Daryl Hannah - Saving The Oceans And Their Treasures

Passionate about the environment, actress Daryl Hannah is lending her voice and talents to various projects.

Her latest effort is a role in the TV movie Shark Swarm, where her character fights a real estate developer who, in an effort to starve out seaside property owners unwilling to sell, poisons the waters with toxic sludge to kill the fish and unwittingly turns local shark populations into deadly predators who hunt humans in packs.

In an interview with New York Vue, Hannah said she hoped the film would “bring attention to sharks and the terrible things that are happening to them.” Besides warming waters and pollution, sharks must also contend with wasteful fishing practices: “They cut off the fins and throw [the live shark] back in the ocean.”

She also narrated Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Dolphins and Whales 3D, in theatres since February. The film brings the elusive ’tribes of the oceans" to the big screen, allowing viewers to practically reach out and touch them and become personally involved in their underwater lives, “interacting socially, communicating through their highly complex system of sounds, playing, feeding, breeding, migrating and perpetually fighting for their survival.”

Hannah is also heavily involved with the Reef Check Foundation, an organization dedicated to conserving and restoring tropical coral reefs and California rocky reefs by creating partnerships between businesses, universities, government agencies and volunteers.

Due to pollution, illegal fishing, and over-fishing, reefs have been in crisis for over a decade. Reef Check studies have shown that “there is virtually no reef in the world that remained untouched by human impact.”

“Unfortunately, there isn’t enough being done to protect the ocean,” Hannah told Diver Magazine. “It doesn’t factor as large as it should in the climate crisis debate.”

“If reefs are in trouble, so are we,” said Dr Earle, former Chief Scientist of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. “I think what Reef Check is doing is phenomenal: inspiring and motivating scientists, volunteers and the general public to take care of our ocean.”

Through Reef Check community’s data gathering, partnerships, and management through sustainable use, however, there is clear evidence that rehabilitation of reefs is possible.