Our oceans are filled with billions and billions of phytoplankton that absorb about as much carbon as all the plants and trees on land combined. Every second breathe we take comes from the sea. What can we do to help protect the marine ecosystems that literally fill our lungs with breathe and life? Next time you’re at the coast or along the sea, learn the name of a new marine species, be it a whale, gull, fish, sea or shorebird. When we shake hands with a place, get to know the names of who lives there, then we begin to cultivate a personal connection. It’s from this relationship that we are often compelled to act, to save the places we know and the species we have relationships with, those we know know by name. Mind you, the name doesn’t have to be a scientific one! What I might call a great blue heron, you might call “that huge grey bird with stilts for legs and a spear for a nose that hunts in the marsh by the bike path”. That name works! Now you’ve shaken hands with that bird, you know the place it calls home. Down the line when you come across an opportunity to protect that marsh, you’ll know who you’re protecting, why it’s worth fighting for.