Heyerdahl speaks as part of a fundraiser for Concordia College in Moorhead. He says the main trouble is what we?re doing to the world ocean, destroying the possibility of living on this planet. We have maintained the vision of the ocean that existed at the time of Columbus; the ocean is not bottomless, not endless. It is much smaller when you climb on a few logs like he did in Kon-Tiki and step off 4000 miles later. If you move the buildings from Manhattan and set them on the bottom of the North Sea all the big buildings will come high above the surface. We see the big rivers draining into the ocean and still it doesn?t raise an inch. We forget about evaporation, what evaporates is the clean water, what remains is all the pollution that modern man has started to send in the last two decades or so. There's not a river in the world with any clean drinkable water going into the ocean anymore. It?s all polluted by chemicals in ever greater concentration; just a matter of time before we kill the plankton which is not only the food for the fish but is the main producer of oxygen that we need.
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THOR HEYERDAHL: I had more difficulties getting across the Atlantic with a modern jet than I usually have by raft.
DENNIS HAMILTON: That's Norwegian Explorer, anthropologist, author, cinematographer, and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl. He sailed the Pacific Ocean in a balsa wood raft and the Atlantic in a raft made of reed bundles. Not as larks, but to prove ways in which ancient civilizations moved about the surface of the Earth, and subsequently populated it.
Heyerdahl is in Moorhead to speak to the Concordia College C-400 Fundraising Club, about his adventures and his crusade to save the oceans.
THOR HEYERDAHL: We are really behaving against better knowledge. Not so much in destroying the land, perhaps, the main trouble to my mind is what we are doing to the world ocean right now, which is going to be, to my mind, the safest way of destroying the possibility of living on this planet. And I think that the main thing is to start realizing that we are destroying the ocean.
And I think that-- and this is what I feel that I have learned only of recent years, and where I feel a mission to tell other people is that the ocean is not unlimited. It is not so enormous as we like to think it is. And for one, and I'm sure most other people, we have maintained the vision of the ocean that existed at the time of Columbus.
We speak of the bottomless ocean. We speak of the endless ocean. The ocean is not bottomless and it's not endless. The ocean is much, much smaller than we usually think it is when we just see it from one side. But when you climb on board a few logs, like I did with Kon-Tiki in South America, and just sit there and step off 4,000 miles at the other end a few weeks later, or when you go on board a few bundles of papyrus reeds in Morocco, and you just hang on and suddenly you are in America, then you realize that the ocean is not endless.
And when you start measuring it and realize that, for instance, the North Sea, which we in Europe think is some bottomless abyss where we've been dumping all our toxic material for years and years. Well, if you move Manhattan, the buildings of Manhattan, and put them on the bottom of the North Sea, nearly all the big buildings will come high above the surface.
What makes us err and think that we can put anything into the ocean because it doesn't matter, it's the fact that we see all the big rivers, whether it is the Nile or the Amazon or the Mississippi. They keep on running into the ocean all the time, and still it doesn't raise an inch. So we think it must be either bottomless or endless.
And we forget that it is, of course, the water running in is just the same amount that is evaporating as clean water. And the rivers are just the sum of all the rain coming down by evaporation. But the water that evaporates is the clean water, and what remains is all the pollution that modern man has started to send in the last two decades or so.
There's not a river in the world sending clean, drinkable water into the ocean anymore. It's all polluted by some chemical material, and while the clean water is evaporating, these chemicals are there in ever greater condensations. So it is just a matter of time the way we work before we can kill the plankton, which is not only the food for the fish, which we badly need for protein for a steadily growing population, but which is also the main producer of the oxygen, which we need. Even if we live in Fargo, we are as dependent on the plankton as people living in New York or on the seaside.
DENNIS HAMILTON: Norwegian anthropologist, explorer, ecologist, and hero of millions Thor Heyerdahl. I'm Dennis Hamilton.