She walked into another room and looked up at a delicate lacework of wires suspended in the air, representing an underground mountain range that juts out of the churning Atlantic sea and peaks at Bouvet Island, a remote spit of rock near Antarctica.
"We view the sea as a surface. I want people to be aware of the immense world under the sea. One of the biggest mountains in the world is Hawaii," she said, a cooler, sense of wonder passing over her.
"Our eye tends to stop where the surface of the water is. I'm trying to get you to go below it," she said, her tone of existential urgency returning. "Everyone thought the ocean was so vast, there would always be abundant fish. It takes no time at all for industrial fleets to go in and fish until we're at 90% collapse of the fisheries in a lot of areas."
After all, Lin said, legendary animals have vanished before.
She flipped through her book and pointed to a black-and-white photograph of a majestic 5,000-pound, 20-foot-wide stingray caught in 1933 but unheard of today. "It's all about what Jared Diamond calls 'landscape amnesia.' We accept it. I'm trying to say, 'It's not OK.' "
Lin is interviewing biologists for the memorial and asking them to contribute testimonials of paradises lost that they have seen vanish. She wants to travel to environmental hot spots with her family and blog from around the world.
She wants to let people know they can play an active role in the Earth's future. After learning from the memorial about the destructive algae nurtured by fertilizers and the mercury in the disappearing tuna, they can choose to buy organic produce, she said. Lin thinks people might feel differently about shrimp if they were aware of the destructive shrimp fishing practices that kill dolphins and turtles.
"Can we envision a model for sustainable growth?" Lin said. "I want to allow people to make choices. Better choices. The good news is that nature is incredibly resilient, and it will come back if we give it room. The question is, are we willing to share the planet?"
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anne-marie.oconnor @latimes.com
