Cristina Mittermeier Of Sealegacy: Inspiring care for our oceans and shared humanity with conservation photography (ep243)
Cristina Mittermeier (@mitty) is a true ocean hero. She's a world-renowned photographer, conservationist, and marine biologist whose work has been published in hundreds of publications including National Geographic Magazine, McLean’s, and TIME.
Notably, she's the founder of the prestigious International League of Conservation Photographers (@ILCP_photographers) and alongside her partner, Paul Nicklen, also the co-founder of SeaLegacy (@sealegacy), which is a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the ocean.
As Cristina shares in this episode, their newest project Only One will launch later this year, but you can sign up first to get their latest updates!
In this conversation, Cristina shares how the theme of ‘enoughness’ has shown up in different ways and evolved throughout her lifetime; how integrating the immeasurable sacred ecology into our work in sustainability—otherwise focused on the technical details and numbers denoting impact—might deepen our sense of connection and purpose to support our overarching goals; how she's going about inspiring love and care for our oceans; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Cristina and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by The Fruitful Darkness by Trevor Hall (@TrevorHallMusic)
“People feel so separate from the oceans. What we want to do with storytelling is to create that connection and build that relationship. It’s the only way we’re going to be successful at protecting more of the ocean.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological regeneration, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app, and support Green Dreamer on Patreon so we can keep the show going and accessible to all!
On lessons on enoughness from the Indigenous communities Cristina has worked in:
“When you go to an Indigenous community, you see people who have so little in terms of material wealth—oftentimes people live in houses that don't even have a floor, running water, or electricity.
‘Poverty’ is a term that we have labeled; they don't feel 'poor' themselves. A lot of times, people who live in extreme conditions feel quite lucky, and they seem grateful. They seem content, and they find happiness.
So I started wondering how they feel so content when they have nothing, and I started realizing they're filling the emptiness with other stuff—the relationships that you have in your life, your language, your traditions, and whatever worship or religion is important to you.
When you have those things, you don't need to fill your life with stuff.”
On how biodiversity creates resilient ecological systems:
"Destroying diversity and creating monocultures that are homogeneous is the perfect recipe for a disease to thrive. If you have a diverse system and you introduce a virus, that virus will not infect every species the same way. But if you have a monoculture and you introduce a virus or a pest that attacks that species, you will wipe out that entire culture.
Diversity lends resilience to the system. And the more diversity of species that we have, the more resilient we become to pandemics like this one."
On increasing the awareness of our dependence on the oceans:
“Imagine that we're going to go to Mars. We're going to board the spaceship, and it's going to take a few years to take us to a new planet. The minute we board, we'd receive a thorough briefing on how every system works—where the air comes from, how that air gets filtered, where the water comes from, and what the things are that we shouldn't touch because we might need them later.
Well, living on Earth is no different. We are living on a spaceship, and this is the only home we have. In the big scheme of the galaxy, it's actually pretty small. So we should be doing a lot more to understand how every system works.
I've come to realize that people feel so separate from the oceans. So what we want to do with storytelling is to create that connection and build that relationship and increase ocean literacy.
It's the only way we're going to be successful at protecting more of the ocean. Otherwise, it's just out of sight, out of mind."
Final words of wisdom:
"The most important thing we can do moving forward is to think of ourselves as superheroes for our planet. Don't be afraid of wearing your imaginary spandex suit!
It doesn't matter what kind of work you do in your everyday life; you can always have a big influence on the people around you, and you can always find a way to contribute to the culture of appreciation and love of nature.
So don't be afraid! Be a superhero for the planet, and declare yourself as being for the earth today.”
