Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beet poet, garden, harbor, jubali, ocean, photo, photography, produce, sand sculpture, summer, surf on September 6, 2015| 5 Comments »
Signs and portents. Summer is winding down. The writing is on the telephone wires. The sidewalk squirrel is gathering nuts. My neighbor’s garden is producing bounty. A dragon has appeared on the beach. We seized our last chance for a ladies’ lunch overlooking the harbor. I bought Jubali beet-cucumber-apple juice at the farmers market because it was called Beet Poet.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conservation, drew lab, ecosystem, endangered, environment, fiji, joshua drew, maria popova, marine, Meehan Crist, Mindlin Foundation, nagigi, nautil.us, ocean, overfishing, reef, sustainable on August 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Maria Popova linked to this story on twitter. It’s about how climate change is affecting a way of life for Fiji Islanders.
Meehan Crist writes at the blog Nautil.us, “The day that conservation biologist Joshua Drew, his two students, and I arrive in the Fijian village of Nagigi, the wind is blowing so hard that the coconut palms are bent sideways. ‘Trade winds,’ we are told. And, ‘El Nino. The villagers here also know that climate change is affecting the weather, but their more immediate problem, shared across the Pacific—and, indeed, the world—is an ocean ecosystem sorely depleted by overfishing.
“Nagigi is a village of about 240 people living in tin-roofed wooden homes strung along a sandy coastline. A single paved road runs the length of the village, parallel to the ocean, and along this road are homes clustered by family, painted in cheerful pastels, and connected by well-worn paths through the crab grass. ‘Before,’ said Avisake Nasi, a woman in her late 50s who has been fishing this reef her whole life, ‘you just go out and you find plenty fish. Now, you have to look.’ …
“If pressures mount from too many sides at once—rising ocean temperatures, acidification, pollution, overfishing—the combined pressure will be too much even for Fiji’s remarkably resilient reefs to bear. …
“Conservationists and humanitarian groups have recently united in the call for sustainable resource management, and in this trend, Nagigi is ahead of much of the Western world. Villagers have been discussing how they might use a traditional ban on fishing known as a tabu (tam-bu) to help manage their marine resources in new ways. …
“Drew presents his findings about how fish here are interconnected with other reefs, and how to best protect the species most important to the village in terms of food and income. He talks about how, for the last three years, he has been collecting baseline data about the species present on the reef so that if the village sets up a tabu, its effects can be measured.
“His audience is most interested in what Drew has to say about where to set up a tabu—include the mangroves at the left side of the village shore, because they act as fish nurseries—and for how long—three years would give crucial species enough time to mature and spawn. There has been some talk of a one-year tabu, which would be less of a hardship for villagers who will have to walk a mile or more to reach ocean where they are allowed to fish. But Drew’s data suggest this wouldn’t be long enough to make the sort of difference the village wants to see. ‘I can only offer information,’ Drew says at the end of his presentation, ‘the decision is yours.’ ”
The reporting for Crist’s story was made possible by a grant from the Mindlin Foundation.
Try to see the related climate-change movie Revolution, which I wrote about here.
Photo: Meehan Crist
The view from Nagigi’s school to the sea, where many locals make their living
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bill murphy, conservation, giant Pacific, intelligence, living on earth, marine, mollusk, Mr. Potato Head, new Zealand sea life, ocean, octopus, postaday, rambo, sea, sony, Sy Montgomery, Tia Strombeck, Wilson Menashi on June 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »
I was charmed by Sy Montgomery’s recent article in the Boston Globe on the intelligence of octopi (she says “octopuses”).
The author of The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, Montgomery describes getting to know a clever and apparently affectionate octopus called Octavia.
“Everyone wanted to pet Octavia,” she writes. “And no wonder. She was beautiful, graceful, and affectionate. The fact that she was boneless, slimy, and living in painfully cold, 47-degree water deterred none of us.
“What thrilled us — me, New England Aquarium volunteer Wilson Menashi, and four visitors from the environmental radio show Living on Earth was the surprising fact that Octavia, who clearly wanted to be petted, was a giant Pacific octopus.
“When her keeper, Bill Murphy, opened the top of her exhibit, Octavia recognized Menashi and me immediately; we’d been working with her for several weeks. Turning red with excitement, she flowed over toward us from the far side of her tank. When we put our hands in the water, her arms rose to meet ours, embracing us with dozens of her strong, sensitive, white suckers. Occasionally Wilson handed her a fish from the plastic bucket perched on the edge of her tank. …
“Then, as Menashi reached for another capelin to feed her, we realized the bucket of fish was gone. While no fewer than six people were watching, and three of us had our arms in her tank, Octavia had stolen the bucket right out from under us.
“ ‘Octopuses are phenomenally smart,’ Menashi says. And he should know: He has worked with them for 20 years, and is expert in keeping these intelligent invertebrates occupied. Otherwise, they become bored. Aquariums design elaborate escape-proof lids for their octopus tanks, and still they are often thwarted. Octopuses not infrequently slip out of their exhibits and turn up in other tanks to eat the inhabitants.
“Many aquariums give their octopuses Legos to dismantle, jars with lids to unscrew, and Mr. Potato Head to play with. Menashi, a retired inventor, designed a series of nesting Plexiglas cubes, each with a different lock, which Boston’s octopuses quickly learned to open to get at a tasty crab inside. And just this spring, New Zealand Sea Life aquarists teamed up with Sony engineers to teach a female octopus named Rambo to press the red shutter button on a waterproof camera to take photos of visitors, which the aquarium sells for $2 each to benefit its conservation programs. Rambo learned in three attempts.”
What a different perspective on the scary beast in the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which I saw as a child.
I’d love to copy the whole intriguing article, but I’m afraid that would not be “fair use.” So read it all here.
Photo: Tia Strombeck
Sy Montgomery pets Octavia, an octopus at the New England Aquarium in Boston.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canada, carbon dioxide, coral, diver, envionment, fossil fuel, global warming, marine, ocean, reef, revolution, rob stewart, saipan, sea, seychelles, sharkwater, skeleton on May 17, 2015| 2 Comments »
Suzanne’s Mom was asked to review Revolution, a film by the young environmentalist, biologist, diver, and Sharkwater filmmaker Rob Stewart.
Encompassing gorgeous deep-sea photography, scientific climate-change testimony, a representative of the drowning country of Seychelles, and many youth demonstrations, the documentary forces you to think about what the burning of fossil fuels is doing to the oceans and what it means for the future of the planet. It also gives you the sense that anyone can do something about it — take up a camera, make a poster, or write a letter that makes a change.
The film is infused with a sense of youth, of young people saying, “Enough!” I particularly loved the moment early on when Stewart, who had read only two books on filmmaking, is flubbing his lines in front of Darwin’s Arch. What comes across in addition to the humorous inexperience is a feeling of energy, optimism, and determination.
The film has many engaging details about sea life that Stewart can’t resist throwing in, like how the endangered pygmy seahorse, which camouflages itself to look like coral, “mates for life — and the guy gets pregnant!”
He talks about how the burning of fossil fuels creates too much carbon dioxide, which is absorbed by the ocean and is harmful to anything that needs to grow a skeleton, which is pretty much everything but nasty, poisonous creatures that flourish in the muck where corals died, like the flamboyant cuttlefish. Coral expert Charlie Veron comments that at the same rate of ocean acidification caused by too much CO2, there will be no coral reefs in 50 years.
Stewart also looks at the island nation Madagascar, sole home of lemurs, explaining that endangered tropical forests are responsible for 1/4 of the world’s species and 1/3 of our oxygen. Madagascar scientist Serge Rajaobelina says that population growth on the island and the burning of the trees for development has meant the loss of 80 percent of the forest in 40 years, more than in 55 million years.
The movie goes on to cover perhaps a few too many youth protests, including one in which an inspired, tree-planting young boy says, “We have found we have to save our own future,” and is later arrested in tears.
But then we get to see that children and young adults are actually having an impact.
A sixth-grade class in Saipan writes letters to the Saipan government against killing sharks for shark fin soup, and the government signs a law preventing the practice. In fact, we are told, since the first Stewart film, China, the main adherent of shark-fin soup, has dropped the practice by 70 percent, and 100 countries have banned it.
The upbeat Saipan children who comment on their successful advocacy embody the truth of my favorite Pete Seeger line, “one and one and 50 make a million.” Says one, “Maybe the world might not end because of what we are doing.”
Watch the Revolution trailer here.
[We do not accept gifts here, so the DVD that the film company sends me for screening and reviewing will be forwarded to Save the Bay, RI.]
The late Rob Stewart. The filmmaker did not come up from a dive 1/31/17 near Key Largo.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged army corps of engineers, city data, coastal, erosion, hurricane sandy, narragansett bay, ocean, postaday, resilience, revolution, rhode island, rob stewart, rockefeller foundation, Structures of Coastal Resilience on May 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »
In March, ecoRI posted an article about a Rockefeller Foundation proposal for protection of four sensitive coastal areas.
The website reports, “Leading climate scientists, engineers, designers and scholars recently collaborated to create comprehensive resiliency design proposals for vulnerable coasts along the North Atlantic, such as Rhode Island’s.
“Structures of Coastal Resilience (SCR), a Rockefeller Foundation-supported project dedicated to providing resilient design proposals for urban coastal environments, focuses on four vulnerable coasts: Narragansett Bay; Jamaica Bay in New York; Atlantic City in New Jersey; and Norfolk, Va.
“Each of the project locations feature ongoing projects by the Army Corps of Engineers, and each location is highly prone to flooding and socioeconomic vulnerability, according to project officials. The goal of SCR is provide actionable project recommendations for hurricane protection and climate adaptation. …
“As Rhode Island was spared the worst of the devastation associated with Hurricane Sandy [in 2012], it’s an ideal location for developing structures of coastal resilience that can be advanced gradually and through systematic evaluation and adaptation, according to project officials. …
“As increased urban runoff and higher saltwater levels merge on the coastal zone, some species are threatened while others adapt. Marsh and dunes recede while weedy forest cover creeps closer to the beachfront. Plants with high salt tolerance that are capable of rapid establishment have begun to colonize areas with accommodating soil. Designers can capitalize on this process, deploying plants to prevent erosion and build resilient coasts.” More here.
Folks, a woman involved with a movie about saving the oceans (Revolution) e-mailed to ask if I would review it, and I said sure. So watch this space.
Photo: CityData.com
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged algae, biologist, derrick jackson, ecology, eelgrass, environment, kelp, marine, nancy caruso, nature, ocean, restoration, sea, seaweed on December 3, 2014| 2 Comments »
The radio show Living on Earth (LOE) reported recently on work to restore seaweeds that are a key part of the ecosystem.
From the LOE website: “Ripped from the seafloor by strong swells, massive amounts of kelp recently washed ashore in southern California. But the uprooted algae may actually be a sign of successful kelp restoration efforts. Marine biologist Nancy Caruso discusses the fragile ecosystem and how she and a community are helping to rebuild the majestic kelp forests.”
Radio host Steve Curwood interviewed Caruso. She recounts how she began 12 years ago with a group of students and volunteers “to restore the kelp forests off of Orange County’s coast.”
After a storm, she says, big holes get ripped in the forest of kelp, often 10 feet high. Then “new life can grow from the bottom up, and so if we see this happen, which we’re seeing right now, the kelp returns immediately after this event, then we know that our restoration efforts are successful, and after 30 years of our local ecosystem not having healthy kelp forests, we can rest assured that it’s now restored.”
To Curwood’s question about how restoration is done, Caruso answers, “It was actually quite an effort because I had the help of 5,000 students from ages 11 to 18 as well as 250 skilled volunteer divers, and we planted this kelp in 15 different areas in Orange County. There’s a spot down in Dana Point. It’s the only kelp forest that was left in Orange County so we would collect the reproductive blades from those kelp plants, and I would take them into the classrooms for the students to clean them and we would actually stress them out overnight. We would leave them out of water in the refrigerator, kind covered with paper towels, and then the next morning we would put them back in the ice-cold seawater and the kelp blade would release millions of spores” that would then be raised in nurseries and returned to the ocean.
“All those animals that get washed up on the beach inside the wrangled tangled kelp become a food source for shorebirds that live along our coast.”
More from Living on Earth here. For more on the importance of seaweed, see also Derrick Z. Jackson’s article in the Boston Sunday Globe: “Eelgrass Could Save the Planet.”
Photo: NOAA’s National Ocean Service
Kelp forests can be seen along much of the west coast of North America. 
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Arkansas, bio-additive, Chythanya Murali, Deepwater Horizon, ecology, ecosystem, eighth grader, environment, enzymes, Gulf of Mexico, jessica orwig, marine, ocean, oil spills, plankton, science fair, sea on September 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »
John sent a link to a story at Business Insider about a science fair project that could have a real impact on the environment.
Jessica Orwig writes, “This 13-year-old is trying to save the world one ecosystem at a time. Chythanya Murali, an eighth grader from Arkansas, has created a safe, effective, non-conventional method to clean oil spills, by harnessing the cleaning properties of bacteria — specifically the enzymes they use to break down oil particles. These enzymes disassemble oil molecules, making way for the bacteria to convert it into harmless compounds. …
“In 2012, a study found a chilling discovery about the oil-cleaning agents dispersed in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. When combined with the oil itself, the resulting mixture was 52 times more toxic to small animals like plankton than oil alone. …
” ‘My inspiration for this project began [from] the immense damage caused by the BP oil spill in early 2010.’
“To improve oil-cleaning methods, Murali designed a science fair project that explored the different mixtures of oil-eating enzymes and oil-breaking-down bacterias, to see how they effect the marine environment.
” ‘The combination of bio-additive enzymes and oil-degrading bacteria as a novel combination for short and long-term cleaning, and its effect on ecosystems, was not explored before,’ Murali told Business Insider.
“So it only seemed natural to Murali to combine the two and see what happened. She discovered that in a small-scale aquarium, the combination of her chosen oil-cleaning agents could help remove oil while preserving the health of the overall ecosystem, something that some of the oil-cleaning agents we use today cannot achieve.” Read more here.
Kids are going to save the world, I think.
Photo: Chythanya Murali
Chythanya Murali with her science fair poster.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Danmarks Radio, denmark, jutland, Lene Kjeldgaard, lido, Nørre Vorupør, north sea, ocean, photo, saltwater, sea, sea pool, Sofus Comer, swim, swimming pool, Thisted council, thy on July 16, 2014| 2 Comments »
Klaus’s dad — who, I am told, is a musician in his spare time — recently wrote about enjoying the post on conducting your own orchestra. He lives in Denmark. I told him I have also posted about Denmark a few times and hope to do so often.
So when SmallerCitiesUnite! tweeted this tidbit on Denmark today, I knew it had to be in the blog.
From The Local: “Swimming in the North Sea just got a bit easier, at least near the northwestern Jutland town of Thy. Denmark opened its first sea pool, also known as a lido, over the weekend in Nørre Vorupør on the coast of the North Sea.
“The 50 square metre open-air pool allows swimmers, divers and kayakers to be in the North Sea without worrying about large waves, dangerous undercurrents or rip tides. …
“ ‘It could lead to investments in summerhouses or rental opportunities,’ Lene Kjeldgaard, the mayor of Thisted council, told Danmarks Radio.
“See a gallery of photos from the pool’s first weekend here.”
Photo: Sofus Comer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amelia Urry, andrew sullivan, art, artist, brown university, ceramic, coral, Courtney Mattison, ecology, environment, global warming, grist, marine, ocean, Our Changing Seas, postaday, reef, rhode island school of design, risd, seas on May 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Some posts at Andrew Sullivan I only need to glance at briefly and bells go off: for example, this entry about an artist who works with coral.
Andrew quotes Amelia Urry writing about Courtney Mattison, who became enamored of coral while studying conservation biology at Brown University and moonlighting at the Rhode Island School of Design.
“Mattison’s newest piece, Our Changing Seas III,” says Urry at Grist, “depicts a hurricane-spiral of bleached corals coalescing to a bright center. You can read it as a message of hope or one of impending doom, depending on your disposition …
“At the heart of Mattison’s artwork is her desire to inspire real-life changes in how people view and treat the world’s oceans and environments. Similar to the Our Changing Seas series, Courtney Mattison’s Hope Spots collection comprises 18 vignettes, each of which represents a vital marine ecosystem in its ideal form (that is, protected from various threats such as global warming or pollution).” Read more at Grist, here.
Art: Courtney Mattison
“Our Changing Seas III,” a ceramic coral reef
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anglerfish, biologist, clownfish, curwood, ecology, Eddie Welker, environment, fish, living on earth, loe, marine biology, Masaki Miya, nature, ocean, Palumbi, postaday, The Extreme Life of the Sea, transdifferentiation, turritopsis on April 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Photo: Masaki Miya et al. Wikimedia Creative Commons
Anglerfish use bioluminescence to attract their prey in the darkest depths of the ocean.
When John was little, he liked a book called Fish Do the Strangest Things. Strangeness is a great focus for a nature book, because everyone likes offbeat critters.
Steve Curwood, founder of the radio show Living on Earth, recently interviewed the author of a book that focuses on the strangeness of ocean life.
CURWOOD: “In an engaging new book called The Extreme Life of the Sea, biologist Steve Palumbi and his novelist son Tony deepen our understanding of how strange sea life has managed to survive against all odds. … Why did you write this book. Why now?
PALUMBI: “Well, the real reason is that we’re trying an experiment: can you take the narrative style and approach that a novelist would use and combine it with what a scientist would do? … You don’t really care about the plot until you care about the characters, and so we wanted to write a book that made you care about the characters.
CURWOOD: “Now, you write about the extreme life of the sea, the oldest, the hottest, the shallowest, to name a few. Why did you choose this approach?
PALUMBI: “Because it was a way of getting people’s attention to the really sort of amazing things that these critters do. Organisms in the sea live in some of the hottest places, they live in some of the coldest places, and how they do that is something marine scientists have paid a lot of attention to. So it was really a way to make it more engaging, more fun, and to let us move credibly between different kinds of organisms all in the same chapter. …
CURWOOD: “You had one extreme that you called immortal.
PALUMBI: “That’s an amazing jellyfish called turritopsis, and it has the remarkable ability to age in reverse. So when the environment is bad, this animal can essentially go from its adult body form back, back, back to its larval form, and then start all over again. … It’s called transdifferentiation. It’s the only critter known to be able to do that.”
More here, where you can read the rest of the transcript and listen to the recording. It’s all pretty amazing.
Photo: Eddie Welker, Flickr Creative Commons 2.0)
Clownfish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged billet head, Bob Breidenbach, charles w. morgan, charlestown, Matthew Barnes, moby, Mystic Scenic Studios, mystic seaport, navy yard, ocean, postaday, preservation, saltwater, spaulding, stowaway, timber, whales, whaling ship, wooden on January 25, 2014| 2 Comments »
Asakiyume put me on to this offer from the nautical museum in Mystic, Connecticut. They have just finished restoring a whaling ship, and the public is invited to apply for the role of stowaway on its first trip.
Now, as we all know, stowaways stow themselves away in secret, against the wishes of the boat’s owners, but the museum has decided to put a new spin on an old concept.
Here’s what the Providence Journal reports: “Mystic Seaport is looking for a stowaway for its restored 19th century whaling ship. Whoever is hired will sail with the Charles W. Morgan ship next summer on visits to ports across New England. The stowaway will receive a stipend and will share the experience through videos and blog posts.
“The museum in Mystic has spent four years restoring the ship that was built in 1841. The Morgan’s last voyage ended in 1921 and is the world’s only surviving wooden whaling ship.
“The ship … will sail with a mission to raise awareness of the importance of protecting the oceans and its species.” More here.
Kind of counterintuitive to use a whaling ship to promote preserving the ocean and its creatures, but I guess no one is going to hunt any whales. Good thing, too. I read Moby You-Know-Who finally in 2010, and I wouldn’t recommend the life aboard ship.
Stowaway entries must be submitted via e-mail to stowaway@mysticseaport.org by 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on February 18, 2014. I like the idea that the stowaway is expected to blog about the trip. S/he just better not be prone to seasickness.
Update 5/11/14: Read here how the whaling ship restoration benefited from special timber stored upright in saltwater at Charlestown Navy Yard in Mass. and rediscovered during the construction of Spaulding Rehab.
Photo: Bob Breidenbach/The Providence Journal
Matthew Barnes of Mystic Seaport examines the billet head on the bow of the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beach, bluffs, harbor, lace cap hydrangea, ocean, postaday, raft, ragged sailor, rhode island, sunset, swim, waves on September 2, 2013| 2 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amami Oshima, crop circle, japan, marine biology, NHK, noaa, ocean, photographer, postaday, puffer fish, sea, this is colossal, underwater, Yoji Ookata on August 21, 2013| 4 Comments »
The website “This Is Colossal” has a lovely bit on a fish with artistic tendencies.
Japanese photographer Yoji Ookata “obtained his scuba license at the age of 21 and has since spent the last 50 years exploring and documenting his discoveries off the coast of Japan. Recently while on a dive near Amami Oshima at the southern tip of the country, Ookata spotted something he had never encountered before: rippling geometric sand patterns nearly six feet in diameter almost 80 feet below sea level. He soon returned with colleagues and a television crew from the nature program NHK to document the origins what he dubbed the ‘mystery circle.’ …
“The team discovered the artist is a small puffer fish only a few inches in length that swims tirelessly through the day and night to create these vast organic sculptures using the gesture of a single fin. …
“Apparently the female fish are attracted to the hills and valleys within the sand and traverse them carefully to discover the male fish where the pair eventually lay eggs at the circle’s center, the grooves later acting as a natural buffer to ocean currents that protect the delicate offspring.” Read more.
Never imagine that there is nothing left to discover. After all, “According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration less than five percent of the world’s oceans have been explored,”
Photo: This Is Colossal.
The male puffer fish makes this nest to attract a female.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 20000 leagues, chichi, edie widder, giant squid, jacki lyden, japan, jules verne, kirk douglas, kraken, nautilus, nemo, ocean, richard ellis, sea, tom ashbrook on January 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »
From the Jules Verne classic 20,00 Leagues Under the Sea came a film with Kirk Douglas and a memorable Giant Squid. (Disney will probably sue if I embed a pirated trailer. See the official one here. It has the Giant Squid in it.)
Until very recently, no one could prove that such a thing as a Giant Squid even existed. I have seen renderings of what sailors might really have seen when they described a Giant Squid: for example, a whale with an octopus wrapped around it. And I just learned that the mythological Kraken may be the result of people seeing a Giant Squid and thinking it was a supernatural monster. (Oh, surely not the gentle Kraken of The Island of the Aunts!)
Here’s what made my day: the wonder and delight in the voice of the woman videotaping the first Giant Squid ever caught on camera, a creature that hangs out in the deep sea off Chichi island, Japan, where expeditions going down 3,000 feet have sought him for years.
You can hear Tom Ashbrook’s guests talk about this triumph at WBUR’s OnPoint program.
They are Richard Ellis, author of “The Search For The Giant Squid: The Biology and Mythology of the World’s Most Elusive Sea Creature,” and Edie Widder, the president and senior scientist at the Ocean Research and Conservation Association who filmed the Giant Squid.
“For thousands of years, sailors have told stories of giant squids. In myth and cinema, the kraken was the most terrible of sea monsters. Now, it’s been captured — on a soon-to-be-seen video.
From National Public Radio: “Even after decades of searching, giant squids had only been seen in still photographs. Finally, in last July, scientists filmed the first video of a live giant squid swimming some 2,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
“Edie Widder is the ocean researcher who shot the footage, which is slated to be released in a Discovery Channel documentary later this month.
“She told Jacki Lyden, host of weekends on All Things Considered, the elusive creature could have been as much as 30 feet long” More.
(I am spatially challenged and embarrassed to admit how many decades it took me to figure out that Captain Nemo traveled in his Nautilus 20,000 leagues horizontally, not straight down.)
Photograph: Edie Widder/Discovery Channel
A giant squid stars in this still image taken from the first-ever video of giant squids.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, bren smith, Charles Yarish, connecticut, Craig LeMoult, ecology, environment, farm, ocean, ron gautreau, sea, seaweed, uconn on October 12, 2012| 3 Comments »
I like win-win stories like this one from National Public Radio. It’s about a new crop with a lot of monetary potential — and distinct advantages for the environment.
“It doesn’t require any land or fertilizer. Farming it improves the environment, and it can be used in a number of ways. So what is this miracle cash crop of the future? It’s seaweed.
“Charlie Yarish, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, loves seaweed. In nature, he says, when seaweed turns a rich chocolate color, that means the plant is picking up nitrogen, a process called nutrient bioextraction. …
“Many plants and animals cannot survive when there is too much nitrogen in the water, but seaweed is able to ‘capture’ the nitrogen, as well as contaminants in the water.
“A United Nations report says that nearly 16 million tons of seaweed were farmed in 2008 — most of it in Asia. Yarish helped a company called Ocean Approved start the United States’ first open-water kelp farm in the Gulf of Maine in 2006 … Now, he’s helping to create a seaweed farm off the coast of Connecticut.
“Bren Smith owns and runs the Thimble Island Oyster Company, off the coast of Branford, Conn. After his business was hit hard by Tropical Storm Irene last year, ruining about 80 percent of the shellfish crop, Smith started looking around for something more resilient to farm. That’s when he found Yarish, who agreed to help set him up in the seaweed farming business. …
” ‘There’s no barns, there’s no tractors. This is what’s so special about ocean farming. It’s that it’s got a small footprint and it’s under the water. I mean, we’re so lucky; I feel like I stumbled on this just great secret that we then can model and spread out to other places,’ ” Smith says. …
” ‘The plan is to actually split it into a couple different experimental markets — one for food, one for fertilizer, one for fish food. I’m [also] working with a skin care company in Connecticut, and then one for biofuel,’ Smith says. He’s even hoping he can someday fuel his own boat with biofuel from the seaweed.”
Craig LeMoult has the whole story here at NPR, where you also can listen to the audio.
Photograph by Ron Gautreau
Oyster fisherman Bren Smith on his boat.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 