Cultivating Stronger Connections With the Natural World

By Timothy Beatley

Too often nature seems abstract and far away, difficult to know and touch in any visceral way. This represents a serious problem as we work to cultivate a greater sense of curiosity, empathy, and caring for the natural world — essential conditions for building the tangible support (political and otherwise) needed to conserve and protect nature.

In few areas is this clearer than in the ocean realm, where the nature may seem especially distant and exotic and where, given the extreme pressures faced from acidification, overfishing, marine pollution, and other issues, significant awareness is needed.

We are innately drawn to nature; that is the basic premise behind the concept of biophilia. But as biophilic pioneer Steve Kellert, who passed away this past November, would say, it is a "weak genetic tendency" — meaning that it is like a muscle that needs exercising and strengthening. We must work to extend and expand our innate nature connections.

I have been exploring these ideas through the filming of a new documentary about the marine nature in and around cities, and I am more convinced than ever that planners can and must explore creative ways to build these important emotional connections.

Since 1969, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center in Key Biscayne, Florida, has educated more than one million local students about sea life through its interactive and hands-on Seagrass Adventure program. Photo courtesy Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center.

Uncovering the unseen

Tentatively titled Blue Urbanism, the film is a collaboration with Colorado-based filmmaker Chuck David. We seek to tell the many stories of how to forge new connections between the residents of coastal cities and the (largely) invisible ocean world all around them.

Recent shoots in East and West Coast U. S. cities suggest a range of possibilities. One impressive organization is Harbor WildWatch, in Gig Harbor, Washington, along the Puget Sound. Thanks to Lindsey Stover, the executive director, we were able to film one of their signature events — Pier Into the Night.

The night we visited, two volunteer divers with lights and a GoPro camera mounted between them were diving a few hundred feet away. The real-time video stream was then projected onto a screen on the pier.

A crowd of about 90 adults and children sat watching, mesmerized as Harbor WildWatch marine naturalist Stena Troye narrated, identifying and answering questions about what we were seeing on the screen.

We saw some remarkable marine organisms that night, including moon snails, anemones, shrimp, sea stars, decorator crabs, and sea cucumbers. Troye also pointed out some less than natural items, including abandoned fishnets and plates, and even an iron, which met with a strong response from the crowd and reinforced the conservation message of the night.

The overall takeaway for attendees was clear: There is abundant and diverse life below the surface and all around their harbor community. The message for planners: If we expect citizens to care about these largely invisible worlds and support our efforts to plan for them, conserve them, and manage pollutants and other land-based threats to them, we must do a better job educating about these environments.

Getting your feet wet

A bit further north in Seattle, we filmed the story of efforts to profoundly reconnect residents to the water there, spearheaded by the nonprofit group Friends of Waterfront Seattle. With the help of landscape architect James Corner, they are implementing a bold vision of a two-mile stretch of new waterfront spaces and connections to the water.

The vision includes the ongoing efforts to place what has been a major visual and physical barrier, the Alaska Way Viaduct, underground. It is an ambitious plan that includes new park space, a continuous promenade, rebuilt piers, places to launch kayaks, and new street-level connections to surrounding neighborhoods. Current progress includes the completion of the first phase of a rebuilt Elliott Bay Seawall, designed to provide new habitat for salmon and marine invertebrates.

A few days later we traded the chilly, damp weather of the Northwest for the warm breezes of South Florida. We spent the day with the state of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center. A part of Crandon Park, and positioned on the Atlantic Ocean side of Key Biscayne, it provides an unusually compelling setting for educating people about ocean life.

One of the more remarkable programs offered by the Nature Center is something called the Seagrass Adventure. Students walk into the shallow waters of the Atlantic and, with the help of expert naturalists, discover what lies right below the surface. We followed groups of fifth graders as they waded into the waist-high water, exuberant about what they might find. Theodora Long, the center's director, told us how it rose from humble beginnings, from educating residents from the back of a hotdog stand on the beach in 1969 to hosting hundreds of students a year today.

The day we filmed this event, seven groups were in the water at once. Each pair of students had a net for scooping up the ocean's sandy bottom. Their ecstatic reactions to what appeared in their nets were simply wonderful. There were finds big and small — mantis shrimp, sea sponges, queen conch, trunkfish, and bristle worms, among other organisms. My favorite discovery that day was what appeared at first to be a spiky tennis ball. Once the object was placed in one of the floating pails, it returned miraculously to its normal shape as a balloonfish.

After an hour or so, the groups returned to shore and sat in a circle to examine and discuss what they had found. I am sure that this visceral, hands-on day of learning and connection will stay with these kids long into adulthood. At least I hope it will, because we will need them to care about and do more to steward over and protect that remarkable marine world than my baby boomer generation has. Ideally, they will return to the ocean and continue to perceive it in these deeper, more intimate ways.

These are some of the essential ways we need to cultivate an urban marine ethos and sensibility to support and buttress the planning and conservation decisions we need to make, now and in the future.

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Biophilic Cities Project.