Branta Bernicla | Josh Ellenbogen
The Oceans Run Deep
By Trinity Trimmer
The deepest body of water I ever dared jump into was a community swimming pool. I was around seven years old when I first braved the deep end. I cannonballed into what had once been silent, still water, and then the water seemed to rush all around me in a circular current. Sinking, I tipped my head towards the sky and squinted open my eyes, watching as the surface faded further and further away. Everything in my vision was blurred and indistinct, yet there were brief moments of clarity as the water moved around me. It was early in the morning and the pool had just opened, so the only person in the water at that time was me. Eventually, my toes touched the floor of the pool, the concrete feeling uneven and almost jagged despite there being no rocks in sight. I pushed off the ground, gradually swimming back to the surface as I struggled to hold my breath.
When I was a kid, I had incredibly irrational fears with water whether it was a swimming pool, a river, or the vast deep blue ocean. Even simply drifting through the shallows felt dangerous to me. I wasn’t necessarily afraid of drowning (though maybe I should have been given how bad of a swimmer I was). Rather, I was afraid of what lingered beneath the surface.
There are the obvious things one might fear when entering a body of water: shark attacks, jellyfish stings, perhaps even brain-eating amoeba. These things definitely terrify me. But what is even more alarming is water’s deception, how sometimes you’ll look at a crystal-clear creek or stream and think it’s only a couple feet deep. Then you jump in and realize your feet are nowhere near the bottom and there are hidden undercurrents that could rip you underwater, taking away your very last breath before you even have time to blink.
Now that I’m older and have more experience swimming, I find myself wondering about the environment and why we, as humans, still fear certain aspects of it, especially when looking at the destruction we have created.
We fear sharks because they can bite us but according to a charity organization known as Shark Guardian, we kill around one hundred million sharks per year, and that number does not account for the sharks that have been displaced or harmed from habitat destruction. We do anything to keep the places we call home and yet we oftentimes lack respect and appreciation for the ecosystems that other organisms call home. In the midst of summer, we fear heat stroke while forgetting that the rising temperatures are due to our own habits, our overreliance on our cars and electricity. But instead of trying to protect the resources that give us life, we simply choose to crank up our air conditioners to escape the heat that we helped create. According to Our World in Data, we only end up polluting environments more by embracing our state of delusional cool air (Ritchie). So perhaps we should not be fearing anything after all because the Earth is not the deceptive one in this scenario.
We are.
We justify our actions by saying they’re necessary for our survival, but always end up taking much more than we need. And once we realize we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, our trash is dumped right back into the places where we first got our resources. Our eyes are consistently larger than our stomachs and yet we refuse to decrease our rates of consumption in every industry. Therefore, we are the deceptive ones. We are the creeks and rivers and streams that seem unassuming and innocent, but below all the facades lies an ugly truth revealing the beautiful things we are willing to destroy to live above our needs.
And in this process, we inevitably will end up with a more desolate planet and, in turn, a more desolate humanity. We will be alone in the deep end and the resources that once could’ve saved us, will be gone.
***
When I was twenty years old, I went swimming in the ocean in Southern France and allowed the salty Mediterranean to completely wash over me. There were millions of rocks scattered across the shoreline and I kept expecting to meet sand, yet only found the surface of slippery rocks. I struggled to wade deeper into the ocean as each step felt tumultuous and risky as the rocks shifted beneath me. But then I remembered the concrete at the bottom of that community swimming pool, how even something manmade was still imperfect and uncertain. I eased deeper into the ocean until my toes finally met the soft sand, and then I kept swimming further until I could no longer touch the bottom of the sea. I dunked my head underwater and tried to let myself sink, to plummet so that my feet could once again meet sand. But instead, I continued to float and gently sway with the Mediterranean’s tide. I knew nothing about what the ocean had in store for me, if there would be a harsher tide in an hour or perhaps loose seaweed wrapping itself around my legs.
That day, I thought a lot about the world we live in, how there is nothing concrete about the oceans or the environment itself. It is ever-changing and oftentimes out of our direct control. A lot of the environmental concerns our world faces today were created in our history, and now we face the effects our ancestors caused before us. Although we cannot control the circumstances we are given, we can control ourselves and how our actions affect the environment.
We control how much we consume and waste, as well as how and where we choose to toss the things we no longer need. We can control our daily habits and conserve Earth’s energy and resources in every way possible, whether it’s by unplugging devices or turning off lights or taking cool showers or perhaps even starting a new eco-friendly hobby like composting. Even choosing to buy second-hand items and supporting more sustainable brands can have a monumental impact. Additionally, we can boycott the larger corporations whose actions have continued to worsen the climate crisis, corporations like Exxon Mobil who have released 3.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past seven years (The Guardian). While our actions can certainly help the climate crisis, they cannot undo the damage that larger oil and gas companies have continued to create. And although we cannot completely control the choices these companies make, we can choose to put pressure on them to change for the better by shining a light on the problems they create and finding ways to boycott.
We can control how we affect the Earth as consumers and how we fight back against the producers who refuse to make sustainability a priority. Because the oceans will always run deep, but in order to save the Earth that continues to give us life, we must make our dedications to sustainability run deeper.
I used to believe that deeper water equated to more risk and danger. It wasn’t until I finally allowed myself to float in the Mediterranean Sea that I realized just how beautiful the depths of the environment can be when we simply allow it to embrace us. My feet couldn’t touch the sandy bottom of the ocean floor, but my mind knew the tide would eventually push me back to shore. I carry this same faith with me when I look at the current climate crisis and everything that’s negatively affecting our Earth now. I know we’re in the depths of despair, but I’m still hoping the Earth will keep us afloat.
I’m still hoping we can help the Earth itself stay afloat.
We can’t run away from the depths of damage that have already been created, but we can jump headfirst into the ruins to stop more damage from being produced. For it is only once we’ve reached the depths where we can truly begin a greater road to recovery.
References
Environmental Protection Agency. (2025, March 31). Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency slide 1 of 4. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
How many sharks are being killed yearly?. Shark Guardian. (2025). https://www.sharkguardian.org/how-many-sharks-killed-each-year
Ritchie, H. (2024, July 29). Air conditioning causes around 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. how will this change in the future?. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/air-conditioning-causes-around-greenhouse-gas-emissions-will-change-future
Watts, J. (2024, April 3). Just 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since 2016. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016
Trinity Trimmer (she/her) is a writer, editor, musician, and coffee enthusiast who loves traveling and reading literary fiction. She works with Ginkgo Magazine and Rivercraft Literary Magazine while also being a percussionist with the Susquehanna University Symphonic Band. When she’s not practicing marimba or studying with friends, she enjoys going for runs along the Susquehanna River. After graduation, she plans on living in a city along the East Coast and doing editorial work while writing books of her own.