Ted Talk: Pay Attention to the Penguins

Penguins are the last animals I would expect to be good “ocean sentinels.” Penguins carry themselves so carelessly, it seems as though they are oblivious to almost everything around them. In this Ted Talk video, a woman named Dee Boersma explains how penguins are good indicators of what humans are doing to the environment. Although penguins seem unaware of their environment, it is really humans who are oblivious to what we are doing to it. Dee Boersma was a young woman who had never been camping or even lived alone, yet she moved to Galapagos, and actually made a considerable impact. Her ambitious and naive move to the Galapagos Islands should serve as a testament to what we as humans can do to help preserve our environment. Although she uses penguins as an example of what we’ve done to the environment, such as dumping oil, we should still be conscious of other species and their current situations. If a species such as penguins becomes extinct then it will throw of the natural cycle of their ecosystem. It could result in the loss of various other species. All in all we need to save penguins because of the conditions humans have put them in. I feel this video has taught me that we can learn more from paying further attention to the things that suffer from our problems than the things that are causing the problems.