Plastic Crap In The Oceans

The tawdry attitude we humans have about nature and the Earth is reflected in our penchant for dumping our plastic crap in the ocean. Eight million tons a year according the report below from the University of Georgia.

Have you ever heard of something called a mid-ocean gyre? They are places in the world's oceans where currents come together in gigantic swirls. They are huge. One in the North Pacific ocean is the size of the state of Texas. They are places where all the plastic we humans dump in the oceans come together. Imagine a toilet bowl clogged with plastic bits, from very large down to microscopic. This stuff does not occur naturally. Every last tiny piece of it amounts to human waste.

The fact that we allow our plastic crap to end up in the oceans in such massive volume says a lot about mankind's very poor record of stewardship toward the environment we all depend on. There is no excuse for it. We humans simply must do a better job of cleaning up after ourselves.

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Magnitude of plastic waste going into the ocean calculated: 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans per year

 

The 192 countries with a coast bordering the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, Mediterranean and Black seas produced a total of 2.5 billion metric tons of solid waste. Of that, 275 million metric tons was plastic, and an estimated 8 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste entered the ocean in 2010.

Credit: Lindsay Robinson/UGA

A plastic grocery bag cartwheels down the beach until a gust of wind spins it into the ocean. In 192 coastal countries, this scenario plays out over and over again as discarded beverage bottles, food wrappers, toys and other bits of plastic make their way from estuaries, seashores and uncontrolled landfills to settle in the world's seas.

How much mismanaged plastic waste is making its way from land to ocean has been a decades-long guessing game. Now, the University of Georgia's Jenna Jambeck and her colleagues in the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis working group have put a number on the global problem.

Their study, reported in the Feb. 13 edition of the journal Science, found between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2010 from people living within 50 kilometers of the coastline. That year, a total of 275 million metric tons of plastic waste was generated in those 192 coastal countries.

Jambeck, an assistant professor of environmental engineering in the UGA College of Engineering and the study's lead author, explains the amount of plastic moving from land to ocean each year using 8 million metric tons as the midpoint: "Eight million metric tons is the equivalent to finding five grocery bags full of plastic on every foot of coastline in the 192 countries we examined."

To determine the amount of plastic going into the ocean, Jambeck "started it off beautifully with a very grand model of all sources of marine debris," said study co-author Roland Geyer, an associate professor with the University of California, Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, who teamed with Jambeck and others to develop the estimates.

They began by looking at all debris entering the ocean from land, sea and other pathways. Their goal was to develop models for each of these sources. After gathering rough estimates, "it fairly quickly emerged that the mismanaged waste and solid waste dispersed was the biggest contributor of all of them," he said. From there, they focused on plastic.

"For the first time, we're estimating the amount of plastic that enters the oceans in a given year," said study co-author Kara Lavender Law, a research professor at the Massachusetts-based Sea Education Association. "Nobody has had a good sense of the size of that problem until now."

The framework the researchers developed isn't limited to calculating plastic inputs into the ocean.

"Jenna created a framework to analyze solid waste streams in countries around the world that can easily be adapted by anyone who is interested," she said. "Plus, it can be used to generate possible solution strategies."

Plastic pollution in the ocean was first reported in the scientific literature in the early 1970s. In the 40 years since, there were no rigorous estimates of the amount and origin of plastic debris making its way into the marine environment until Jambeck's current study.

Part of the issue is that plastic is a relatively new problem coupled with a relatively new waste solution. Plastic first appeared on the consumer market in the 1930s and '40s. Waste management didn't start developing its current infrastructure in the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia until the mid-1970s. Prior to that time, trash was dumped in unstructured landfills--Jambeck has vivid memories of growing up in rural Minnesota, dropping her family's garbage off at a small dump and watching bears wander through furniture, tires and debris as they looked for food.

"It is incredible how far we have come in environmental engineering, advancing recycling and waste management systems to protect human health and the environment, in a relatively short amount of time," she said. "However, these protections are unfortunately not available equally throughout the world."

Some of the 192 countries included in the model have no formal waste management systems, Jambeck said. Solid waste management is typically one of the last urban environmental engineering infrastructure components to be addressed during a country's development. Clean water and sewage treatment often come first.

"The human impact from not having clean drinking water is acute, with sewage treatment often coming next," she said. "Those first two needs are addressed before solid waste, because waste doesn't seem to have any immediate threat to humans. And then solid waste piles up in streets and yards and it's the thing that gets forgotten for a while."

As the gross national income increases in these countries, so does the use of plastic. In 2013, the most current numbers available, global plastic resin production reached 299 million tons, a 647 percent increase over numbers recorded in 1975. Plastic resin is used to make many one-use items like wrappers, beverage bottles and plastic bags.

With the mass increase in plastic production, the idea that waste can be contained in a few-acre landfill or dealt with later is no longer viable. That was the mindset before the onslaught of plastic, when most people piled their waste--glass, food scraps, broken pottery--on a corner of their land or burned or buried it. Now, the average American generates about 5 pounds of trash per day with 13% of that being plastic.

But knowing how much plastic is going into the ocean is just one part of the puzzle, Jambeck said. With between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons going in, researchers like Law are only finding between 6,350 and 245,000 metric tons floating on the ocean's surface.

"This paper gives us a sense of just how much we're missing," Law said, "how much we need to find in the ocean to get to the total. Right now, we're mainly collecting numbers on plastic that floats. There is a lot of plastic sitting on the bottom of the ocean and on beaches worldwide."

Jambeck forecasts that the cumulative impact to the oceans will equal 155 million metric tons by 2025. The planet is not predicted to reach global "peak waste" before 2100, according to World Bank calculations.

"We're being overwhelmed by our waste," she said. "But our framework allows us to also examine mitigation strategies like improving global solid waste management and reducing plastic in the waste stream. Potential solutions will need to coordinate local and global efforts."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Georgia. The original article was written by Stephanie Schupska. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

1.     J. R. Jambeck, R. Geyer, C. Wilcox, T. R. Siegler, M. Perryman, A. Andrady, R. Narayan, K. L. Law. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 2015; 347 (6223): 768 DOI: 10.1126/science.1260352

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Cite This Page:

       

University of Georgia. "Magnitude of plastic waste going into the ocean calculated: 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans per year." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 February 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150212154422.htm>.

 

The Whale Man of Australia

Darren Jew lives a life that I would consider trading for. He spends his time photographing and making videos of whales and other marine life.  His work is the gold standard.  Amazingly beautiful imagery. His photos of whales, particularly Humpbacks, are powerful and beautiful.

I'm so glad that in my lifetime, people like Darren Jew came along at the same time photographic technology made it possible to showcase the beauty of the ocean. Now everyone can see why we need to appreciate the gifts of the sea. In the best of worlds,  the kind of inspiration Darren Jew creates with his camera can inspire people everywhere to become proper stewards of the biosphere.

Here is the link to Darren Jew's website. Be sure to check out the video on the index page...http://darrenjew.com/

Humpack Whales from Above

Another gorgeous You Tube video of Humpback Whales in Tonga. This video combines aerial and underwater footage of these magnificent creatures.

Here is the link... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCqxJfuthls. 

Humpback Whales in Tonga

Just ran across this short video that features some incredible underwater video of humpback whales in Tonga in the South Pacific. It was shot by an Australian photographer named Darren Jew. Darren works for Canon, which happens to be the brand of camera that I use.    This guy is really living the life.

I have spent time in Tonga. The life there is laid back, so much different than the pace of life here.  I have a friend, Richard Chesher, whom I first met in Tonga. He is a remarkable fellow; a marine biologist, who spends his time immersed in marine photography. His photos are amazing. Chesher lives in New Caledonia these days.  We didn't see any whales while I was in Tonga,  but we did hang out in one of Chesher's clam sanctuaries. That's an adventure I've already written about in an earlier blog about Chesher.  Click on his name in the subject column on the right side of the page.

Anyway,  this video of Darren Jew hanging out with humpbacks in Tonga is worth the admission.  Check it out.

Here is a link to the video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y2JfZC5X7M

Sugar-Powered Batteries

Here's a very interesting new twist on battery technology. It takes a page from the biosphere's living playbook.

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Sugar-powered biobattery has 10 times the energy storage of lithium: Your smartphone might soon run on enzymes

• By Sebastian Anthony on January 21, 2014   

As you probably know, from sucking down cans of Coke and masticating on candy, sugar — glucose, fructose, sucrose, dextrose — is an excellent source of energy. Biologically speaking, sugar molecules are energy-dense, easy to transport, and cheap to digest. There is a reason why almost every living cell on Earth generates its energy (ATP) from glucose. Now, researchers at Virginia Tech have successfully created a sugar-powered fuel cell that has an energy storage density of 596 amp-hours per kilo — or “one order of magnitude” higher than lithium-ion batteries. This fuel cell is refillable with a solution of maltodextrin, and its only by products are electricity and water. The chief researcher, Y.H. Percival Zhang, says the tech could be commercialized in as soon as three years.

Now, it’s not exactly news that sugar is an excellent energy source. As a culture we’ve probably known about it since before we were Homo sapiens. The problem is, unless you’re a living organism or some kind of incendiary device, extracting that energy is difficult. In nature, an enzymatic pathway is used — a production line of tailor-made enzymes that meddle with the glucose molecules until they become ATP. Because it’s easy enough to produce enzymes in large quantities, researchers have tried to create fuel cells that use artificial “metabolism” to break down glucose into electricity (biobatteries), but it has historically proven very hard to find the right pathway for maximum efficiency and to keep the enzymes in the right place over a long period of time.





 A diagram of the enzymatic fuel cell. The little Pac-Man things are enzymes

Now, however, Zhang and friends at Virginia Tech appear to have built a high-density fuel cell that uses an enzymatic pathway to create a lot of electricity from glucose. There doesn’t seem to be much information on how stable this biobattery is over multiple refills, but if Zhang thinks it could be commercialized in three years, that’s a very good sign. Curiously, the research paper says that the enzymes are non-immobilized — meaning Zhang found a certain battery chemistry that doesn’t require the enzymes to be kept in place… or, alternatively, that it will only work for a very short time.

Energy densities of various battery types. “15% Maltodextrin”, in dark blue, is the battery being discussed

here.

The Virginia Tech biobattery uses 13 enzymes, plus air (it’s an air-breathing biobattery), to produce nearly 24 electrons from a single glucose unit. This equates to a power output of 0.8 mW/cm, current density of 6 mA/cm, and energy storage density of 596 Ah/kg. This last figure is impressive, at roughly 10 times the energy density of the lithium-ion batteries in your mobile devices. [Research paper: doi:10.1038/ncomms4026 - "A high-energy-density sugar biobattery based on a synthetic enzymatic pathway"]

If Zhang’s biobatteries pan out, you might soon be recharging your smartphone by pouring in a solution of 15% maltodextrin. That battery would not only be very safe (it produces water and electricity), but very cheap to run and very green. This seems to fit in perfectly with Zhang’s homepage, which talks about how his main goals in life are replacing crude oil with sugar, and feeding the world.

The other area in which biobatteries might be useful is powering implanted devices, such as pacemakers — or, in the future, subcutaneous sensors and computers. Such a biobattery could feed on the glucose in your bloodstream, providing an endless supply of safe electricity for the myriad implants that futuristic technocrats will surely have.

 

 

 

 

Disaster Fatigue

Disaster fatigue is a concept as ugly as the mega-scale human tragedies that cause it.  It's not a difficult idea to grasp. Mega-scale hurricanes, typhoons, floods, droughts, and wildfire are becoming more deadly and  more common.

A few days ago, a tropical storm known as Haiyan struck the Philippines.  It was by some accounts the most powerful storm in recorded history.  Sustained winds of 195 mph, gusting to nearly 250 mph; a storm surge of 20 feet.  The death toll is estimated at 10,000 at this point and likely to go much higher.

You watch the TV news reports and your heart goes out to the masses of people caught up in the suffering.  Huge numbers of people still have no food, no potable water, and little or no medical care.  The world is trying to help. The U.S. Navy and other relief agencies are there providing as much aid as they can, but the scale of the devastation is overwhelming. 

The sobering reality about such weather events is that they are becoming more common, far more costly, and more consequential and lasting in their impact. 

We have mostly ourselves to blame.  Storms like Haiyan become monsters in scale in large part because of the physics of climate change. Warmer ocean surface temperatures breed more powerful weather systems.  In the Philippines, the impact is exacerbated by the crowded conditions in mostly poor coastal communities.   The human population in the Philippines is nearly 100 million, increasing at  nearly 2% annually.  There is no safety net in poor countries like the Philippines.

In 2010, an earthquake devastated Haiti.  The world's initial response was intense, but now, three years later, much of the rubble remains and the economy is moribund. Haiti continues to be defined by dysfunction and human suffering.   Add now, the Philippines to a growing list of places that cannot take care of its people.

In the U.S., we are still dealing with the consequences of Hurricane Sandy on the Northeastern seaboard, and Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the deep South.

If trends continue, what looms ominously is the possibility that our compassion and our support when devastating weather events strike will be increasingly limited by the overwhelming demand.   To a significant  extent, disaster fatigue is already an unsettling reality.   At the very least, we should demand that our elected representatives in government wake up and take action to moderate climate change.  That is surely an imperative part of any plan to deal with disaster fatigue.


Here is a link to a video that makes the connection between human induced climate change and colossal disasters like Typhoon Haiyan... http://acronymtv.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/super-typhoon-haiyan-and-the-climate-change-link/

Super Coral

Here's an interesting story that needs to be told. It happened to my friend in the South Pacific, Richard Chesher.  He's a Ph.D. marine biologist, and a world class reef photographer, widely admired for his beautiful panographic images.  I've written about Rick Chesher six times before in this blog. He has his own blog label that you can click on if you'd like to read the other entries about him.

I was talking to Rick the other day via Google Plus.   We were discussing climate change and the impact on the marine environment. The two principle impacts are elevated ocean surface temperatures and increased acidification of surface waters.  These two issues trigger a cascade of other consequences. Ocean reefs and corals are particularly vulnerable to higher temperatures and acidification.  In fact, reef ecosystems in many parts of the world are in steep decline, in no small part because of climate change.

Finding isolated populations of super coral that have successfully adapted to higher water temperatures is very important.  Rick Chesher has identified just such a coral ecosystem.  It is in the protected waters of Port Moselle Marina in Noumea in New Caledonia, where Rick and his wife, Freddie live. The corals in Port Moselle are thriving, despite elevated water temperatures and high levels of pollutants from sewage and storm drain runoff.




Port Moselle, New Caledonia

Rick Chesher is retired from marine research.  Hoping to connect with a scientist actively working on coral reefs and climate change, Rick created a webpage about the corals in Port Moselle.  He also identified a university professor in Australia, who has received funding to search for coral reefs that have adapted to higher ocean temperatures.  When Rick contacted the researcher in Australia, he was , more or less, rebuffed.  Amazing.  Here's somebody - a trained professional tasked with finding heat adapted coral populations - and the response is disinterest. You have to wonder what kind of politics are driving that brand of bad attitude.

Port Moselle, New Caledonia

Anyway, Rick Chesher is hoping to attract some interest from  a marine scientist somewhere, who will pick up the ball and follow through with a serious study of these climate change adapted corals in New Caledonia.

Here is a link to Rick Chesher's page on the super corals of Port Moselle Marina in Noumea, New Caledonia ..  http://www.tellusconsultants.com/resistant-corals-super-corals-coral-bleaching.html

Here is a link to one of Rick Chesher's panograph images of Port Moselle...  http://www.360cities.net/image/port-moselle-marina-noumea#254.90,-5.30,60.0

Hanging Out With Whale Sharks

About ten years ago,  my friend and sometimes film collaborator, Michael Tobias told a group of us at a party about his sublime experience swimming with whale sharks in Mexico's Sea of Cortez.  Michael's experience was part of Whale Shark Hunters of the Philippines,  a film he executive produced in 2001 for National Geographic about these marvelous creatures.

Whale sharks are kin to some of the most ferocious predators in the sea, but while great white sharks and their ilk can be extremely dangerous, whale sharks are the gentlest of creatures.   To be sure, they are giants. The largest can exceed forty feet in length and 50,000 pounds in weight. Thought to live up to 70 years, they are filter feeders, living off of plankton, and other small organisms, and can be found in all the world's tropical oceans.

 

 

 

I read a piece on the net today that reported on a whale shark tourist industry that has developed on Cebu in the Philippines.  It turns out that Michael Tobias's documentary, which was directed by filmmaker Erin Calmes,  was a catalyst that led to many nations declaring the whale shark a protected species.  Further, whale shark tourism is thriving now in the Sea of Cortez as well as in the Philippines.   Instead of hunting these gentile giants,  fisherman in Cebu are making money taking tourists to swim with them. 

I just told my wife, swimming with whale sharks is on my 'to do' list.

Here is a link to a wonderful video that features people swimming with giant whale sharks...http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_898895&feature=iv&src_vid=dUMUSFLyZpU&v=o6lpDsBYX6A

Here is a link to a group that is working to protect whale sharks...http://www.whalesharkfest.com/pdf/ecoocean-brochure.pdf

Hanging with the P.M. in Vanuatu

In 2003, I traveled to Vanuatu in the South Pacific to shoot a video segment for the documentary we were shooting at that time. It was titled, The Hydrogen Age.   This was the same trip that included the hairiest airliner approach and landing I have ever experienced. See my blog entry dated, 8/7/12.

We choose to do this segment in Vanuatu for a couple of reasons.  First of all, it is an independent nation that suffers in the strangle hold of big oil.   Like the rest of the world, Vanuatu is dependent on oil. In Vanuatu, that dependence is total and unequvocal.  There are only two or three power stations in the entire country.  They all run on imported fuel oil brought in by tanker.  The capitol, Port Vila has electricity.  There is also a power station on Espirito Santo, which incidentally is the island where James Michener was stationed during World War Two.  It was there, that he wrote his famous novel, South Pacific.  Anyway,  Vanuatu spends abiout 80% of its national budget buying fuel oil for it's power stations.  There is no money for roads; no money for lighting in rural schools; no money for any kind of big intiative that would advance the welfare of the Vanuatuan people.

My friend, marine biologist Richard Chesher, was spending alot of time in Vanuatu at that time.  He was acquainted with many of that nations's prominent government officials.  I talked to Rick about my media work focused on renewables and hydrogen in particular.  Almost immediately, he saw the impact it could have on that nation.

Vanuatu has an abundance of renewable energy resources including a lot of wind, solar, tidal, and perhaps most important, significant untapped geothermal potential.   If Vanuatu could tap that energy and find a way to store it for use on demand, they could end their dependence on oil. Not only that, they could become a net energy exporter. What hydrogen provided was the means to take Vanuatu's captured renewable energy potential into a clean, storable form of energy that could be used on demand, when and where needed. Hydrogen was the key. It was a gamechanger.

Rick Chesher began talking up hydrogen and renewables to his friends in government. He formed a company with some prominent local leaders. They got the Prime Minister, Eduard Natapei, interested. The P.M. saw that his nation's renewable energy potential combined with hydrogen's ability to be used as a clean energy currency, could have a profoundly positive impact on the future of his people.  






Port Vila, Capitol of Vanuatu

My co-producer on The Hydrogen Age, Bill Hoagland, and I decided that Vanuatu's potential with renewably produced hydrogen was a story that should be included in our documentary.

Within a few weeks, I was on my way to Sydney, Australia, and from there, it was on to Vanuatu, where I experienced the white knuckle arrival of my life. See blog entry dated 8/7/12.

Rick had friends at Vanuatu's national television station. It's called TV Blong Vanuatu.  They wanted replacement lithium batteries for their field ENG video cameras.  We made a deal. I brought some of the new batteries for them; they provided one of their video crews to me. 

The day after I arrived in Vanuatu, Rick Chesher and I went to meet the Prime Minister, Eduard Natapei, at his office.






Eduard Natapei

The P.M. was a very affable fellow. It was no wonder he was a successful politician.  I was prepared to conduct the interview with him in his office. Instead, he says,  let's go and see some things.  So, we headed out in a couple of cars. Vanuatu is a friendly place. No big security detail.  As soon as we left Port Vila, the roads turned from asphalt to gravel.  There was no money in the government treasury to pave roads outside of the capitol.  Halfway around the island,  we stopped .  The P.M. led us on foot off the road to an unndeveloped meadow very close to the ocean.  We were on top of a massive geothermal site. There were pools of boiling hot and steaming water scattered about.  At that location, I conducted the interview with the P.M.  We later visited a village that had no electricity or running water. Every one there subsisted off the land and the sea.  In was in that village, surrounded by the locals, that I gave the Prime Minister a copy of the book, Natural Capitalism.  I had interview one of the book's co-authors, Amory Lovins, at his home in Old Snowmass, Colorado a month or so before my trip to Vanuatu. Amory gave me an autographed copy of Natural Capitalism that was to be given to the P.M.   That was pretty cool; being the link between the great energy guru, Amory Lovins and the Prime Minister of Vanuatu.

All told, I spent about five hours with the P.M. that day. He was very gracious, and I left Vanuatu a few days later,  hoping very much that a start on a new and better future for Vanuatu would soon come in the form of  developemnt support for that country's geothermal resource.    It was exciting to think that my friend Rick Chesher, and I, and my associates working on The Hydrogen Age, might have played a significant part in creating a new energy paradigm for that small island nation.

Unfortuantely, the outcome was not what we had hoped for.   The government of Vanuatu was unable to generate any financial support for developing their indigenous renewable energy resources.  Big Oil's political muscle blocked any such possibility.  To this day, Vanuatu remains economically crippled by its total energy dependence on imported oil.

Hairiest landing ever

Ever been on a plane at night, on final approach for a landing in a driving thunderstorm,  with almost no visibility? 

In 2003, I was on a flight from Sydney, Australia to Port Vila, the capitol of the island nation of Vanuatu. I was headed there to produce a segment for the documentary I was working on at that time. It was called, The Hydrogen Age.  More about that part of my Vanuatu adventure on another day.  This entry is an account of the craziest, most scary approach and landing I have ever experienced.

Vanuatu is 1500 miles Northeast of Sydney.  I was traveling aboard an Air Vanuatu 737 turbojet.   After just over three hours flight time, we began our descent into the airport at Port Vila on Efate, the main island of the Vanuatu island group.

As we descended in the darkness, the ride became decidedly more bumpy. I was in an aisle seat, but I could see lightning flashing below and ahead.  The cabin lights had been dimmed for landing. As our descent continued, we soon found ourselves immersed in thunder, lightning, and driving rain.  The turbulence was pretty extreme. The general feeling in the passenger cabin was unsettled to say the least.

Up front, the flight crew were Qantas veterans.  I recall hearing one of the pilots come on the plane's PA system.  He said something like, "No worries, folks. A bit of bad weather here. Hang on, we'll be on the ground in about ten minutes."    His calm voice provided scant reassurance.

The next few minutes were seriously scary. The rain and lightning were with us all the way down.  Water was flowing over the windows as the landing gear was deployed.  Except for frequent lightning flashes, it was still pitch black outside.  Still plenty of buffeting.  Finally, the 737 touched down. It was carrying extra speed, the thrust reversers came on and stayed on as the aircraft slowed.

At that point, our brush with terror was over. Minutes later, as I headed up the aisle to deplane, I came on the two Aussie pilots.  They were heroes to the passengers. I said to them, "Nice work."   The captain smiled, "Day at the office, mate."


Here is an interesting  cockpit video of an Air Vanuatu 737 flight from Port, Vila, Vanuatu to Sydney, Australia....  
 http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/fly-low-and-fast-180956560/?utm_source=airandspacenewsletter&no-ist

Elephants and Rhinos in Australia

Just read a  piece in which the idea of introducing wild elephant herds and rhinoceros to Australia is getting serious consideration. 

Here are some relevant facts. Elephants are in grave danger in Africa due to the value of their ivory tusks.  It's even worse for the rhino because of their horns. Poor Africans are willing to risk their own lives to take down an elephant or rhino, as one successful hunt could make a man rich by local standards. That kind of pressure would be non-existent in the outback of Australia, where there is plenty of open land for elephants and rhinos to roam, and few people whose survival might depend on exploiting them.

According to the article, African gamba grass was imported to Australia long ago, and now has proliferated to the point that it cannot be consumed fast enough by catttle.  The fit for elephants and rhinos in Australia seems good. It's not as though the introduction of a large mammalian species hasn't happened before in Australia. The place is home to a large population of camels, many of which are now wild.  The camel is not indigenous to Australia, but as a species it has certainly found a home there.

If establishing elephant herds and rhinos in Australis saves those species from extinction, what are we waiting for?

Here is a link to the story about elephants and rhinos in Australia...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/01/elephants-rhinos-australia-wild-grass

Encyclopedia of Earth

Here is a tremendous, open source, immanently accessible, peer reviewed information resource on all subjects related to the Earth sciences.

http://www.eoearth.org/

The Log of the Moira

Richard and Frederique Chesher live a very interesting life. For about the last forty years, they have been tooling around the South Pacific ocean aboard Moira, their 44 foot motorsailer/research vessel. They were once chased by pirates and their smarts combined with a bit of luck allowed them to escape. At sea, when pirates call, the victims generally disappear with their plundered vessel to the bottom of the sea, never to be heard from again. That is the constantly looming, deadly downside of travel at sea in a small vessel.

The upside makes the risk worthwhile, and it's on full display in The Log of the Moira, an online chronicle of the Cheshers research expedition in the South Pacific in search of the invisible threads that shape evolution. They spent extended time in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Micronesia, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Palau, New Guinea, Samoa, and a bunch of obscure places, about which us Westerners know virtually nothing.

I have had the good fortune of visiting the Cheshers aboard Moira in Vava'u, a group of outer islands in the Kingdom of Tonga and, a few years later, in Port Vila, the capitol of the island nation of Vanuatu.

I have already written about one of Rick Chesher's exciting initiatives in the March 'Giant Clam' entry to this blog. The Log of the Moira chronicles their adventures, their work with conservation of marine biology of the South Pacific, and their interaction with some of the most unusual human cultures found anywhere on Earth. The log is also packed with the wisdom gleaned from the very unique life experiences they've known, and the people they've met along their journey.

I had the privilege of reading much of the Moira logs twenty years ago, when they existed only in manuscript form. As currently constituted on line, the logs are offered in a visual format that makes them even more engaging. The log is not presented as a journal driven by time, but rather as a collection of experiences and observations, linked by what Rick calls, 'Threads of Awareness in Chaos'. As such, the log is exciting to read and also life affirming in its conclusions.

 Here is a link to the beautifully presented, Log of the Moira...

 http://www.log-of-the-moira.com/

 Here is a link to a sphere image of the Moira in New Caledonia....

 http://www.360cities.net/image/new-caledonia-cruising

Chesher's Dazzling 360 Photography

I first wrote about my friends Richard and Freddie Chesher in my 'Giant Clams' blog.  I will be writing multiple entries about them because they are such remarkable people. The next thing about them that I want to share is the web link to Rick's breathtaking 360 degree photo images.  He's not the only person in the world doing 360 photography, but he does it very, very well, and he is likely the only one using this image technology underwater in the islands of the South Pacific.

Here is a link to Rick Chesher's wonderful 360 photography...

http://www.360cities.net/profile/richard-chesher

Giant Clams

About twenty years ago, there was a story about giant clams in Outside magazine.  At that point, all I knew about giant clams is what I had seen in the Tarzan movies. You know, the pretty girl swims to the bottom of a lagoon and gets her foot stuck in a giant clam's mouth. Tarzan comes to the rescue.

The reality is there have been very few fatalities attributed to giant clams...if any. On a coral reef, they're the equivalent of couch potatoes.  Once they settle in, they cement themselves in place and are there for life. Giant clams are filter feeders, sucking in every kind of nutritive detritus that happens to float by.  They do it very efficiently; well enough in fact that they can grow up to about three feet in diameter. Unfortunately for them, they also happen to be good eating for pacific islanders, most of whom live off the bounty of the sea. In too many places, culinary appeal has turned the giant clam into an endangered species.

Anyway, this Outside magazine story I read was about Dr. Richard Chesher, an American marine biologist, who's working with local villagers in Vava'u in the Kingdom of Tonga to create  underwater sanctuaries to restore giant clams to places where they had disappeared because of overexploitation. And, it turns out, it's an idea that works. In places where you create clam sanctuaries protected by the local people, the entire reef is restored. 


So,  I tracked down this guy Chesher. The next thing I know, I'm in Tonga, hanging out with him and his artist wife,  Frederique Lesne aboard Moira, their beautifully maintained  44 foot sailing yacht/research base.  I find myself swimming above a circle of giant clams living happily in one of  Chesher's sanctuaries. Not exactly an everyday experience.The most satisfying thing that came out of that trip to the South Pacific was the lasting friendship  I developed with two of the most remarkable people I have ever met. Stay tuned for, Chesher's Dazzling 360 Photography,  my next blog entry about them.

http://www.unescap.org/drpad/vc/conference/ex_to_56_gcc.htm