05:15The goal of this year's World Ocean Day is to make protecting the water we share a daily priority.

But, what can we do to make that a reality?

Lifestyles went to Vancouver, Canada for some advice.

STANDUP: AL CAMPBELL, CNC CORRESPONDENT
"Wednesday is World Ocean Day, a day to bring attention to the inhabitants of the world's oceans, its importance, but also the bounty that it provides. I'm here in Surrey, British Columbia, just south of Vancouver and they are celebrating World Ocean Day a few days early bringing attention to a body of water that covers about 70 percent of the Earth's surface. While there's fun and games for the family here today, the most important message that they are stressing is that the world's oceans must be protected for future generations to enjoy."

Jim Armstrong is an environmental biologist with Metro Vancouver, the inter-municipal administrative body for the Vancouver area.

Having seen the results of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico first hand, he told Lifestyles such future catastrophes can be prevented through strict government control, and an informed public asking questions about what is the state of the environment.
 
SOUNDBITE: JIM ARMSTRONG, ENVIRONMENTAL BIOLOGIST
"Well in British Columbia here we have moratorium on offshore drilling, which is different than the Gulf of Mexico, and it's just the awareness of the potential for deep-water drilling and the effects. The oil industry has to be more proactive in making that, making a similar incident to the Gulf of Mexico not happen again."

STANDUP: AL CAMPBELL, CNC CORRESPONDENT
"Canada, with its beautiful coastline, about 57,000 kilometers in all, was the country that proposed World Ocean Day at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil. It was officially approved by the United Nations in 2008. The theme for this year's World Ocean Day as well as the next is 'Youth: A wave of change' with the idea of being to get young people to view protecting the ocean as a way of life."
 
Yvonne Dawydiak is the volunteer coordinator for educational programs for the Friends of Semiahmoo Bay Society.

She says every trip a person makes to the beach has an environmental impact and it's important to teach children how to lessen that impact.

SOUNDBITE: YVONNE DAWYDIAK, VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR
"As you know our oceans are under more and more pressure from development, from pollution, overfishing, that sort of thing and young children tend to have an innate sense of responsibility towards the environment and the more we can help them develop that and grow with it and continue to understand on a more deep level the issues surrounding or affecting our oceans, the better."

STANDUP: AL CAMPBELL, CNC CORRESPONDENT
"Viveka Ohman is a Vancouver-based naturalist and marine environmentalist. She says she's deeply concerned about the nuclear fallout from Japan's recent earthquake and tsunami. She says the nuclear leakage into the ocean will definitely have a prolonged effect and will take several years to correct itself."

SOUNDBITE: VIVEKA OHMAN, NATURALIST, MARINE ENVIRONMENTALIST
"Immediately around Japan I think the marine life will be greatly affected and they will tend to notice that in the local waters, particularly around the reefs. I suspect a lot of the reefs will be destroyed, however, having been a nuclear fallout, and my background experience on that is rather limited, but having some kind of understanding of it, those isotopes will eventually die off. The do have a certain kind of shelf life and they'll dissipate and die off and go into the atmosphere and also deep into the ocean. So other countries will be affected minimally, that would be make take on it. But around Japan and the fishing there, that's going to be a tough one for them."

Ohman, who originally hails from Sweden, a country with strict environmental laws, said mud flats needed to be protected from development.

What's more, chemical runoff from agriculture needed to be monitored more strictly to protect the oceans.
 
SOUNDBITE: VIVEKA OHMAN, NATURALIST AND MARINE ENVIRONMENTALIST
"Governments have to be so much more enforcing than what they do, and not to be as friendly – I'm taking a risk here – friendly with industry as they are in trying to enforce these regulations because that's where part of the problem comes from. It's not enforced tightly enough. The regulations are there to protect the resource, the ocean environment, but it's not enforced enough."

Ohman said educational awareness, such as World Ocean Day, was a step in the right direction.

SOUNDBITE: VIVEKA OHMAN, NATURALIST AND MARINE ENVIRONMENTALIST
"I can't stress it enough that we do not pollute our oceans, that we protect them as they are right now and then there will be oceans, clean oceans left for our younger generations to enjoy. But right now it is like we are using it to its fullest extent and think it is a resource for us to utilize when it's not. We should just appreciate it and have a sustainable, sustainable fishery."