26 April 2019

Nosy pelicans

     As long as I can remember, every morning - almost to the minute - a group of pelicans has flown south to north wherever the water meets the sand which is a slightly different place from day to day, entirely dependent on the tide.  
     Then an hour or so later they made the return trip, southbound from wherever they went.  
     When the sea is calm they'll sit in the warm Caribbean water, bobbing gently.
     This has been their habit for years.

     But that habit changed when construction began on our new buildings.  I noticed it particularly when I would be working upstairs at El Nido....applying caulk, sanding boards, most any kind of work.  Finally I realized I could just quit whatever I was doing and plop down in a chair on the porch and watch.  That was enough for them.  It turned out they were nosy.  

     Instead of flying along the water's edge they rerouted, moving a bit inland and closer to the ongoing work.  They don't stop to visit, but they fly lower and closer than they have for all those past years...close enough for me to watch their shadows chase them as they go by.  And they make more trips.





17 April 2019

The rise in ocean plastics...AMENDED

     SOMETIMES THERE'S GOOD NEWS

    Increasingly there are groups, large and small, commercial and otherwise, working to solve some of earth's problems.  These two are providing alternatives.
     Precious Plastic "...is a global community of hundreds of people working towards a solution to plastic pollution."  Their site provides tutorials, a large selection of free source plans for things like "...machines that enable anyone to recycle plastic..."  and even a bazaar for selling items made from recycled plastic ranging from baskets to jewelry to drawer knobs.  One of the things I found most hopeful was the map that shows how far their community reaches.  Cruise their site at https://preciousplastic.com/
     A very recently introduced effort at combating plastic pollution is Ralph Lauren's "Earth Polo."  Their site proclaims that "Each shirt is made from 12 plastic bottles" and the company pledges to recycle hundreds of millions of plastic bottles by 2025.  And do I care that the shirt is expensive?  If the shirts last as long as the bottles that are currently floating in our oceans and washing up on our shores last, they're worth every penny:  https://tinyurl.com/y3voy5hw


ORIGINAL POST

     Experts, studying data from plastic caught in the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) between 1967 and 2016 has confirmed a rapid increase in plastic pollution in our oceans.  In 2015 is was estimated that 50 million tons 'littered' earth's water; and it is estimated that this will increase by 2025 to 150 million tons.  
     That's a lot of zeroes and a lot of plastic trash in the earth's seas; and what makes all this even worse is that the survey and the resultant report is based on information captured in ONLY "...the North Atlantic and adjacent seas..." 
     The CPR survey is part of the Marine Biological Association of the UK:

     The data is compiled in the report here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09506-1