"Earth?"

Simon Spear's award-winning celebration of our water planet home
that we share with marine life great and small. This beautiful
short film has won awards and accolades in film festivals all over
the world. Among the achievements is the First Place Award in the
Conservation Video category for the Our World
Underwater/Wetpixel/DivePhotoGuide Competition. Simon discusses his
film on his website www.viewfromtheblue.me.uk: "70% of our planet's
surface is covered by water, and yet we call our planet Earth.
Seems strange eh? For centuries we have believed that our oceans
were an endless resource and we have harvested their bounty to
their maximum potential. However over the last decade in particular
we have begun to realize that this is not the case and that our
oceans are just as fragile and prone to destruction as any other
habitat. "Commercial fish stocks the world over are on the brink of
collapse and at current rates will disappear by 2050 at the latest.
Shark populations have been decimated as we continue to kill up to
100 million sharks a year. As a result many species are in imminent
danger of extinction. Today we have only 5% remaining of our coral
reefs that once carpeted most of our tropical seas. By 2050 it is
believed that we will loose a further 95% of what little remains.
We are in danger of turning our most incredible of natural wonders
into a barren desert completely devoid of life. "With all these
words of doom it perhaps seems strange then that this film attempts
to celebrate our water planet by sharing some of the wonders that I
have seen during the past 12 months or so. I truly hope that I can
convey at least a small part of the wonder and amazement that I
often feel while under the surface of our water planet. I have very
little hope that it will be possible to save our oceans in their
current state, but we must try with all our resolve, because if we
loose this amazing resource, we may find that our species may also
be on a very short path to extinction."