This TED Talk features marine ecologist Enric Sala, recorded live at TED 2018.

If you were to jump into any random spot in the ocean, you would probably see something like this.

Empty of large animals, because we have taken them out of the water faster than they can reproduce.

Today, I want to propose a strategy to save ocean life, and the solution has a lot to do with economics.

In 1999, a little place called Cabo Pulmo in Mexico was an underwater desert.

The fishermen were so upset not having enough fish to catch

that they did something that no one expected.

Instead of spending more time at sea,

trying to catch the few fish left,

they stopped fishing completely.

They created a national park in the sea, a no-take marine reserve.

When we return 10 years later, this is what we saw. What had been an underwater barren

was now a kaleidoscope of life and color,

we saw it back to pristine in only 10 years,

including the return of the large predators, like the groupers, the sharks, the jacks,

and those visionary fishermen are making much more money now from tourism. Now, when we can align economic needs

with conservation, miracles can happen. And we have seen similar recoveries all over the world.

I spent 20 years studying human impacts in the ocean.

But when I saw firsthand the regeneration of places like Cabo Pulmo, that gave me hope.

So I decided to quit my job as a university professor to dedicate my life to save more ocean places like this.

In the last 10 years, our team at National Geographic Prestincis

has explored, surveyed and documented some of the wildest places left in the ocean

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