In 1972 English chemist James Lovelock proposed his Gaia hypothesis and was promptly either ridiculed or ignored. The Gaia hypothesis is a theory that the Earth's organisms symbiotically interact with their environment as a single, self-regulating system to maintain conditions that support life on our planet. At the time, this theory was seen as far-fetched at best. Now, it’s widely accepted by the scientific community.

The reason for this acceptance, as with most scientific conclusions, is evidence. There is symbiosis everywhere in nature. Ecosystems are most definitely systems with a very specific blueprint. We have already seen the effects on other earth systems when one earth system gets knocked off balance.

Everything is connected, and everything has a role to play. The tiniest phytoplankton feeds the krill that a food chain spanning entire oceans depends on. If sharks are removed from the top of that food chain, entire ecosystems unravel in a process called trophic degradation.

So when you see someone trying to save some species you’ve never heard of and you think, “does it really matter if the humphead wrasse goes extinct?” the answer is yes, it does. There is so much we don’t see, and so much we don’t know. There’s a lot going on here, and it all matters.

PS- By the way, the humphead wrasse eats crown-of-thorn starfish, which prey on reef-building corals and are extremely damaging if not kept in check by the wrasse. Also, humphead wrasse are all born females and change genders later in life. It’s actually a pretty cool fish!

Original 16”x20” pen and watercolor drawing on heavy archival paper.

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