When my daughter was three, she didn’t watch much media. She had two videos she enjoyed—Singing in the Rain, and Riverdance. One day she asked if there were more. We went to the local video store (a tiny little place on Main Street in the central Vermont village where we lived at the time), and looked at the National Geographic shelf. She chose a documentary with a whale on the cover by Dr. Roger Payne, who is famous for discovering whale song. It was called In the Company of Whales, and I highly recommend it, though it’s hard to find these days.

I didn’t know much about whales at the time, but Amber and I must have watched that video a hundred times over. In one section, Dr. Payne talks about “AIDS of the sea”. Herbicides and insecticides, pollutants, and pharmaceutical drugs find their way to the ocean in overwhelming proportion, he explains—through runoff from fields, industrial waste, and the overflow of sewage systems. Like our own, the sea animals’ immune systems are being affected. At the time, I made something of a joke to a client—save the whales, see an herbalist!

The more I thought about it, the more I realized: it’s not a joke.