Evdilos Primary School of Ikaria on the Research Vessel Triton While on a short break from our work in the area of the Ikaria Trench, the crew of the Research Vessel Triton made a stop at the port of Evdilos and we had the pleasure of welcoming 110 students from the Evdilos Primary School of Ikaria on board. The new generation of children fills us with hope for the future. With genuine curiosity, they absorb every piece of information and overwhelm us with insightful questions about the species that live in the surrounding seas, the tools we use in research, and much more. Despite the demanding workload of our research and conservation action, we seize every opportunity to share our knowledge about the rare marine life that surrounds the island youth along with our growing concern about the increasing threats caused by human activity. For the past 25 years, we have offered activities for island schools to participate in that raise awareness of marine conservation issues. These volunteer-led initiatives are the most valuable investment that we can make towards the young islanders. Yet, we must all look in the mirror and ask ourselves: What kind of environment did we inherit just a few decades ago, and what do we wish to leave behind for the generations to come? On an island like Ikaria – once called Ichthyóessa (“rich in fish”) in ancient Greece – how has it reached a point where we find ourselves at a port where there are no fishermen to catch fish for locals to consume? As a result, access to nutritious food that was taken for granted for thousands of years is now becoming increasingly scarce. Beyond that, the lack of infrastructure means that “waste management” in practice often occurs through dispersion by wind and rain. In the open sea, we end up measuring more plastic than zooplankton in almost every sample we collect. To grasp the scale of the problem: in each cubic meter of seawater there are up to 100,000 zooplaktonic organisms, which include fish larvae and more than 1,000 different zooplankton species that inhabit the Mediterranean. Yet, the amount of plastic found often exceeds that of planktonic life. Equally alarming is the issue of untreated sewage, which also ends up in our seas, enriched with chemicals and plastic fragments. These critical issues, however, seem to be a topic of concern briefly every August, before they are quickly forgotten once again. It is a paradoxical and recurring situation, observed in different forms and intensities on every island and coastal area of Greece – a heavy legacy that, unfortunately, we all seem determined to leave behind for future generations.