There’s a bird called a storm petrel, the smallest and most fragile of sea birds, not much bigger than a starling. In good conditions it will dance on the surface of the sea, paddling its webbed feet to entice plankton to the surface for it to feed on.

Storm petrels spend their lives at sea, tossed by some of the most violent conditions our planet will ever see. They are – to me – the most perfect expression of life at sea.

They appear the most fragile and vulnerable thing imaginable – yet by riding the wind, water and currents they become one with the ocean’s tempestuousness, and thrive here.

We humans are considerably less adept. There is nowhere that can make you feel as small as the open ocean. Being out miles from shore in my sea kayak feels as alone as you can ever be in the modern era. Yet every now and then off this Cornish coast, I’ll have a legion of dolphins, seals, fulmars and kittiwakes on the wing, a leaping bluefin tuna too. And then, in recent weeks, even a pair of magnificent bull orca.

The ocean is what remains untameable in our world. It is that which puts us in our place, which reminds us of the vast interconnected ecosystems that drive our planet. That we – as one single species – can be impacting it is simply too staggering for many minds to comprehend. Perhaps that’s why so many people sneer at the realities of climate change. How could something as small as us affect something as big as this?

But even as our ocean becomes more and more reflective of all that is wrong with our relationship with nature, this is still the place where I feel most alive, most free and most hopeful.

In the famous words of Karen Blixen, written under the pen name Isak Dinesen, “The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears or the sea.”

This is how this short essay appears in the special Oceanographic publication, The Innerview