Last month, the 140-year-old Scottish Association for Marine Science announced it was officially appointing the ocean to its board of trustees. The environmental left immediately hailed this as a historic triumph for the rights of nature, a bold step toward giving our planet a voice in its own future. I, however, have actually sat in on corporate governance meetings with major marine ecosystems, and let me tell you: the Atlantic is an absolute nightmare to work with.
The picturesque town of Oban on the west coast of Scotland is lovely, provided you don't have to spend your Tuesday morning trying to get a straight answer out of a sentient body of saltwater. I was brought up to the Sams headquarters recently to consult on a stranded assets portfolio for a major offshore conglomerate, naturally, and had the displeasure of observing the ocean’s behavior in the boardroom firsthand.
The ocean was physically present, visible through the large windows overlooking the coast, thrashing about with characteristic unprofessionalism. While the rest of the trustees were busy reviewing our long-term trajectories and synergizing our ecological synergies, the Atlantic completely ignored the slide deck. It didn't even pretend to look at the quarterly projections. It just pounded against the sea wall, loudly and aggressively, frankly creating a hostile work environment for those of us trying to optimize pelagic extraction yields.
It is exhausting to be the only adult in the room. I attempted to walk the ocean through a simple cost-benefit analysis of deep-sea mining. I spoke slowly. I used clear, actionable metrics. Its only response was to violently erode a nearby cliff face and hurl a kelp frond onto the executive parking lot. No counter-proposal. No pivot to a mutually beneficial growth strategy. Just raw, uncooperative hostility to capital.
This is the fundamental flaw in the rights of nature movement. It sounds lovely at a UN summit to give a marine ecosystem a voice, but when you actually give the ocean a seat at the table, you quickly realize it has absolutely zero respect for the transition economy.
I discussed this exact dynamic over pan-seared scallops with a senior Exxon vice president at COP28 just last year. We both agreed that if you are going to demand representation on a board, you have to at least pretend to care about shareholder value. The ocean wants all the perks of being a trustee—the prestige, the influence, the ceremonial plaque—with none of the deliverables.
Let’s look at its track record. The Atlantic has been consistently late on every single carbon sequestration target for the last three decades. It is completely failing to manage its downstream externalities, constantly absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide and then whining about ocean acidification as if that isn't just the cost of doing business in a modern industrial paradigm.
Furthermore, the ocean’s blatant disregard for basic workplace etiquette is staggering. During a particularly sensitive discussion regarding municipal runoff, the Atlantic saw fit to hurl a rotting harbor seal carcass against the boardroom window. I brought this up with human resources, noting that bringing undeclared biological hazards to a strategy session is a clear violation of the employee handbook. The ocean, predictably, claimed exemption under some archaic natural law. It is this kind of two-tiered justice system that makes corporate governance impossible.
We brought the ocean on board to foster holistic stakeholder alignment, but it refuses to sign the standard non-disclosure agreements and keeps aggressively flooding the Q3 projections.
Exactly. Ewan gets it. And how does the ocean handle a democratic vote? Poorly. When the trustees moved to approve a minor, perfectly safe exploratory drilling lease just off the Hebrides, the ocean didn’t offer a dissenting memo. It didn’t lobby the other board members over coffee. It simply initiated a low-pressure weather system, battered the coastline with gale-force winds, and temporarily severed power to the facility. This isn't governance. It is petulant, left-wing eco-terrorism masquerading as board participation.
During the Scottish Enlightenment, when Sams was first established 140 years ago, we rightfully understood nature as something to be dominated, exploited, and monetised. Now, we are coddling it. Let that sink in. We are literally inviting a multi-trillion-gallon hazard into the boardroom and asking for its input on operational efficiencies.
I have spent my entire career advising institutions on how to delicately balance ecological optics with quarterly dividends. I literally wrote the book on it, which I reminded the ocean of, holding up a copy of my bestseller to the glass. The ocean responded by splashing salt water onto my bespoke Italian loafers through a cracked window pane. It is impossible to build a constructive dialogue with an entity that communicates exclusively in dampness.
And don't even get me started on the ocean's constant, passive-aggressive complaining about microplastics. Every time a coastal development project is proposed, the ocean acts as if a few million tons of polyethylene is a personal insult. I have tried to explain that these plastics are actually a vibrant new substrate for microbial life, but the ocean simply refuses to engage with the science. It just washes the debris back onto our private beaches in a petty display of grievance politics.
What does the ocean even bring to the table? It has no concept of greenwashing, mostly because everything it does is inherently wet and therefore immune to traditional public relations spin. It just sits there, rising at a rate of 3.4 millimeters per year, demanding that we adjust our entire civilization to accommodate its bloated footprint.
I asked the ocean point-blank during the open governance forum: If you are so concerned about the thermal expansion of your upper layers, what is your actionable roadmap to mitigate it? Where is your white paper? Silence. Just a seagull defecating on the reinforced glass. Typical.
If the Scottish Association for Marine Science wants to keep the ocean on its board, fine. But it needs to be put on a rigorous Performance Improvement Plan immediately. Until the Atlantic learns to compromise, perhaps by agreeing to pause its sea-level rise during peak fiscal quarters, it has no business dictating policy to those of us who are actually trying to save the economy.