Earth is primarily an ocean planet. That may be hard for non-aquatic life-forms to wrap our fins around, but it’s true.

The oceans are the reason the planet looks blue. The planet surface is about 2/3 ocean and 1/3 land mass.

When we terra-peds make a pilgrimage to the beach we look out at a horizon of ocean, the motion of ocean, we become the slaves of waves (having a Dr. Seuss moment). There is something wonderfully soothing about standing at the edge of the two different biosphere systems - land and sea.

It may be that looking at the eternal, unchanging nature of wave and water, contemplating the zen demonstration of the oneness of the manyness of this experience stops our minds in a fundamental way. However you experience it, I hope it is as meaningful and soothing to you as it is to me and I encourage you to find time to sit at the edge of land and sea, doing nothing but breathing and being a part of the biosphere instead of the econosphere.

But, there are problems with the blueness, the oceanity of the small blue planet. These problems are not readily apparent as we gaze at the wave horizon. We may experience a sense of the unchanging nature of the planet as we contemplate wave, but in the aquatic world beneath the ocean horizon there are problems of over-fishing, of ocean acidification, and of pollution that is creating large dead zones in the oceans.