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Pope’s Words on Coral Reefs
Compliments of Jim Harper jim@harperfish.com via Coral-list: coral.aoml.noaa.gov
41. In tropical and subtropical seas, we find coral reefs comparable to the great forests on dry land, for they shelter approximately a million species, including fish, crabs, molluscs, sponges and algae. Many of the world’s coral reefs are already barren or in a state of constant decline. “Who turned the wonderworld of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft of colour and life?”25 This phenomenon is due largely to pollution which reaches the sea as the result of deforestation, agricultural monocultures, industrial waste and destructive fishing methods, especially those using cyanide and dynamite. It is aggravated by the rise in temperature of the oceans. All of this helps us to see that every intervention in nature can have consequences which are not immediately evident, and that certain ways of exploiting resources prove costly in terms of degradation which ultimately reaches the ocean bed itself.
42. Greater investment needs to be made in research aimed at understanding more fully the functioning of ecosystems and adequately analyzing the different variables associated with any significant modification of the environment.
True Activist: Longest Floating Structure in History Sets Out to Clean the Ocean in 2016 & video
May 29, 2015 by John Vibes
http://www.trueactivist.com/longest-floating-structure-in-history-sets-out-to-clean-the-ocean-in-2016/
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TranslateAn ambitious new project is hoping to help clean the world’s oceans with a trash collector that is reportedly the longest floating structure in recorded world history.
Back in 2013 we reported that a 19-year-old developed a plan to clean up the world’s oceans in just 5 years, removing 7,250,000 tons of plastic. However, last week, Boyan Slat (now 21), founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, announced that this awesome project will be deployed in 2016.
Slat’s invention consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Working with the flow of nature, his solution to the problematic shifting of trash is to have the array span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel as the ocean moves through it. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from smaller forms, such as plankton, and be filtered and stored for recycling. The issue of by-catches, killing life forms in the procedure of cleaning trash, can be virtually eliminated by using booms instead of nets and it will result in a larger areas covered. Because of trash’s density compared to larger sea animals, the use of booms will allow creatures to swim under the booms unaffected, reducing wildlife death substantially.
According to a press release published by the company:
The array is projected to be deployed in Q2 2016. The feasibility of deployment, off the coast of Tsushima, an island located in the waters between Japan and South-Korea is currently being researched. The system will span 2000 meters, thereby becoming the longest floating structure ever deployed in the ocean (beating the current record of 1000 m held by the Tokyo Mega-Float). It will be operational for at least two years, catching plastic pollution before it reaches the shores of the proposed deployment location of Tsushima island. Tsushima island is evaluating whether the plastic can be used as an alternative energy source.
Pollution in the world’s waterways is one of the most serious challenges that our species is facing, and creative solutions are going to be needed in order to solve this problem. People from all over the world have recognized this issue and have been working hard to come up with their own ideas to clean trash from oceans and other bodies of water.
“Taking care of the world’s ocean garbage problem is one of the largest environmental challenges mankind faces today. Not only will this first cleanup array contribute to cleaner waters and coasts but it simultaneously is an essential step towards our goal of cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This deployment will enable us to study the system’s efficiency and durability over time,” Slat said.
John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.
This article (Longest Floating Structure In History Sets Out To Clean The Ocean In 2016!) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.
Dr. William Alevizon’s new E-book “Caribbean Coral Reefs: An Introduction” released
It was a pleasure to learn that former Reef Relief Scientific Advisor Dr. Bill Alevizon has released an update of his earlier book “Coral Reefs: An Introduction.” He tells us that:
“This eBook is meant to serve as an introduction to the structure, habitats, and marine life of Caribbean coral reefs (including Florida and The Bahamas). It is written for a general audience, and has been designed and formatted for today’s HD ebook readers and software. Text is accompanied by numerous color photographs and diagrams, organized in a fixed layout to maximize instructional benefit. This work should prove particularly useful to students, recreational divers and snorkelers, or anyone else just beginning exploration and/or study of these amazing ecosystems.”“William S. Alevizon, Ph.D. is a professional marine biologist and educator with more than thirty years of writing, teaching, research, and consulting experience on Caribbean coral reefs and reef life.”