Free diver and ocean conservationist Hanley Prinslu has spent her life helping others connect with the ocean and understand our responsibility to care for it.

Here, she shares her brief but spectacular take on protecting what we love.

Something I love sharing with people is that our bodies are 70% water,

70% of the surface of our planet is ocean,

our tears have the same salinity as the ocean.

We are water and I truly believe that we protect what we love

and that when something we love is threatened, we act.

I grew up on a horse farm outside Pretoria in South Africa,

and my childhood consisted of riding horses bareback,

climbing the tallest trees, catching frogs

and listening to owls at night.

I had two rules.

Come home before the sun sets and don't die.

Some of my earliest memories are of wanting to be a mermaid,

exploring the dams on the farm, the rivers,

that stillness of being below the surface.

Free diving came to me later in my life.

Free diving is when you go down on one breath

and swim underwater holding your breath.

In my mind, the penny dropped,

and I was like, that is what I have been wanting to do.

There's a small village on the southeastern Cape

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