By Daniel de la Calle
Here is the classic list of web finds you have seen right here in the past. This week I dug out two great videos, info about a workshop in China, a job offer, some news and a literary reference, clearly enough to enhance your weekend experience.
Echinoderms will be fine. According to recent research, sea urchins, starfish or sea cucumbers will be able to adapt to increasingly acidic oceans. I knew about sea urchin's resilience and adaptability from seeing how they are one of the few living creatures left at harbors in Spain. We do not eat them, but they are a very popular dish in France and Japan. Sea cucumbers have always had a special place in my heart and imagination. When I was 10 I read a couple of Emilio Salgari's stories and one was titled Trepang Fishermen (I Pescatori di Trepang) and it was about the sea cucumber fishermen in Indonesia. Sea cucumbers are very popular all along Asia, as food and for their medicinal values. The illustrations in my book showed some steaming hot delicious trepang that locals devoured. I have to admit they do not look as tempting when seen underwater, but I am ready to try them. Anywhere in New York you might know?
Read more HERE
Continuing in Asia, Chinese Xiamen University is offering a joint international workshop on Climate Change and Ocean Carbon on April 3-4, 2011. More specifically, the second day's theme is "Coastal Carbon & Ocean Acidification". You can register online HERE (ha ha ha) and read more about it HERE.
Interested in a postdoctoral position in Coral Ocean Acidification? There is one postdoc position to join a recently funded research project investigating the physiological impacts of ocean acidification, temperature and nutrients on reef building corals at the University of Delaware. To read more, CLICK.
Echinoderms might be alright in a more acidic ocean, but Antarctic krill is at serious risk. Tasmanian scientists have released new research that shows how devastating Ocean Acidification is to Antarctica's staple food. The Australian scientists exposed krill to different levels of CO2, from the current 380ppm up to 2000ppm. "In the tanks with highest levels none of the embryos survived to hatch". Read more HERE
This is a video on the ocean acidification research carried out on the island of Svalbard, in Norway. If you are interested in people's accents this is an absolute must.
A terrific video from Oregon Public Broadcast on research by Oregon State University scientists on oyster hatcheries along the Pacific shore.
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News: What Blogs Are For
Friday, November 12, 2010
The Sea of Huge Breams
Friday, October 08, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
When we are a small person, the novelty of life and language combined with our imagination sometimes makes us come to the most hilarious and endearing words and conclusions. My daughter is bilingual and I have to confess that oftentimes I delay correcting some of her funny Spanglish words to savor them a little longer.
I started fishing right here
at the age of seven and back then and there you could only hope to catch two kinds of fish with dough bait: a "vieja" (spanish for "old woman"), an ugly looking rubbery fish with horn-like protuberances that not even stray cats were interested in, and the magnificent "sargo", a beautiful silvery bream that has a touch of gold on the head and a vertical black line just before the tail. The petit sargos I would catch were all juvenile fish because my hooks were lilliputian, but I knew breams got much, much bigger and I already suffered from the fisherman's obsession with size. Following this account you can imagine that when I first heard about the Sargasso Sea, for us the Mar de los Sargazos or "sea of huge breams", my eyes popped with the vision of that fisherman's dreamsea, the surface of the water boiling, crammed with giant silvery fish desperate to be caught and taken away from that concentration of life. My imagination went berserk, I became quite obsessed with the Sargasso Sea, with the sound of those two words, and made the resolution to one day get to that paradise with a fishing line. I later found out that sargassum are a type of seaweed, but lately I have also discovered that I was not the only one with the wrong idea of the place. The Sargasso Sea was always portrayed as a dead zone of lost ships and skeleton crews floating in calm waters, all surrounded by algae and very little or no life. Scientists are currently showing more and more interest in this mega-nursery for ocean fauna and flora where diverse fish, crabs, shrimp and sea slugs try to grow under the protection of the sargassum canopy, eluding the turtles, tuna, dolphins, mahi mahi and sea birds that flock to the area as well. This is why the Government of Bermuda, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University, Mission Blue, the US Southeast Region of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute, among others are trying a new initiative to establish the Sargasso Sea, that sea within an ocean, as a high protected area.
Meanwhile, on the Pacific coast the Federal Government has announced a proposal to protect 150 miles of Californian shoreline for the severely endangered black abalone. The Center for Biological Diversity informs on its website that the decision results from a lawsuit placed by them "challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s failure to designate critical habitat for the shellfish, which, once common in Southern California tide pools, has declined by 99 percent since the 1970s." Black abalone first suffered from overfishing and is now under serious threat by a disease called withering syndrome and the sword of Damocles of ocean acidification to the future of the snail's growth. You can read more about it here.
When we are a small person, the novelty of life and language combined with our imagination sometimes makes us come to the most hilarious and endearing words and conclusions. My daughter is bilingual and I have to confess that oftentimes I delay correcting some of her funny Spanglish words to savor them a little longer.
I started fishing right here
at the age of seven and back then and there you could only hope to catch two kinds of fish with dough bait: a "vieja" (spanish for "old woman"), an ugly looking rubbery fish with horn-like protuberances that not even stray cats were interested in, and the magnificent "sargo", a beautiful silvery bream that has a touch of gold on the head and a vertical black line just before the tail. The petit sargos I would catch were all juvenile fish because my hooks were lilliputian, but I knew breams got much, much bigger and I already suffered from the fisherman's obsession with size. Following this account you can imagine that when I first heard about the Sargasso Sea, for us the Mar de los Sargazos or "sea of huge breams", my eyes popped with the vision of that fisherman's dreamsea, the surface of the water boiling, crammed with giant silvery fish desperate to be caught and taken away from that concentration of life. My imagination went berserk, I became quite obsessed with the Sargasso Sea, with the sound of those two words, and made the resolution to one day get to that paradise with a fishing line. I later found out that sargassum are a type of seaweed, but lately I have also discovered that I was not the only one with the wrong idea of the place. The Sargasso Sea was always portrayed as a dead zone of lost ships and skeleton crews floating in calm waters, all surrounded by algae and very little or no life. Scientists are currently showing more and more interest in this mega-nursery for ocean fauna and flora where diverse fish, crabs, shrimp and sea slugs try to grow under the protection of the sargassum canopy, eluding the turtles, tuna, dolphins, mahi mahi and sea birds that flock to the area as well. This is why the Government of Bermuda, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University, Mission Blue, the US Southeast Region of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute, among others are trying a new initiative to establish the Sargasso Sea, that sea within an ocean, as a high protected area.
Meanwhile, on the Pacific coast the Federal Government has announced a proposal to protect 150 miles of Californian shoreline for the severely endangered black abalone. The Center for Biological Diversity informs on its website that the decision results from a lawsuit placed by them "challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s failure to designate critical habitat for the shellfish, which, once common in Southern California tide pools, has declined by 99 percent since the 1970s." Black abalone first suffered from overfishing and is now under serious threat by a disease called withering syndrome and the sword of Damocles of ocean acidification to the future of the snail's growth. You can read more about it here.
Angry Denials
Saturday, October 02, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
The internet, that jungle out there.
If you have looked for articles about ocean acidification or any of the uncountable environmental problems we are facing I am certain you have already stumbled upon a website or personal blog where it is all refuted and mocked, most times with a shockingly angry and aggressive tone. I am not into gossiping, junk food or onychophagia, but do sadly have other unhealthy habits, one of which is the inability to simply close such pages and move on. I always need to read inside, scroll down the comments, open new tabs to find out who the person writing is, follow that ping pong game of replies and counter replies. Where exactly does this anger come from? It cannot just be from that person's belief that environmentalists and scientists are wrong or liars. These comments tend to be peppered with curses, thoughts are clumsily yelled, misspelled from the fury spilled onto the keyboard.
But every once in a while the information is more organized, it has the appearance of equanimity, of founded research and knowledge. Since I am no scientist and would get lost in any serious discussion on geology, chemistry or biology, a few of those adamant statements do shake me and make me wonder. One of those people, though histrionic, is that certain Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (always think of Lord Melbury when I read about him), a more eloquent, versed, verbal speaker than the average. This even served him to give testimony this past spring in Congress as an unidentified type of expert. Something good has come out of so much wrong: 20 world renowned climate scientists has examined the part of Monckton's testimony related to their particular area of expertise and the summary of those responses has been put together in Climate Scientists Respond,
a document that not only refutes every single argument put forward by the aforementioned, but most misinformed testimonies out there. It makes for good reading plus, since one of those experts happens to be Ken Caldeira, one of my favorite interviews in A Sea Change, I felt obliged to include it in this blog.
Ken and Sven walking down the beach in California.
The internet, that jungle out there.
If you have looked for articles about ocean acidification or any of the uncountable environmental problems we are facing I am certain you have already stumbled upon a website or personal blog where it is all refuted and mocked, most times with a shockingly angry and aggressive tone. I am not into gossiping, junk food or onychophagia, but do sadly have other unhealthy habits, one of which is the inability to simply close such pages and move on. I always need to read inside, scroll down the comments, open new tabs to find out who the person writing is, follow that ping pong game of replies and counter replies. Where exactly does this anger come from? It cannot just be from that person's belief that environmentalists and scientists are wrong or liars. These comments tend to be peppered with curses, thoughts are clumsily yelled, misspelled from the fury spilled onto the keyboard.
But every once in a while the information is more organized, it has the appearance of equanimity, of founded research and knowledge. Since I am no scientist and would get lost in any serious discussion on geology, chemistry or biology, a few of those adamant statements do shake me and make me wonder. One of those people, though histrionic, is that certain Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (always think of Lord Melbury when I read about him), a more eloquent, versed, verbal speaker than the average. This even served him to give testimony this past spring in Congress as an unidentified type of expert. Something good has come out of so much wrong: 20 world renowned climate scientists has examined the part of Monckton's testimony related to their particular area of expertise and the summary of those responses has been put together in Climate Scientists Respond,
a document that not only refutes every single argument put forward by the aforementioned, but most misinformed testimonies out there. It makes for good reading plus, since one of those experts happens to be Ken Caldeira, one of my favorite interviews in A Sea Change, I felt obliged to include it in this blog.
Ken and Sven walking down the beach in California.
Webcombing
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
I did a little webcombing this afternoon and found some news that could interest you, whoever you are, the reader of this blog. These are the fruits of that labor:
1 NOAA is proposing to establish a research area in Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary. Their idea is to designate an area in the sanctuary "where fishing and diving activities are prohibited and vessel transit is allowed without interruption". The preferred boundary encompasses the southern third of the sanctuary and is expected to displace a minimal number of visitors.
An area devoid of human impact would enable a scientific exploration of how reefs function, to determine more accurately "the effects of natural events (e.g. hurricanes) and to study impacts of climate change, including ocean acidification, which can be better determined in the absence of additional factors like fishing and diving."
NOAA is also "seeking comments on the Proposed Rule and the supporting Draft Environmental Impact Statement." You have until December 13 this year.
2 The oceans might look blue to us, but they are the true green lung of our planet. Every second breath of oxygen we take has been produced by phytoplankton, drifting microscopic plant micro-organisms that through photosynthesis remove carbon dioxide from the water and produce oxygen.
The Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, a private, non-profit center on the Gulf of Maine, has just been awarded nearly $5 million to help build a new Center for Ocean Biogeochemistry and Climate Change in which to study what the changing climate and increased acidity is doing to the oceans, and more specifically, the role of plankton in this relationship.
Scientists now believe that the life cycle of plankton may be controlled by marine viruses. Phytoplankton blooms in spring and dies in late summer, like most plants, and they want to explore what climate change will do to these pathogens.
I must have been in fifth grade when our science books showed some amazing drawings of these two kinds of impossible creatures: zooplankton (like our friends the pteropods and jellyfish) and phytoplankton (seaweed and algae, for example).
3 "Researchers from Exeter University and the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, both in England, found a clear association between overall noise levels generated by a reef's denizens and the amount of living coral present: Healthy reefs mean more coral structures, more fish and other creatures calling that coral home; and more inhabitants mean more noise."
In their study they have found a real richness of information from the reef-generated sounds, so this finding could change the way scientists monitor reefs. The sounds could very well provide fish and invertebrates with the necessary information to find the best area to live, or even help them to return to the very reef in which they originally spawned.
I wonder if a more acidic ocean, where sound travels faster, will produce unexpected consequences.
You can read more about this on www.ouramazingplanet.com, and the findings have been published online in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology.
I did a little webcombing this afternoon and found some news that could interest you, whoever you are, the reader of this blog. These are the fruits of that labor:
1 NOAA is proposing to establish a research area in Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary. Their idea is to designate an area in the sanctuary "where fishing and diving activities are prohibited and vessel transit is allowed without interruption". The preferred boundary encompasses the southern third of the sanctuary and is expected to displace a minimal number of visitors.
An area devoid of human impact would enable a scientific exploration of how reefs function, to determine more accurately "the effects of natural events (e.g. hurricanes) and to study impacts of climate change, including ocean acidification, which can be better determined in the absence of additional factors like fishing and diving."
NOAA is also "seeking comments on the Proposed Rule and the supporting Draft Environmental Impact Statement." You have until December 13 this year.
2 The oceans might look blue to us, but they are the true green lung of our planet. Every second breath of oxygen we take has been produced by phytoplankton, drifting microscopic plant micro-organisms that through photosynthesis remove carbon dioxide from the water and produce oxygen.
The Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, a private, non-profit center on the Gulf of Maine, has just been awarded nearly $5 million to help build a new Center for Ocean Biogeochemistry and Climate Change in which to study what the changing climate and increased acidity is doing to the oceans, and more specifically, the role of plankton in this relationship.
Scientists now believe that the life cycle of plankton may be controlled by marine viruses. Phytoplankton blooms in spring and dies in late summer, like most plants, and they want to explore what climate change will do to these pathogens.
I must have been in fifth grade when our science books showed some amazing drawings of these two kinds of impossible creatures: zooplankton (like our friends the pteropods and jellyfish) and phytoplankton (seaweed and algae, for example).
3 "Researchers from Exeter University and the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, both in England, found a clear association between overall noise levels generated by a reef's denizens and the amount of living coral present: Healthy reefs mean more coral structures, more fish and other creatures calling that coral home; and more inhabitants mean more noise."
In their study they have found a real richness of information from the reef-generated sounds, so this finding could change the way scientists monitor reefs. The sounds could very well provide fish and invertebrates with the necessary information to find the best area to live, or even help them to return to the very reef in which they originally spawned.
I wonder if a more acidic ocean, where sound travels faster, will produce unexpected consequences.
You can read more about this on www.ouramazingplanet.com, and the findings have been published online in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology.
Anthropocentric Geoengineering!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
If there is one possible scenario that frightens me more than our current lack of action to stop the countless maladies we are inflicting upon the planet it is this very tempting flight forward casino gamble of geoengineering.
Just two unoriginal thoughts I want to throw out there:
No scientist would claim to know a tenth of the millions of factors that determine what life in the planet is and how it finds its dynamic equilibrium amongst the myriad of species, ecosystems and climates. Every single time we have played doctors or gods in the backyard it has been an absolute disaster, resulting in the loss of species or worse scenarios. I always remember the tragicomic story of the introduction of the mongoose in the Hawaiian archipelago as a means to get rid of rats (that delightful Norwegian Rat possibly brought along by Captain Cook together with the first batch of mosquitoes). I will not go into details, you can read about it here.
But what really fires me up is how we are like wasted heroin junkies who know exactly the origin of their addiction and future decay, but pathetically, helplessly admit that we just can't give up the habit, it is beyond us, surpasses us, the world would have to blow up in pieces before we thought of moving on to new sources of energy. We are going to drink, burn and cook it ALL up, yum yum, and then we will see where we stand, how things look the morning after.
Thinking about all this I can more easily understand all the Iron Hypothesis and assorted megalomaniac geoengineering ideas out there, brought forward for our consideration, without blushing.
If there is one possible scenario that frightens me more than our current lack of action to stop the countless maladies we are inflicting upon the planet it is this very tempting flight forward casino gamble of geoengineering.
Just two unoriginal thoughts I want to throw out there:
No scientist would claim to know a tenth of the millions of factors that determine what life in the planet is and how it finds its dynamic equilibrium amongst the myriad of species, ecosystems and climates. Every single time we have played doctors or gods in the backyard it has been an absolute disaster, resulting in the loss of species or worse scenarios. I always remember the tragicomic story of the introduction of the mongoose in the Hawaiian archipelago as a means to get rid of rats (that delightful Norwegian Rat possibly brought along by Captain Cook together with the first batch of mosquitoes). I will not go into details, you can read about it here.
But what really fires me up is how we are like wasted heroin junkies who know exactly the origin of their addiction and future decay, but pathetically, helplessly admit that we just can't give up the habit, it is beyond us, surpasses us, the world would have to blow up in pieces before we thought of moving on to new sources of energy. We are going to drink, burn and cook it ALL up, yum yum, and then we will see where we stand, how things look the morning after.
Thinking about all this I can more easily understand all the Iron Hypothesis and assorted megalomaniac geoengineering ideas out there, brought forward for our consideration, without blushing.
Heinz Awards 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
In a case of unprecedented coincidence, two of this year's Heinz Awards winners are very closely related to A Sea Change and Ocean Acidification. Richard Feely, one of our favorite NOAA scientists, and Elizabeth Kolbert, the New Yorker journalist that wrote the article "The Darkening Sea" that inspired the film are each going to receive the Heinz Award Medallion and an unrestricted cash prize of $100,000.
The Heinz Awards website writes about Richard Feely:
Logging more than 1,000 days at sea on over 50 scientific expeditions, Dr. Richard Feely of Seattle, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Laboratory, has played a leading role in examining the acidification of oceans and shifting public policy to address this growing issue. In fact, ocean acidity is now considered global warming’s “evil twin,” thanks in large measure to Dr. Feely’s seminal research on the changing ocean chemistry and its impact on marine ecosystems. He argues that with the continuation of uncontrolled “greenhouse” gas emissions, the acidity of the world’s oceans will double by the end of the century. Dr. Feely is sounding the alarm that our oceans are becoming more acidic earlier than expected, which has enormous impact on the environment. His groundbreaking research includes leading NOAA expeditions, such as one off North America’s Pacific coast, that discovered the startling fact that corrosive waters were at acidic levels not predicted by climate change models to occur for decades. Richard Feely has spent his federal government career researching and understanding ocean chemistry and the effects of human-induced changes, particularly excess carbon dioxide, on the world’s seas. Early on, his findings were largely ignored. However, recognizing ocean acidity as an environmental problem with potentially catastrophic economic consequences, Dr. Feely persistently and methodically applied the highest levels of scientific inquiry as the problem grew in scope and intensity. He has also leveraged media platforms to explain the problem of ocean acidification and to increase its visibility more publicly. Dr. Feely maintains “The decisions we make now, over the next 50 years, will be felt over hundreds of thousands of years.”
And this is what it says about Elizabeth Kolbert:
A groundbreaking environmental journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert is devoted to educating the public about environmental issues and has gone far beyond traditional reporting – even raising a hive of bees in her backyard to better understand their habits and explain them to her readers for a story about their mysterious disappearance. When Ms. Kolbert joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1999, she began to fully explore the field of environmentalism in general and the topic of global change in particular. Her fascination with the climate began in early 2000, when she felt the topic, which was mostly the province of scientists and environmentalists, was not getting enough clear coverage in the mass media. Ms. Kolbert’s unique ability to communicate complex information generates intense public interest and grabs national attention. Her passion and creativity shine through her writing. Ms. Kolbert has an ability to describe complicated scientific processes in entertaining and educating ways as she spreads the critical story of our changing planet. In a style that is both instructional and chatty, Ms. Kolbert walks readers who are largely not scientists or climate experts, through the multiple disciplines studying this issue. She is an award-winning journalist who brings her natural curiosity and intelligence to bear on the growing concerns raised by our warming planet. By dissecting and disseminating the vast and highly technical scientific information available on global climate change, she brings these crucial issues to a wider audience. She has become a trusted resource to a growing network of concerned citizens who crave informed expertise on the topic but who lack the access she has acquired to the many disciplines researching the topic.
We are so happy for them both, it is well deserved recognition for a life guided by talent and hard work. And they are probably very happy as well that they do not live in Spain, because back in my country this sort of news spreads like wildfire and they would now be forced to invite to drinks and tapas anyone they ever met.
In a case of unprecedented coincidence, two of this year's Heinz Awards winners are very closely related to A Sea Change and Ocean Acidification. Richard Feely, one of our favorite NOAA scientists, and Elizabeth Kolbert, the New Yorker journalist that wrote the article "The Darkening Sea" that inspired the film are each going to receive the Heinz Award Medallion and an unrestricted cash prize of $100,000.
The Heinz Awards website writes about Richard Feely:
Logging more than 1,000 days at sea on over 50 scientific expeditions, Dr. Richard Feely of Seattle, a senior research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Laboratory, has played a leading role in examining the acidification of oceans and shifting public policy to address this growing issue. In fact, ocean acidity is now considered global warming’s “evil twin,” thanks in large measure to Dr. Feely’s seminal research on the changing ocean chemistry and its impact on marine ecosystems. He argues that with the continuation of uncontrolled “greenhouse” gas emissions, the acidity of the world’s oceans will double by the end of the century. Dr. Feely is sounding the alarm that our oceans are becoming more acidic earlier than expected, which has enormous impact on the environment. His groundbreaking research includes leading NOAA expeditions, such as one off North America’s Pacific coast, that discovered the startling fact that corrosive waters were at acidic levels not predicted by climate change models to occur for decades. Richard Feely has spent his federal government career researching and understanding ocean chemistry and the effects of human-induced changes, particularly excess carbon dioxide, on the world’s seas. Early on, his findings were largely ignored. However, recognizing ocean acidity as an environmental problem with potentially catastrophic economic consequences, Dr. Feely persistently and methodically applied the highest levels of scientific inquiry as the problem grew in scope and intensity. He has also leveraged media platforms to explain the problem of ocean acidification and to increase its visibility more publicly. Dr. Feely maintains “The decisions we make now, over the next 50 years, will be felt over hundreds of thousands of years.”
And this is what it says about Elizabeth Kolbert:
A groundbreaking environmental journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert is devoted to educating the public about environmental issues and has gone far beyond traditional reporting – even raising a hive of bees in her backyard to better understand their habits and explain them to her readers for a story about their mysterious disappearance. When Ms. Kolbert joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1999, she began to fully explore the field of environmentalism in general and the topic of global change in particular. Her fascination with the climate began in early 2000, when she felt the topic, which was mostly the province of scientists and environmentalists, was not getting enough clear coverage in the mass media. Ms. Kolbert’s unique ability to communicate complex information generates intense public interest and grabs national attention. Her passion and creativity shine through her writing. Ms. Kolbert has an ability to describe complicated scientific processes in entertaining and educating ways as she spreads the critical story of our changing planet. In a style that is both instructional and chatty, Ms. Kolbert walks readers who are largely not scientists or climate experts, through the multiple disciplines studying this issue. She is an award-winning journalist who brings her natural curiosity and intelligence to bear on the growing concerns raised by our warming planet. By dissecting and disseminating the vast and highly technical scientific information available on global climate change, she brings these crucial issues to a wider audience. She has become a trusted resource to a growing network of concerned citizens who crave informed expertise on the topic but who lack the access she has acquired to the many disciplines researching the topic.
We are so happy for them both, it is well deserved recognition for a life guided by talent and hard work. And they are probably very happy as well that they do not live in Spain, because back in my country this sort of news spreads like wildfire and they would now be forced to invite to drinks and tapas anyone they ever met.
Beauty In Tragedy
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
There is a mesmerizing power and intensity in tragedy, a fascination that traps the eye and pushes us toward it the way cliffs tempt bodies to fall. It is one of the main ingredients in most artistic expressions and I assume it must be linked to our desire to understand mortality.
Nine years ago I lived in downtown Manhattan and one morning woke up to the news from my brother in Spain that the WTC was on fire. I went up to the roof of the apartment building, where two workmen were drinking coffee with eyes glued to the flames and smoke on the first tower. I felt instantly drawn to it, not by some morbid attraction, simply because going there seemed to me like the only logical thing to do; it was something that could not be ignored. The thought of what ended up happening during the next couple of hours did not even cross my mind, so I had no fear. I simply grabbed the camera (I was studying at the ICP at the time) and walked South. Everyone that was close to the towers that morning has their own story about what they lived through. In my mind it all still plays like an impossible, absurd, slow dream. I recall single steps taken along the sidewalk, my glances up looking for that first tower that I did not know was gone, the white ash in the air, delicately laid on the pavement and on mailboxes, the smell, that toxic burnt smell. The scale, both in sheer size and in the number of deaths, of the catastrophe turned it forever intangible, incomprehensible, almost unacceptable for me, and the beauty of that morning enhanced this sensation, condemning me to this day to recall things with a mixture of detail and haziness. It was the day I realized I was just a sideline observer in life, that I was not made to be a photographer, or a hero, or a person touched by greatness. I just happened to be there, in a place I have not returned to. Every September I am forced to remember it all when I wake up one morning and there is that gorgeous and unmistakable blue sky that is so New York and so September Eleventh.
Edward Burtynsky's OIL series depicts a tragedy in large scale, images full of detail, with perfect composition and eerie, confusing beauty. His work combines two of the playful aesthetic choices photography offers that I very much enjoy: the abstraction of reality from aerial shots (which surprisingly also occurs in macrophotography) and texturizing from stepping down from three to two dimensions. His most recent photographs for the exhibition, the ones you can see in the link above, were taken this spring during the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They are so beautiful, so sad.
There is a mesmerizing power and intensity in tragedy, a fascination that traps the eye and pushes us toward it the way cliffs tempt bodies to fall. It is one of the main ingredients in most artistic expressions and I assume it must be linked to our desire to understand mortality.
Nine years ago I lived in downtown Manhattan and one morning woke up to the news from my brother in Spain that the WTC was on fire. I went up to the roof of the apartment building, where two workmen were drinking coffee with eyes glued to the flames and smoke on the first tower. I felt instantly drawn to it, not by some morbid attraction, simply because going there seemed to me like the only logical thing to do; it was something that could not be ignored. The thought of what ended up happening during the next couple of hours did not even cross my mind, so I had no fear. I simply grabbed the camera (I was studying at the ICP at the time) and walked South. Everyone that was close to the towers that morning has their own story about what they lived through. In my mind it all still plays like an impossible, absurd, slow dream. I recall single steps taken along the sidewalk, my glances up looking for that first tower that I did not know was gone, the white ash in the air, delicately laid on the pavement and on mailboxes, the smell, that toxic burnt smell. The scale, both in sheer size and in the number of deaths, of the catastrophe turned it forever intangible, incomprehensible, almost unacceptable for me, and the beauty of that morning enhanced this sensation, condemning me to this day to recall things with a mixture of detail and haziness. It was the day I realized I was just a sideline observer in life, that I was not made to be a photographer, or a hero, or a person touched by greatness. I just happened to be there, in a place I have not returned to. Every September I am forced to remember it all when I wake up one morning and there is that gorgeous and unmistakable blue sky that is so New York and so September Eleventh.
Edward Burtynsky's OIL series depicts a tragedy in large scale, images full of detail, with perfect composition and eerie, confusing beauty. His work combines two of the playful aesthetic choices photography offers that I very much enjoy: the abstraction of reality from aerial shots (which surprisingly also occurs in macrophotography) and texturizing from stepping down from three to two dimensions. His most recent photographs for the exhibition, the ones you can see in the link above, were taken this spring during the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They are so beautiful, so sad.
Summer Winds
Friday, August 06, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
Over twenty years ago I saw my first wind farm around the Gibraltar Strait. I was going with my parents and brothers to the town of Tarifa, on the Cádiz coast, "the windsurfing capital of the world" as they called it back then. Tarifa has a much higher suicide rate than the rest of the country; many blame its incessant winds for this. The mistral wind is considered an extenuating circumstance for murder trials in the South of France.
Driving along the Cádiz coast a couple days ago the original wind turbines that looked so futuristic back then seemed shrunk, small, decrepit, like old old radio antenna, rusty gray. Beside the few dozen there were hundreds and hundreds of the most gigantic, majestic white turbines, filling endless fields, in the middle of toro de lidia (a special breed of bull that is raised for bullfights) farms, outlining the tops of all the hills. They certainly take over a landscape and brake the natural scale of things, but I like seeing them because I like what they do and what they stand for. My neighbor in the village happens to be an engineer that works in a local farm. He tells me they break a lot and that the efficiency is sometimes low. I only half listen to him, I want to keep dreaming a bit. In a few days I will be going there again and promise to take some shots, but in the meantime here is a picture I took of "our" local ones, the ones my neighbor climbs up to fix.
A NEW APPOINTMENT IN THE U.S.
The White House has nominated Scott Doney to be NOAA's chief scientist. Doney, a well respected marine biochemist, has done research on climate change, the global carbon cycle and ocean acidification. Here is a link to this news and to a letter by Jane Lubchenco, NOAA's administrator.
I feel the scientific community and all matters environmental are treated with more respect and given more importance under this Administration.
POISONOUS CURRENTS
The internet is like a vast ocean, so it also holds quite a lot of poison. Some of what I have read on different blogs and sites goes like this: scientists are making all this talk about the environment up in order to get funding for their research and because they have some "hidden agenda", they work for a third party with dubious interests.
What an insult to our intelligence. Almost all these women and men were the best and brightest students through elementary school, high school, college. They did not choose to go to business school, study economics, law, to go to the money-making career where they could pursue a fancy lifestyle. They are individuals with a thirst for knowledge, a passion for research and discovery, for exactitude and rigorousness, their jobs are almost a vocation or a call like that of religious priests. But the ongoing argument from the poisoned depths of the ocean yells that this was all planned in order to secure funding for false and biased research. This line of thought claims that the scientists did not want to do research after all, instead they wanted to fabricate lies, to convince us of them and to scare us with those carefully made up stories so they could get money, lots of money that they still do not see because they are stupid in the end and spend it in lab equipment, buoys, months of holidays in the Arctic. Por favor.
Over twenty years ago I saw my first wind farm around the Gibraltar Strait. I was going with my parents and brothers to the town of Tarifa, on the Cádiz coast, "the windsurfing capital of the world" as they called it back then. Tarifa has a much higher suicide rate than the rest of the country; many blame its incessant winds for this. The mistral wind is considered an extenuating circumstance for murder trials in the South of France.
Driving along the Cádiz coast a couple days ago the original wind turbines that looked so futuristic back then seemed shrunk, small, decrepit, like old old radio antenna, rusty gray. Beside the few dozen there were hundreds and hundreds of the most gigantic, majestic white turbines, filling endless fields, in the middle of toro de lidia (a special breed of bull that is raised for bullfights) farms, outlining the tops of all the hills. They certainly take over a landscape and brake the natural scale of things, but I like seeing them because I like what they do and what they stand for. My neighbor in the village happens to be an engineer that works in a local farm. He tells me they break a lot and that the efficiency is sometimes low. I only half listen to him, I want to keep dreaming a bit. In a few days I will be going there again and promise to take some shots, but in the meantime here is a picture I took of "our" local ones, the ones my neighbor climbs up to fix.
A NEW APPOINTMENT IN THE U.S.
The White House has nominated Scott Doney to be NOAA's chief scientist. Doney, a well respected marine biochemist, has done research on climate change, the global carbon cycle and ocean acidification. Here is a link to this news and to a letter by Jane Lubchenco, NOAA's administrator.
I feel the scientific community and all matters environmental are treated with more respect and given more importance under this Administration.
POISONOUS CURRENTS
The internet is like a vast ocean, so it also holds quite a lot of poison. Some of what I have read on different blogs and sites goes like this: scientists are making all this talk about the environment up in order to get funding for their research and because they have some "hidden agenda", they work for a third party with dubious interests.
What an insult to our intelligence. Almost all these women and men were the best and brightest students through elementary school, high school, college. They did not choose to go to business school, study economics, law, to go to the money-making career where they could pursue a fancy lifestyle. They are individuals with a thirst for knowledge, a passion for research and discovery, for exactitude and rigorousness, their jobs are almost a vocation or a call like that of religious priests. But the ongoing argument from the poisoned depths of the ocean yells that this was all planned in order to secure funding for false and biased research. This line of thought claims that the scientists did not want to do research after all, instead they wanted to fabricate lies, to convince us of them and to scare us with those carefully made up stories so they could get money, lots of money that they still do not see because they are stupid in the end and spend it in lab equipment, buoys, months of holidays in the Arctic. Por favor.
10 Good News, 10
Saturday, July 24, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
It might be the cosmetic work of politicians, it may be hard to see the good side of it, could even leave you a bit confused, but here are 10 pieces of news that could ignite (emissions free, of course) true, authentic change:
1 Britain decides to stop airport growth around London to try to curb its emissions. The decision came from Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.
2 Researches studying the Cretaceous period have discovered that many marine creatures survived ancient cases of ocean acidification.
This very same argument has repeatedly been mentioned by climate change, ocean acidification and environmental disaster skeptics, ignoring the basic importance of gradual adaptation, but it is nice to think that some things could have a chance to survive the new pH levels in our oceans, even if we might not be here to witness it. I would just feel horrible if I thought we are killing everything.
3 China has become the biggest energy user, passing the US.
I am no US citizen, but if I was I would probably be a little relieved to know that the rest of the world can point its finger somewhere else to uncover the biggest piggy of all. Let's skip that there are four Chinese for every US citizen, I do not want to spoil my third point.
Maybe China, as the biggest energy user and future First-World power will do the leading the US is failing to do. Hope is clearly a state of mind.
4 A new monitoring buoy has been deployed off the North Olympic Peninsula to check the composition of seawater coming into the Sound and Hood Canal.
More monitoring equipment and money spent on research. Always feels good.
5 President Obama launches a 10 point policy to protect the US National Waters. And one of the key issues will be Ocean Acidification.
6 Monterey, CA, will host the Third Symposium on The Ocean in a High CO2 World in 2012.
This will come at a time when public awareness on this threat to the environment is much higher than in Paris 2008.
7 Thanks to the band Pearl Jam the term "ocean acidification" has appeared on Rolling Stone's website. This is what I call a clear sign of hope. One of the problems of Ocean Acidification was that the media did nor find it hot enough, that the term was not catchy, but how can you get any cooler than having Pearl Jam release a song about the oceans and giving the proceedings to Conservation International's Marine Programs?
In the article they mention Eddie Vedder's interest and worry about renewable energy, ocean acidification, alternative energy, sustainable fishing and beach clean up work.
The video has some nice footage, by the way. Need to listen to the song more to see if is shower whistle-able.
8 A new study shows that baby fish become confused and reckless in more acidic water.
How can this be good news? Well, it is good news because it is knowledge, and knowledge is always good. Also, if we know more about the effects of ocean acidification on marine creatures we will see a broader picture of what is at stake and there will be a greater chance of action through public demand and legislation. Pathetic the number of websites that have covered this news about the fish having a "death wish" under acidic oceans. Does everything need to be or become a joke?
9 The National Research Council published a new book on Ocean Acidification titled "Ocean Acidification: A National Strategy to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Ocean".
And you can read the whole book online for free here
10 The EPOCA project (European Project on Ocean Acidification) is under way, an initiative employing 100 researchers worldwide, 30 of them in the Arctic.
Nice to see The Economist writing about Ocean Acidification as well.
OK, I have to run now to pick up my daughter and head to our little village in the Andalusian mountains. I hope you find some of the links interesting.
It might be the cosmetic work of politicians, it may be hard to see the good side of it, could even leave you a bit confused, but here are 10 pieces of news that could ignite (emissions free, of course) true, authentic change:
1 Britain decides to stop airport growth around London to try to curb its emissions. The decision came from Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.
2 Researches studying the Cretaceous period have discovered that many marine creatures survived ancient cases of ocean acidification.
This very same argument has repeatedly been mentioned by climate change, ocean acidification and environmental disaster skeptics, ignoring the basic importance of gradual adaptation, but it is nice to think that some things could have a chance to survive the new pH levels in our oceans, even if we might not be here to witness it. I would just feel horrible if I thought we are killing everything.
3 China has become the biggest energy user, passing the US.
I am no US citizen, but if I was I would probably be a little relieved to know that the rest of the world can point its finger somewhere else to uncover the biggest piggy of all. Let's skip that there are four Chinese for every US citizen, I do not want to spoil my third point.
Maybe China, as the biggest energy user and future First-World power will do the leading the US is failing to do. Hope is clearly a state of mind.
4 A new monitoring buoy has been deployed off the North Olympic Peninsula to check the composition of seawater coming into the Sound and Hood Canal.
More monitoring equipment and money spent on research. Always feels good.
5 President Obama launches a 10 point policy to protect the US National Waters. And one of the key issues will be Ocean Acidification.
6 Monterey, CA, will host the Third Symposium on The Ocean in a High CO2 World in 2012.
This will come at a time when public awareness on this threat to the environment is much higher than in Paris 2008.
7 Thanks to the band Pearl Jam the term "ocean acidification" has appeared on Rolling Stone's website. This is what I call a clear sign of hope. One of the problems of Ocean Acidification was that the media did nor find it hot enough, that the term was not catchy, but how can you get any cooler than having Pearl Jam release a song about the oceans and giving the proceedings to Conservation International's Marine Programs?
In the article they mention Eddie Vedder's interest and worry about renewable energy, ocean acidification, alternative energy, sustainable fishing and beach clean up work.
The video has some nice footage, by the way. Need to listen to the song more to see if is shower whistle-able.
8 A new study shows that baby fish become confused and reckless in more acidic water.
How can this be good news? Well, it is good news because it is knowledge, and knowledge is always good. Also, if we know more about the effects of ocean acidification on marine creatures we will see a broader picture of what is at stake and there will be a greater chance of action through public demand and legislation. Pathetic the number of websites that have covered this news about the fish having a "death wish" under acidic oceans. Does everything need to be or become a joke?
9 The National Research Council published a new book on Ocean Acidification titled "Ocean Acidification: A National Strategy to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Ocean".
And you can read the whole book online for free here
10 The EPOCA project (European Project on Ocean Acidification) is under way, an initiative employing 100 researchers worldwide, 30 of them in the Arctic.
Nice to see The Economist writing about Ocean Acidification as well.
OK, I have to run now to pick up my daughter and head to our little village in the Andalusian mountains. I hope you find some of the links interesting.
Doc in Río
Monday, March 15, 2010
By Daniel de la Calle
Dear blog readers,
During the next forty some days I will be in Brazil, screening the film around cities and representing the A Sea Change crew at an environmental film festival called FASAI, in the state of Bahía.
I will do my best to deliver updates of how things go in this wonderful South American country. Somehow I get the feeling I will be writing more than just about ocean acidification.
First stop (March 17th-22nd): Rio de Janeiro, a city with many layers
and in which streets you will find more than pigeons.
Dear blog readers,
During the next forty some days I will be in Brazil, screening the film around cities and representing the A Sea Change crew at an environmental film festival called FASAI, in the state of Bahía.
I will do my best to deliver updates of how things go in this wonderful South American country. Somehow I get the feeling I will be writing more than just about ocean acidification.
First stop (March 17th-22nd): Rio de Janeiro, a city with many layers
and in which streets you will find more than pigeons.
Food and Drink More About the Film Climate change/global warming More Photos Politics Film Festivals Events COP-15 Conservation/environment Daniel de la Calle Screenings Interviews Green technology Current Affairs Sustainable Filmmaking More F.A.Q.s Education TV Martha Stewart Site News Activism Angela Alston Video Blog Reviews of A Sea Change Interview Ben Kalina Blurbs More Links Ocean Science Copenhagen Barbara Ettinger DVDs Sven Huseby ocean acidification More Crew News
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