Under the sea ...

The premiere of Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures at 7 Wednesday night is as timely as they come. In "The Voyage to Kure - Part 1", which finds the son of the legendary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau following in his father's footsteps, viewers are taken to an archipelago off of the Hawaiian Islands. From a distance, the white sand beaches and glistening blue waters look like a perfect paradise, but when Cousteau takes a closer look, the island is littered with garbage. Broken toys, fast food containers, medical waste and other rubbish that has floated in from around the world is now threatening these habitats and the animals that live there. Both above and below the sea, the pollution is causing harrowing effects to some of the last untouched wilderness areas on Earth.

This program comes on the heels of reports last week that vast numbers of ancient coral reefs in the Caribbean are suddenly dying off due to the increased water temperatures that the region has experienced due to global warming. This unprecedented sudden die-off has killed some coral that took hundreds of years to grow. The damage not only hurts the animals themselves, but also trickles down to other plants and animals that rely on the reef for food and protection, as well as the islanders who rely on the tourism that snorkeling and diving in the reefs brings in each year.

While there are undoubtedly huge challenges for the world to overcome in order to reverse or slow these trends, there are still some simple things that each individual can do on their own to do their part to make the Earth a more livable world.

Watch the second part of this program at 7 p.m. next Wednesday, April 12.