World Oceans Day

Principal Manufacturing Engineer, Submarines

My wife, Katherine, and I are Surfers against Sewage reps which all started last year after noticing the poor state of some of our beaches along the West Coast. We wanted to do more to improve our local environment but were a little overwhelmed at the task ahead. We started with some small beach clean events, and these quickly grew. We now aim to hold an event a month and are looking to tackle some of the worst areas along the coast line.

For me, the ocean and the coastline means a lot. I grew up in Jersey, the biggest of the Channel Islands, and the sea in some way or another defined life on the islands. We would all know when the next big spring tide was and fun times involved swimming, surfing or sailing. My first job was as a sailing instructor. As an engineer working on submarines, my lifestyle relies on the sea. I owe a lot to it, my life would have been very different without it. I want my 2 year old son to have the same opportunities and experiences I had - in a clean and healthy environment. When I was younger it was rare to find any washed up rubbish on a beach, now it's becoming commonplace. I'm very keen to turn things around.

We can sometimes forgot how vast and important the ocean is to our climate, our wildlife and our lifestyles. However, it is the easiest of environments to maintain, we don't need to plant anything, re-introduce any new species or control existing species. We simply just need to keep it clean, and avoid any pollution or waste from entering - it has a fantastic way of sorting itself out! If we could encourage more to think and act a little more around how their lifestyle could be polluting our oceans it would be a great step in the right direction.

As a society we should be questioning and challenging more the material our items are made from, and asking could this end up in our sea at any point? If the answer is yes, we should be challenging ourselves, our vendors, suppliers and manufacturers to look at alternatives or question if we need it in the first place.