(6.5 million sq km) of coastline and ocean set aside in 26 marine protected areas (MPAs)-an expanse twice the size of India-where fishing, dumping, mining, and other destructive industries are prohibited. Already he has managed to get 2.5 million sq. His Pristine Seas project, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, has identified dozens of the ocean’s most biodiverse hot spots in an effort to call for their protection. But it’s the ability to break scientific complexity into simple concepts that even landlubbers can comprehend that makes him so effective as an ocean advocate, helping rally global governments to commit to protecting 30% of their coastlines and ocean territories by 2030. Sala’s links between healthy ocean ecosystems and human benefits like carbon sequestration are backed up by science that he has either committed to memory or conducted himself. “The more nature we have, the more nature will be able to absorb our impacts.” Greater biodiversity, whether it is found in the ocean’s whale populations or the old-growth forests that also store carbon, can help mitigate the effect of burning fossil fuels much more cheaply than any new technology, he says. “It’s here.” And so it is, in the wildfires, heat waves, and floods that have made the weather of summer 2023 some of the most extreme on record. “Suddenly, we’re seeing that the impacts of climate change are not something that is going to be suffered by somebody else,” says Sala. That means more of the heat driving the wildfires that have smoked out much of North America. Fewer whales means less plankton sequestering CO, leaving more in the atmosphere. Eventually it sinks to the seafloor, trapping the planet-warming gas in layers of sediment.

The plankton reproduces rapidly, absorbing carbon dioxide as it photosynthesizes sunlight. It may seem like a stretch, the kind that relegates environmentalists deep into woo-woo territory, but as our conversation unfolds, it starts making sense. According to Sala, whale excrement, or, more precisely, the lack of it, has a role to play in the choking miasma that has forced my interview with one of the world’s foremost ocean explorers indoors instead of out on a boat. Their poop, however, is an unexpected twist. It’s not surprising that Sala wants to talk about the smoke, or about whales. Enric Sala-marine ecologist, conservationist, and ocean advocate-is standing under a life-size replica of a Northern Atlantic Right Whale at the natural history museum in Washington, D.C., and the air outside is smudged with wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada.

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