The first three talks from the Mission Blue voyage have been posted on TED.com.

Underwater filmmaker Mike deGruy has spent decades looking intimately at the ocean. A consummate storyteller, he takes the stage at Mission Blue to share his awe and excitement — and his fears — about the blue heart of our planet.

Some 80 to 90 percent of undersea creatures make light — and we know very little about how or why. Bioluminescence expert Edith Widder explores this glowing, sparkling, luminous world, sharing glorious images and insight into the unseen depths (and brights) of the ocean.

Five years ago, Roz Savage quit her high-powered London job to become an ocean rower. She’s crossed the Atlantic solo, and just started the third leg of a Pacific solo row, the first for a woman. Why does she do it? Hear her reasons, both deeply personal and urgently activist.

ABOVE: Sylvia Earle welcomes us to Mission Blue Voyage.

How to describe what happened last week? A Galapagos sea-voyage of 100 people (including Sylvia Earle, Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton, Glenn Close, Elizabeth Banks, Steve Case, Ted Waitt, Bill Joy, Jackson Browne, Damien Rice, Chevy Chase, Jean-Michel Cousteau and 30 of the world’s leading marine scientists) turned into an epic event that may have significant impact on global efforts to save our oceans. It happened because the individuals and organizations on board chose to abandon the obstacles that often engulf nonprofit work, and engage in a process of emergent collaboration that I, for one, found truly thrilling.

Eight separate initiatives were kickstarted, aided by $15m in commitments from the individuals on board. These included:

• $1m to complete a package to protect the waters around Galapagos themselves
• $1.1m to launch a plan to protect the 1m-square-mile Sargasso Sea and commitments to raise a further $2.5m to see the plan through to success
• $350k to boost ocean exposure in schools
• $1m to commence a campaign to end fishing subsidies
• $10m to kickstart a new partnership to fund longer-term ocean projects

Not bad for 4 days’ work, especially as these commitments were not pre-planned. They emerged organically from the discussions on board in an untried process that worked better than anyone dared hope for.

In addition, we recorded more than 20 fabulous talks on ocean issues that are to be shared with the world on TED.com in the coming months, and which will end up being seen by literally millions of people.

Sylvia Earle makes her TED Prize wish at TED2009.

So how did this come about? Here’s the story: It began with “one wish to change the world.” That’s the gift given to winners of the TED Prize. Last year, the iconic ocean explorer Sylvia Earle was a recipient of the prize and in her blockbuster acceptance speech at TED, she declared her wish “to ignite public support for a global network of Marine Protected Areas, hope spots large enough … to restore the blue heart of the planet.” The speech inspired hundreds of offers of support, including a $1m pledge from investor/philanthropist Addison Fischer.

The National Geographic Endeavor.

In the following months, the TED Prize team, headed by Amy Novogratz, worked intensively with the most promising offers, and plans were drawn up to embark on a new global awareness campaign. The agency Razorfish, working for us pro bono, came up with superb branding — active, exciting and ambitious. Mission Blue was born. But to mark the launch we decided to do something bold to kickstart interest. With Addison’s underwriting, and the confirmed availability of a perfect ship operated by Lindblad Expeditions, the Mission Blue Voyage to the Galapagos was born. The vision was referred to internally as “TED-at-sea.” By bringing together leading marine scientists with philanthropists and with thoughtful celebrities interested in this issue, we thought we could at a minimum:

• record memorable TED talks to boost understanding of — and passion for — the oceans
• give a transformative experience to people in a position to act
• raise money by charging passengers $20,000 to come

Three months before the scheduled departure date, things were not looking good. No famous names were signed up, and we had yet to sell our first ticket. In late January, in a conference call of interested parties, we had three options: postpone, cancel, or redouble our efforts. We decided to go for it. By the time TED2010 was held three weeks later, Chevy Chase and Jackson Browne had confirmed their interest, along with a few leading members of the TED community. And the speaker lineup was looking fantastic. We presented the trip as an epic voyage for those willing to engage in one of the biggest challenges to our future. By the end of TED, we knew our boat would be full.

But the question remained whether anything other than awareness-raising could be achieved.

Jackson Browne.

A traditional solution to this problem might have been to decide on a goal — such as a petition or a specific marine protected area (MPA), or a funding request for the hosting foundation — and seek to rally everyone behind it. But in the past few years at TED, we’ve repeatedly been surprised and excited by the power of opening up involvement to a wider community. (Our TEDx program is the latest evidence of this, spawning 1,000 TED-like events in little more than a year.) So we decided to go for a different approach, and two weeks ahead of the trip, we invited all of our participants to consider influencing the outcome of the trip by becoming an “Idea champion.” This meant proposing an idea around which a group could form to plan specific action for the oceans.

Idea Champion Laurie Coots makes the case for oceans in education

We ended up with eight ambitious ideas, each with powerful strategic potential. They ranged from taking on creation of a specific new MPA, to launching a major education initiative for kids. On the first day of the trip, each champion presented their idea and sought recruits to join their team. Each idea won supporters, and groups ranging in size from 5-12 were formed.

The rules we gave to each group were simple but crucial to what was to follow:

• don’t come up with a plan that someone else will have to implement
• do come up with a plan that you and the other members of your group can implement with the resources you yourselves can raise
• do come up with a further plan that your group could implement if it had additional funding
• be audacious

(That final suggestion came from the tireless Richard Rockefeller, a catalytic presence on the trip.)

Chevy Chase.

The quality of these discussions was boosted by the fact that each of the idea champions had extensive experience of oceans work, and often had an organization in place already working on their chosen issue. So, for example, the Galapagos protection plan was led by Peter Knights of WildAid, which has been working successfully in Galápagos for many years. Plus there was a clear sense from everyone that given the shocking threats to the ocean, this could not be just a pleasure trip. The celebs played a key role here. For example, on the very first evening, Ed Norton argued passionately to me that it was critical we came away with something concrete for Galápagos itself. And from the stage, Chevy Chase interrupted his own hilarious monologue with an eloquent plea for action.

Eagle rays photographed by Wolcott Henry.

Inspired by spectacular talks from Sylvia Earle and the other oceanographers on board, and by direct exposure to the nature wonderland of the Galápagos, the group conversations quickly got serious, and the issue of funding became one of the keys. How would we administer these different initiatives? I hosted a breakfast of leading philanthropists on board to see if there was appetite for a central fund for this purpose, and the usual problems quickly emerged. What foundation would receive the funds? Who would decide exactly how the projects were administered? How could individuals be associated with the projects they were most passionate about? How would we sidestep rivalry for funding from the different organizations involved? And wouldn’t this just become yet another organization in an already crowded space?

These issues have the ability to suck the oxygen out of the room, and for a while it looked like we wouldn’t find a way to do much that was concrete.

Venezuelan business leader Ricardo Cisneros calls for a united voice on the oceans.

The key breakthrough was an act of generosity by Sylvia Earle. As mission leader, she could easily have insisted that all initiatives be organized through her new foundation http://mission-blue.org. Instead she agreed to a bold alternative. Let the support go directly to the organization leading each initiative. This massively multiplied the potential for action. By allowing the idea champions to work out their own plans with their groups, and then secure their support directly from individuals on board, real action plans snapped into place with astonishing speed. And it was done largely in a spirit of collaboration not competition. The participating organizations — including WildAid, Conservation International, Oceana, the Nature Conservancy, NRDC, IUCN — acted respectfully toward potential funders, and I overheard several celebrating each others’ successes. Hard to believe, but for some reason last week, that happened.

A group’s action plan wins audience appreciation.

On the final day, as the eight groups reported back on what their members had committed to actually do, I looked around the room as jaws dropped and eyes moistened. The process took about an hour, and it was one of the most exhilarating, most hopeful hours of my life. Real change signed up for in real time. People dreaming big and then acting to make those dreams possible.

At the end of the hour, we gave everyone a blank sheet of paper and the chance to write down their own commitment for further action. Once again the words we received were awe-inspiring: promises to donate or raise, in aggregate, millions of dollars, offers of publicity, connection, creativity, advocacy and personal change.

Glenn Close applauds one of the action plans.

In the next couple of weeks we will be outlining in more detail the actions and commitments that emerged. For now, I am still trying to make sense of it all. My instinct is that as the world gets more interconnected, we are on the verge of discovering new models for radical collaboration to take on the most challenging issues of our time. That is what we dreamed when the TED Prize was launched. Last week, it really seemed to be happening. Huge, heartfelt thanks to every one who helped make it so.

– Chris Anderson, TED Curator

Photo credits, from top: Sylvia Earle: TED / James Duncan Davidson; Sylvia Earle at TED2009: TED / Asa Mathat; Endeavor: Sven-Olaf Lindblad; Jackson Browne, Laurie Coots, Chevy Chase: TED / James Duncan Davidson; eagle rays: Wolcott Henry; Ricardo Cisneros, applause, Glenn Close: TED / James Duncan Davidson.

We are now three days into the Mission Blue Voyage. Here is a snapshot of what has happened so far (from @MissionBlue):

Callum Roberts at #missionblue: One of the things we know about the past is that fish used to be far more abundant. http://bit.ly/bLw4RP

Jeremy Jackson at #missionblue: The really scary thing about all these ocean issues: they have synergy, they make each other worse.

Dan Laffoley at #missionblue: Last Thursday, the British government announced that Chagos — all 630K sq k of it — is now protected.

Jean-Michel Cousteau at #missionblue: How can we help the ocean? Make a connection with your local authorities. Speak from your heart.

Sylvia Earle at #missionblue: The 200-y-o orange roughie doesn’t know why his world has changed. We do. And we can do something about it.

Daniel Pauly at #missionblue: We degrade a fishing environment, then we re-set the baseline lower and continue fishing.

Barbara Block at #missionblue: Our strategy? Fish -n- chips. New kinds of tags with embedded chips and transponders to send data.

Dianna Cohen at #missionblue: It’s not just the gyre of plastic in the Pacific that scares me. It’s the gyre of plastic in the supermarket.

Roz Savage at #missionblue: We do the Pacific a disservice on our maps — we cut it in half. Google Earth shows how big it really is.

Brian Skerry at #missionblue: Photographs a leatherback turtle caught in a net, then cuts it free.

Kristina Gjerde at #missionblue: the oceans belong to us in common, but are managed by hundreds of unrelated entities.

Mark Tercek at #missionblue: Read more about the local economics of marine protected areas — hope spots:http://bit.ly/5mePmA

Barton Seaver at #missionblue: Just because there’s cod at the counter, doesn’t mean there’s enough cod in the sea.

Damien Rice at #missionblue: We have 12 minutes 37 seconds to write a song. Give me a chord and name an emotion.

Enric Sala at #missionblue: Data from fishers in Kenya before/after a ban on seine nets. Fishery rebounded and fishers doubled their income.

Rob Dunbar at #missionblue: Drilling through 100m of ice, 900m of water and 1300m into the seafloor to go back 4 million years.

Stephen Palumbi at #missionblue: We’re jamming a lot of garbage into the base of the ocean pyramid. Plankton problems work up the chain.

Chevy Chase at #missionblue: I don’t fish, just never have. But if fish could scream, I don’t think anyone would fish.

Dee Boersma #missionblue: We thought we’d need a hope spot of about 30km. Then we started tagging penguins. They travel up to 800km to feed

Peter Tyack at #missionblue: As two dolphins create a social bond, their distinctive calls merge. They learn each other’s call.

Sven Lindblad at #missionblue: The metric for ocean ideas: they should be big and sweeping and immediate. The ocean needs help now.

Mike Rutzen at #missionblue: We say we don’t know anything about shark behavior. But we only see them in predator behavior.

Edith Widder at #missionblue: Most sea animals see blue light. So one smart fish makes red light, which he uses like a sniper scope.

Fred Grassle at #missionblue on historic first trip to the vents. Finding tube worms and a “jellyfish-related thing” called a dandelion.

Mike deGruy at #missionblue: If you’ve ever wanted to see something no one has ever seen, get in a submarine.

Just 10 days ago, Sylvia Earle’s new book, The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One, was published. Much like her talk at TED, this book is an articulate and urgent call to the world to recognize that oceanic change threaten the very existence of life on Earth.

More from her publisher:

In recent decades we’ve learned more about the ocean than in all previous human history combined. But, even as our knowledge has exploded, so too has our power to upset the delicate balance of this complex organism. Modern overexploitation has driven many species to the verge of extinction, from tiny but indispensable biota to magnificent creatures like tuna, swordfish, and great whales. Since the mid-20th century about half our coral reefs have died or suffered sharp decline; hundreds of oxygen-deprived “dead zones” blight our coastal waters; and toxic pollutants afflict every level of the food chain.

Fortunately, there is reason for hope, but what we do—or fail to do—in the next ten years may well resonate for the next ten thousand. The ultimate goal, Earle argues passionately and persuasively, is to find responsible, renewable strategies that safeguard the natural systems that sustain us. The first step is to understand and act upon the wise message of this accessible, insightful, and compelling book.

If you enjoyed her talk and support her wish, educate yourself by picking up her book.

Credit: GOOD/Open

We just received an advanced copy of GOOD magazine‘s summer 2009 issue – The Water Issue – in our office. It is a great compilation of articles and graphics on all the many topics related to water, from the lack of access to clean water to business of dams to overfishing to war.

TED Prize winner Sylvia Earle has an article entitled “Hope Floats” detailing the urgent need for humans to protect our ocean ecosystems by establishing more marine protected areas (MPAs) or as Sylvia calls them, “hope spots“.  As she states in her article, and her TED Prize talk, only 1% of the ocean is currently protected. That is certainly not enough.

There is time, but not a lot, to secure overarching policies nd a major network of protected places in the water of various nations as well aas in the high seas…One way or another, all of the ocean needs to be cared for as if our lives depend on it, because, well, they do.

Pick up a copy today. And for more on Sylvia’s wish to help ignite support for more hope spots click here.

Credit: GOOD/Open

Today, June 8, is World Oceans Day.  Although it has been celebrated unofficially since 1993, this year marks the first official celebration as declared by the United Nations. Sylvia Earle, in her 2009 TED Prize talk, eloquently expressed why all people need to take notice of the importance of the oceans and how their destruction affects all of us:

Fifty years ago, when I began exploring the ocean, no one … imagined that we could do anything to harm the ocean by what we put into it or by what we took out of it. It seemed, at that time, to be a sea of Eden, but now we know, and now we are facing paradise lost.

I want to … consider why it matters that in 50 years we’ve lost – actually, we’ve taken, we’ve eaten – more than 90 percent of the big fish in the sea, why you should care that nearly half of the coral reefs have disappeared, why a mysterious depletion of oxygen in large areas of the Pacific should concern not only the creatures that are dying but it really should concern you. It does concern you, as well.

[...] The poet Auden said, “Thousands have lived without love. None without water.” Ninety-seven percent of Earth’s water is ocean. No blue, no green. If you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean. No life support system.

[...] Tim Worth says the economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment. With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you’re connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere is generated by the sea. Over time, most of the planet’s organic carbon has been absorbed and stored there, mostly by microbes. The ocean drives climate and weather, stabilizes temperature, shapes Earth’s chemistry. Water from the sea forms clouds that return to the land and the seas as rain, sleet and snow, and provides home for about 97 percent of life in the world, maybe in the universe. No water, no life. No blue, no green.

There are many ways to mark this occasion.  Here are just a few:

1. Share Sylvia Earle’s TEDTalk and TED Prize with someone who has not seen it yet. And if you want to help fulfill Sylvia’s wish, send in an offer of support.

2. Fill out this survey to support Sylvia’s wish.

3. Participate in one of the many events happening globally to mark World Oceans Day.

4. If you are in NYC, stop and look at the Empire State Building this evening when it is bathed in blue.

5. Learn more about Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) through the recently redeveloped World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).

6. Follow tweets from around the world chronicling the celebration of #WorldOceansDay.

Go to The Oceans Project website for more celebration ideas.

In order to best fulfill Sylvia Earle’s wish, our incredible partners at Razorfish have created a survey on people’s knowledge of the many dangers facing our oceans. The generous support of Keynote Solutions, a test and measurement company, will allow us to organize the information we gather which will provide us valuable insight into the public’s understanding of the threats marine life face today.

Please take a few minutes to fill out this survey and help us move one step closer to making Sylvia Earle’s wish come true!

Share the link with friends.  The more, the merrier!

Credit: GOOD and Timko & Klick

Earlier this spring at the Women in Conservation luncheon, the National Audubon Society honored Sylvia Earle with a Rachel Carson Award. As GOOD Magazine recounted, in her speech, “she spoke about one thing we can all do to help protect our ravaged oceans: Stop. Eating. Fish.”

Now GOOD has posted a beautiful transparency on the impact fish consumption has had on our oceans in the past 50 years. The statistics are staggering.

For those who do not want to give up fish altogether, here is a great resource for making sustainable seafood choices.

You can find GOOD’s transparencies archive available on Flickr. (via)