Running head: THE OCEAN: OUR COMMUNITY WORTH PROTECTING 1
The Ocean: Our Community Worth Protecting
Samantha Lederle
Felician College
October 29, 2015
THE OCEAN: OUR COMMUNITY WORTH PROTECTING 2
It is our job as residents of this planet to protect it and make sure it stays in
survival. Aldo Leopold, in his article “The Land Ethic,” discusses the idea of conserving
our ecosystem. He believes that in order to save the land and our environment we must
acquire a sense of community to the land by treating it properly. This idea includes the
animals, which, in order to save we must treat respectfully, as we would treat our own
neighbors. He explains this idea as land ethics. In a similar yet withdrawn article,
“Synthetic polymers in the marine environment: A rapidly increasing, long-term threat,”
writer, Charles James Moore talks about dreadful occurrences that damage sea life
everyday. Moore focuses on the plastic build up in the ocean due to lack of recycling.
Moore feels this catastrophe could destroy our planet and needs to be handled
immediately. The question that is instantly drawn to my mind when putting these articles
in the same thought process is, is it possible for Leopold’s idea, of having a sense of
community, to be a solution for the dilemmas with the ocean? In my opinion, at first
thought, it would be extremely difficult for people to see it that way. Most people do not
live on the coast and do not get to experience going to the beach in the summer or, even
more severe, some people have not even seen a beach in their entire lifetime. Keeping
these people in mind, it would be hard for them to feel a sense of community with the
marine life and to feel a neighborly bond with some ocean creatures they have never even
heard of or seen before, rather than the neighborhood squirrel. With that being said, I still
believe if people were aware of the effect that the ocean and marine life had on their own
lives they would be able to gain the land ethics Leopold discusses, in order to help reach
Moore’s dream of riding the ocean of plastics.
THE OCEAN: OUR COMMUNITY WORTH PROTECTING 3
Aldo Leopold wrote his article about land ethics in 1948 and in his article he
stated, “There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s relation to land and to the animals and
plants which grow upon it” (Leopold, 1948, p.1). This quotation is Leopold stating his
realization that men do not yet have the ethic with land he hopes we will strive for. The
key to this quotation is the word “yet” because in 1948 Leopold felt man did not have the
ethics to care for land. Are we still waiting for men to acquire these ethics or did the
“yet” Leopold was searching for become a part of our society? In my opinion, strives
were made to become more eco-friendly and conservative toward land but, to say all men
have acquired land ethics would be a stretch. If there is such a large build up of plastic in
the ocean like Moore claims there is, obviously, people are not treating the planet the way
they would be if they had complete ethics toward the entire world, which would include
