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A fishing trip, originally uploaded by slavishtubesocks.
In 2007, a blog called “Fishes Feed Us,” was created by Art & Science Collaborations, Inc., and hosted by One Ocean, as a way for youth in New York City and the Indo-Pacific Region to exchange views about the fish crisis, telling their stories from the “fishes’ perspective” as well as from their own viewpoints. Here is some of what they had to say:
One day we will have to go to a museum to see a fish because we are eating up our ocean’s supply too fast, too soon. (Sameena – New York City)
Since the big commercial fishing vessels started coming into our local waters, there are fewer fish, and more pollution. If we can barely survive now, how are the future generations going to? (Francine – Malaysia)
I wish some groups would help fishers’ children so that they could go to school. It is every child’s right to be educated. (Angelica – New York City)
Boom! Everything seemed to stop. Then I saw fishes floating. Dead. With one dynamite explosion, the reefs, our home, were completely demolished. (Kristine – Philippines)
Education is the key. If people understand the human consequences of losing the world’s fish stocks, they will try and help stop the depletion. (Jasmine – New York City)
Red trash, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.
Plastic is a problem but so is paper:
1. Plastic bags require 40% less energy to produce than paper bags.
2. Paper bags produce 80% more solid waste than plastic and due to modern landfill techniques, don’t biodegrade much faster than their polyethylene counterparts.
3. It takes less energy to recycle a plastic bag than paper.
4. Plastic bags weigh less and take up less landfill space than their paper counterparts.
5. Paper bag manufacturing creates more air and water pollution than plastic bags.
Solution? Purchase reusable cloth bags and use them.
Hat Tip to http://www.greendaily.com
Chris Jordan is an artist who takes photographs that “portraits of American mass consumption.” His book, Running the Numbers, is a collection of huge, zoomed-out shots of the things we discard every day, e.g., this photo above that represents the 2 million plastic beverage bottles we Americans use every five minutes.
Detritic, originally uploaded by Brett Jordan.
Leatherback turtle at sunrise, originally uploaded by SEE Turtles.
Leatherback turtles, the most widely distributed reptiles on Earth, may have survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, but today they’re threatened with extinction themselves, in large part due to the carelessness of humans. Since jellyfish and marine debris concentrate where ocean water masses meet, the turtles feeding in these areas are vulnerable to ingesting plastic. Once leatherbacks ingest plastic, thousands of spines lining the throat and esophagus make it nearly impossible to regurgitate. The plastic can lead to partial or even complete obstruction of the gastrointestinal tract, resulting in decreased digestive efficiency, energetic and reproductive costs and, for some, starvation. “The frustrating, yet hopeful aspect is that humans can easily begin addressing the solution, without major lifestyle changes”, says Dalhousie University professor Mike James. “It’s as simple as reducing packaging and moving towards alternative, biodegradable materials and recycling.”
Blue Avocado lives here.
Beneath the heading, “Plastic Bag Still Up In Tree,” in an old issue of The Onion, we discovered that, according to employees at Boise Mutual Insurance, “the plastic shopping bag they first noticed Dec. 8 is still ensnared in the upper branches of a tree outside their workplace. ‘Well I’ll be–the darn thing is still up there,’ payroll secretary Barb Weicherle said. ‘I really thought this weekend’s gusts would have blown it out.’ Office manager Paul Probert was equally surprised, saying, ‘Son of a gun. It’s still there.’”
San Francisco Chronicle writer, Justin Berton, reminds us that the charming and oddly romantic video of a floating plastic bag in the film American Beauty would be pure catastrophe in the eyes of an oceanographer.
“In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that’s twice the size of Texas.” Read the complete article here.
Every year, the Ocean Conservancy sponsors an International Coastal Cleanup. Last year, volunteers collected more than 6.8 million pounds of trash. As they cleaned up trash, they recorded 11.4 million items from cigarette butts to fast food wrappers to cast-off appliances. Cleanups were conducted on ocean and waterway shorelines, as well as underwater by 10,606 divers and onboard watercraft by 1,236 boaters.
For details, visit www.oceanconservancy.org/site/PageServer?pagename=icc_home.
Terroir: A Sense of Place is the inaugural exhibition for an exciting new venue in Marin County at The Marin French Cheese Company. Originally a French term, the word terroir expresses the special characteristics that a specific landscape contributes to growing foods. For this exhibition, the definition has been co-opted to express the Sense of Place that these artists experience of nature.
For more information and directions, visit http://artatthecheesefactory.blogspot.com/.
A “floating landfill, made up of plastic trash is swirling in a convergence zone about 1,000 miles west of California and 1,000 miles north of the Hawaiian Islands.” The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is said to be twice the size of Texas. The sun’s UV rays turn the pastic brittle, much like they would crack the vinyl on a car roof. They break it down into small pieces and, in some cases, into particles as fine as dust, which are ingested by marine fauna. Toxicity from such plastic pollutants seeps into the ocean water and thus into our food chain.
GreenLandOceanBlue is in the process of fundraising for a film titled, Plastic Pacific, in which filmmakers Mike Prickett and Steve Lawrence will join Captain Charles Moore (who discovered the Garbage Patch 12 years ago) and a team of world-renowned scientists, journalists, and creative artists on a voyage to explore this emerging debacle and highlight the need for waste management worldwide.
For more information about Plastic Pacific, please continue to our blog. For general information about the GPGP, visit http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org.
