide the traces of blood
dispersement
the truth sunken
like a pirate ship at war
each one of us, are
players in the greed that caused
the untimely death of families Pelicanadae,
Delphinadae, innocent warriors
that gave us their vertebrate
when we left the sea
and learned to breathe air
we drive our cars, blow-dry our hair
as if we understand beauty
living like drunken sailors on leave
like there is no tomorrow
The tide washed up cellophane wrapped
undignified carcasses, with
lineages that surpass human royalty
we must be bolder than love, the choice is
a million memories and no future or
a new paradigm
life without harm, collective action, the
ability to walk forward
without shame or regret
holding hands across the sand into the future