The Importance of The Ocean in Our O2 Supply
by Kramer Wimberley, Board of Directors & Founder of DWP/DWP-CARES
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Imagine a seven-year-old girl named Elena. She lives in a small mountain hamlet high in the Andes, where the air is thin, crisp, and perpetually flavored by the scent of woodsmoke and damp earth. Elena spends her mornings tending to her family’s goats, looking out over jagged peaks that touch the clouds. Elena has never seen the ocean. To her, the “sea” is a myth from a picture book – a vast expanse of blue that exists only in the imagination of those in the lowlands. She is a child of the stone and the sky.
Thousands of miles away, an old man named Amadou sits in the shifting shade of a weathered acacia tree in a parched village on the edge of the Sahara. His skin is like parchment, etched by decades of dry desert winds that carry the dust of a thousand miles. Amadou has lived his entire life in a landscape of sand and stone; the concept of an endless expanse of water is as alien to him as deep space. He is a child of the dust and the sun.
Then, consider a teenager named Marcus in Newark, New Jersey. Marcus has spent his seventeen years within the same few city blocks. His horizon is made of brick, asphalt, and the rhythmic rattle of the train. To Marcus, “nature” is a small park between two buildings where the grass is mostly dirt. He has never traveled more than a mile from the neighborhood where he grew up, and the Atlantic Ocean – though geographically close – is a world away in every practical sense. He is a child of concrete and steel.
On the surface, Elena, Amadou, and Marcus share nothing. Different languages, different generations, different worlds. But there is a silent, invisible thread that binds them together. Every few seconds, each of them draws a deep breath. And that breath – that life-giving oxygen – didn’t come from the mountain peaks, the desert shrubs, or the city park. It came from the ocean.
The Great Misunderstanding: Lungs of the Planet – If you ask the average person where oxygen comes from, they will almost certainly point to the nearest tree. We have been conditioned since childhood to view forests as the “lungs of the planet.” While trees are vital to our survival, the reality is that the oxygen produced by the world’s forests pales in comparison to the output of the sea. Our oceans are the true lungs of this planet.
The truth is that between 50% and 72% of the oxygen in every breath you take is generated by the ocean. It isn’t produced by giant whales or kelp forests alone, but by a microscopic, unseen army: phytoplankton. These tiny marine plants are the true powerhouses of our atmosphere. Through the elegant simplicity of photosynthesis, they take in sunlight and carbon dioxide and, in return, exhale the oxygen that sustains Elena in the Andes, Amadou in the Sahara, and Marcus in Newark.
The Miracle of Conversion: Understanding Photosynthesis – To understand why our oceans are failing, we must first understand how they keep us alive. Photosynthesis is not just a high school biology term; it is the fundamental miracle of conversion that allows life to exist on Earth. In the simplest terms, photosynthesis is the process by which plants and certain microscopic organisms use sunlight to manufacture their own food. Think of a phytoplankton cell as a tiny, solar-powered factory. To run this factory, it needs three “raw materials”:
Sunlight (Energy) Water (H2O) Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
The phytoplankton captures sunlight using a pigment called chlorophyll. Using that solar energy, the tiny plant breaks apart the molecules of water and carbon dioxide. It then rearranges those pieces to create Glucose – a simple sugar that the plant uses as food to grow and reproduce.
The “waste product” of this manufacturing process – the gas the plant doesn’t need for itself – is Oxygen (O2). This “waste” is the very gas that Elena, Amadou, and Marcus require to exist. When the ocean is healthy, it is the most efficient oxygen-generating factory in the universe. But when we poison the water, we are effectively suffocating the factory workers.
The Math of Self-Destruction – Humanity is currently engaged in a dangerous game of chemical warfare against its own life-support system. Right now, we are pumping 3.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every single second of every single day.
Imagine having a conversation about consuming cyanide. We know that intentionally consuming any amount of poison is absurd. A better analogy might be alcohol: many enjoy a beer or a glass of wine on occasion. But even the most resilient person would succumb to alcohol poisoning if forced to consume ten bottles of bourbon in one sitting. Our bodies simply cannot process that volume. Similarly, our planet cannot “metabolize” the amount of CO2 we are forcing into it.
When we pump this staggering amount of CO2 into the air, the ocean acts as a giant sponge, absorbing about a quarter of it to try and regulate our climate. But as the ocean soaks up this excess carbon, it undergoes a process called Ocean Acidification. The water literally becomes more acidic, making it harder for the very phytoplankton we depend on to survive. We are poisoning the well from which we breathe.
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The Blue Gateway and a Basin-Wide Vision – At DWP-CARES, we are building the “Blue Gateway” to bridge this gap between urban reality and marine health. This is a vocational pathway for the next generation – youth like Marcus who have been historically denied access to the marine world – to become the technical architects of ocean healing.
Through our Triple Helix Model, we are partnering with island nations, universities, and corporate interests (like insurance and hospitality) who have a vested interest in the “natural infrastructure” that reefs provide. Healthy reefs absorb 97% of wave energy, protecting coastal communities from the increasing violence of storms. As organizational members of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and partners with Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus Project, we provide the data-driven proof that restoration is not a hobby – it is a requirement for planetary health.
To make the invisible visible, we have launched the CARES Adopt-a-Coral program. This initiative brings immediate attention to the critical plight of the coral reef, but more importantly, it offers a tangible way for individuals and organizations to support global sustainability.
In our missions, such as those in Portobelo, Panama, we identify individual corals by genus and species. Adopting a coral is an act of direct environmental intervention. Every coral we protect and restore represents a vital biological machine that adds additional breaths of oxygen to our atmosphere while simultaneously absorbing CO2. By expanding the footprint of these reefs, we are literally expanding the planet’s capacity to breathe and heal.
When you or your classroom adopts a coral, you receive:
- Precision Data: Precise dimensions of the coral colony and the specific water temperature of its habitat.
- 3D Modeling: A high-fidelity 3D model of the coral that can be tracked over time.
- Health Tracking: Updates on the coral’s growth or decline, allowing you to witness the “lungs of the ocean” in action.
For classrooms, the educational ROI is unmatched. Using a 3D printer, students can build a physical replica of their specific coral. We provide data for prints made of temperature-sensitive materials. When these 3D-printed corals are exposed to hot water, students see a visual representation of coral bleaching, witnessing the “polyps” turn white just as they do in a warming ocean. In the future, our “Classroom Under the Sea” model will allow students to speak directly to divers in the field via full-face mask communication technology.
The scale of this mission requires a collective effort to heal our ocean home. We invite you to move beyond recreational diving and join a CARES Mission in Panama, Honduras, Barbados, or Florida. In these field operations, you will master the technical skills of coral monitoring, out-planting, and 3D data collection, transitioning from a tourist to a professional citizen scientist.
For those who cannot join us in the water, we invite you to take direct ownership of restoration through our Adopt-a-Coral program. Individuals can adopt a specific coral fragment, while organizations and businesses can adopt an entire section of the reef. Each adoption provides the vital funding needed to educate the public and protect these ecosystems, while giving you the unique ability to monitor the health and growth of “your” reef in real time through our digital registry.
We are also expanding our work through partnerships like the I.CARE Trash Derby. By engaging in ocean healing activities – removing debris and restoring habitat – we address the challenges of the reef head-on. For those in the industry, the opportunity is immense. We are calling on dive shops to host Ocean Advocacy Education Nights. Divers are already excited to search for marine creatures; if dive professionals are more knowledgeable about the organisms they see, they become much more than just guides.
When a dive professional can explain the biological role of a creature and discuss its place in the “Invisible Thread” of oxygen production, they demonstrate a mastery of the marine environment. This mastery instills a deep level of trust. Customers don’t just want a dive guide; they want an educator and a steward. This expertise ensures you are the only person they want to dive with.
We Want You With Us – The ocean belongs to everyone. CARES is actively seeking partners – individuals, organizations, and corporations – who recognize the urgency of this moment. If you see the value in protecting our “natural infrastructure,” if you believe in the power of citizen science, and if you share this vision for a restored Caribbean basin, we want you with us. Whether through strategic corporate alignment, institutional support, or individual participation in a mission, your involvement ensures this work becomes permanent.
Every Living Being – whether you are Elena in the Andes, Amadou in the Sahara, or Marcus in Newark – is an ocean-powered miracle. We are seeking an institutional endowment to ensure that the heart of the ocean continues to beat in every human lung. The ocean has been exhaling for us since the beginning of time. It is time we finally let it catch its breath.
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