The Ocean: Friend or Foe?

The ocean: deep, dark, bloodthirsty. Last Monday, 228 passengers aboard an Air France flight to Paris were devoured by the Atlantic, doing little to satiate its ravenous appetite for human souls.

On December 26th, 2004, an otherwise harmless earthquake off the coast of Indonesia triggered a 100 foot death wave that consumed over 200,000 people in eleven countries bordering the Indian Ocean. Less than a year later, the Atlantic unleashed a hurricane on the American Gulf Coast, flooding the city of New Orleans and killing 2,000 more - an infinitesimal fraction of the billions murdered by the sea since the evolution of mankind.

"The ocean projects an alluring facade that seduces the heart and clouds the mind," said Cliff Torpe, President of Kill the Beach, "Like a treacherous woman of the night, the sea draws people close with its beautiful sunsets and delicious fish dinners, then sweeps them off to a watery grave."

Torpe's views represent a growing faction of ocean detractors around the globe who stand in opposition to the current material phase of the continuous body of water that constitutes 74% of the Earth’s surface – believing that it should be filled with cement.

"Besides making it possible to drive to Hawaii, solidifying the world's oceans would eliminate the threat rising sea levels caused by global warming pose to coastal cities and significantly reduce the frequency of maritime piracy and shark attacks around the world," argued Catherine Branyan, of People Before Oceans (PBO).

Though many deride the ideas of organizations like PBO, often citing the vast sums of sunken treasures that would be forever lost, Branyan calls such attacks 'shameful', and 'a sad example of personal avarice over the common good'.