My mum taught me how to row when I was two years old, sitting on her lap, in the wooden boat my grandpa built. When I got older, I would paddle out with my mum watching from the shore. When she trusted me enough, I would go to the water first thing in the morning by myself. I still do. I go when I know no one else will be there and I can enjoy the stillness of the water alone. Morning mist lingers, rippling the water beneath.
The boat, now well salted and worn down by the sun, creaks gently with each stroke I take. Aside from the morning bird song, it is the only noise echoing off the sides of the valley, in a rhythmic pattern as I begin to move.
There’s something so human about rowing. It’s not just about moving; it’s more like a partnership. Each stroke feels like a negotiation with the water, a fine balance of strength of surrender, giving and taking. You match the rhythm, feel the resistance and move with it. So early in the morning, gliding past oak-lined banks and hidden creeks, there is a connection.
But it’s disrupted.
The silence, the ripples from the morning mist, the partnership.
It’s broken.
A fisherman heads out, in his boat designed for tougher conditions. The two-stroke engine screams, drowning out the echo of my squeaky rigger.
The mist has cleared around the boat, the ripples have turned into wake, and the calmness I enjoy is ruined. It slices through the water, dominating it, not dancing with it. Efficient, yes, but disconnected from its soul. That boat doesn’t feel the weight of the water as it moves, or the changes in current beneath it. You miss the birdsong, and the splash of mullet at the surface. You miss the connection and conversation between us and the water.
We’ve traded wooden boats for engines, and silence for speed. Slowly, the ocean has been turned into a highway, a dumping ground, a resource. We’ve forgotten that it’s not just water, it’s life. We used to listen to it, now we drown it out.
I’ve come to realise that the ocean isn’t just a backdrop to my mornings – it’s a lifeline. It holds more than half our planet, yet its depths remain a mystery, its generosity is taken for granted. It gives us so much: the air we breathe, the balance in our climate, the food to sustain billions. Beneath its surface lies a world more diverse than any rainforest, a living mosaic of colour and movement.
But that fishing boat shows me its strain.
It’s not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just a fishing net drifting past the bow, or the sheen of fuel on the surface. The changes are subtle, but they’re there. The scream of engines disrupts whale song and dolphin navigation. Coral reefs are bleaching and dying, and the delicate balance is threatened. The rhythm is off. The negotiation has become a demand.
And yet, each morning I row. I row to reconnect, to remind myself that the ocean isn’t just scenery. It’s a presence. It listens, responds and gives. But it needs care. It needs us to return to the rhythm and move with it.
We all need to restore the partnership.
It starts with respect, and education. It starts with the decision to paddle instead of power and clean up instead of looking away. It starts with remembering the ocean is not a place we visit, but a part of who we are. We must protect it for its necessity. For the seals, the coral and the kelp. For the rhythm, the mist and the quiet.
Because the ocean remembers. And we need to remember too.
We need to rethink our relationship with the sea. It’s not something to conquer or control, but something to care for. For me, that means supporting marine protection, reducing plastic use and paying attention to the impact industries have on the water I love. It means listening to Indigenous communities who’ve lived in harmony with the ocean far longer than I’ve been alive. It means teaching children not just to swim but to understand the life beneath them and the responsibility they share in keeping it alive.
So I row. I row for the stillness, for the memory of my mum’s hands guiding mine, for the creak of the boat and the whisper of the mist.
I row for the ocean.