This little blue marble

Nasa Photo

OCR Advisory Board member and ocean champion J. Nichols and “Her Deepness” Dr. Sylvia Earle have founded an organization predicted on a delightful premise. The organization is called “Bluemarbles.org” from the metaphor of the earth seen from space being likened to a blue marble.

The premise involves gifting blue marbles to other people with a suggestion that they do something nice for the ocean. This could be not using a plastic bag, or walking downtown (as opposed to driving), or not using chemicals in your garden, or not buying something that was shipped across the Pacific, or eating wild-caught salmon, or using gray water to flush your toilet, or…well almost anything regenerative that we do will benefit the ocean, because the ocean is connected to everything.

This is part of the idea. And as you pass these blue marbles around – if it works as it should, you may handle two, three or a dozen marbles between now and World Oceans Day on June 11, 2010. This will give you and the dozen other folks you hand marbles to a chance to talk about the ocean and this beautiful blue jewel we live on surrounded by an infinite velvet-black sky.

You can get hooked in here:  http://www.bluemarbles.org/ where you can find marble suppliers (90% of all marbles are made from recycled glass; most are made here in the USA). The site also has some other ways to participate.

For those of you in Marin County, I will be receiving a 5# bag of earth marbles. I would be glad to give you a handful or two. Just e-mail or call me. For others outside of the SF Bay area, you can either order some or just get outside and sooner or later someone will hand you one.