Blog by High Seas Alliance ABMT/MPA Coordinator, Tekau Frere.
I lost my voice in April; literally. Imagine eight days of silence. For someone who talks for a living, who sings for joy, who genuinely believes silence is something that happens to other people, it was a humbling and highly frustrating moment.
The cause wasn’t mysterious: I overdid it: an intense work trip, fatigue, a nasty virus, and walked straight into a concert (to sing! It was really great). No rest nor pause. It felt impossible to stop.
Two doctors, between them nearly two decades of medical training, said the same thing: unplug, rest, let your body repair itself. And while I heard them, I chose not to listen. I thought I just needed corticoids, antibiotics, shots… whatever medicine that could just make me continue undisturbed. They both refused.
So instead, I made what felt like a reasonable compromise. I did less: an hour or two fewer of meetings, a slightly quieter week, no more 1-3 am meetings 3 days a week. I took my vitamins and a lot of honey. I told myself this was responsible and this was balanced.
Months passed and, while I thought I was better, there was still something in my voice that wasn’t quite right. Still, I continued to push: work and singing (Polynesian polyphonic singing is very demanding on one’s vocal chords).
And then one day, my body shut down. I literally wasn’t able to stand up and was forced to stay in bed. I had to cancel, last-minute, an important work trip I had been genuinely excited about. Tragedy!
Lying there, grounded, I finally understood something I had been intellectually aware of but emotionally resisting: you cannot heal while continuing business as usual, even a gentler version of business as usual. Vitamins and moderation are not rest. Honey is no miracle cure for a battered body. At some point, the body just needs a real pause.
This eureka moment carried so much sense for my work as MPA Coordinator for the High Seas Alliance because in my forced grounding, I kept thinking about our ocean and the High Seas.
The arguments I hear in negotiating rooms and policy papers have a familiar shape. We are told that conservation should not impede economic development. That equity demands that ocean resources shouldn’t be locked out in the name of environmental protection. That sustainable use and effective management, not restriction, are the answer for a healthy and productive ocean.
These arguments are valid and the concerns behind them are real. But they carry the same logic I applied to my own recovery: the belief that doing somewhat less harm is the same as healing, and that if we manage the extraction more carefully, the system will repair itself around our continued utilisation.
But the ocean, as vast and mighty and it is, is like my body; it does not work that way.
There are parts of the ocean that have been fished, mined, polluted, and disrupted for so long that they are not merely stressed: they are injured. And an injured ecosystem, like an injured body, needs space, time, a chance to recover. It needs rest.
Marine biologists, oceanographers, ecologists (i.e. the people who have spent careers studying these systems), and traditional knowledge holders (i.e. the people who have spent their lives cultivating the knowledge inherited from their ancestors), are all telling us what my doctors told me: give it a break!
High Seas biodiversity is not a renewable resource on a short cycle. Some of what we are losing will simply not come back.
I didn’t want to follow my doctors’ recommendation because rest felt like surrender, a sense of failure. I wonder sometimes if that’s what’s behind the resistance to MPAs: a discomfort with the idea that some problems cannot be managed through better technology and innovation. That sometimes the most sophisticated, evidence-based, scientifically sound intervention is to step back and let a system do what we cannot do for it.
My voice is back. Not because I found a better vitamin regimen, but because I finally rested. And, my group won the grand prize in the Heiva I Tahiti!
Yet, the ocean is still waiting for us to learn the same lesson.
In January, the first meeting of the COP of the BBNJ Agreement will take place in New York. This important milestone for the High Seas holds many promises, not least among them the ability now to designate resting areas for the ocean in the form of marine protected areas.
On this World MPA Day, let us pause to think how we can give the ocean space to breathe. Today isn’t just a moment to appreciate the ocean’s hidden wonders; it’s a moment to push for its protection. Ask your government to ratify the High Seas Treaty, if it hasn’t already; and follow HSA’s BBNJ COP1 journey as the first High Seas MPAs move from possibility to protection.
Photo credit: Tahiti Choir SchoolThe views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the High Seas Alliance or its member organizations unless clearly stated.