The Scuba News New Zealand

I had just turned 18 and was setting off on my first solo adventure to a destination over 10,000 miles away to an island in the South Pacific…. Fiji.

I was about to embark on my very first SCUBA diving experience with a volunteer program run by the Non-Government Organisation Frontier.

Over the past half century, the world has moved increasingly to industrial agriculture — attempting to maximize efficiency through massive, often inhumane livestock operations; turning huge swaths of land over to monocrops requiring liberal use of fertilizers, pesticides and genetic modification; and reliance on fossil fuel-consuming machinery and underpaid migrant workers. This has contributed to increased greenhouse gas emissions; loss of forests and wetlands that prevent climate change by storing carbon; pollution from runoff and pesticides; antibiotic and pesticide resistance; reduced biodiversity; and soil degradation, erosion and loss.