Eye Candy as Brain Food
By Daniel de la Calle Images of blue along each one of these videos and links: ≈≈≈A feel-good story on video: divers off the shore of Socorro Island in Mexico free a majestic whale shark from the thick anchor rope strangling its body. ≈≈≈Chances are you have seen one of Mark Tipple’s iconic photographs of […]
All Seas: INDIAN OCEAN
By Daniel de la Calle Simon Reeve’s six-episode series titled Indian Ocean delivers a kaleidoscopic view of the world’s third largest body of water, the one least studied by scientists. Starting in South Africa and ending in Australia, passing through rocky cliffs in Oman and the endless beaches of Orissa, each episode hides, disguised in the […]
Art&facts
By Daniel de la Calle For more than 35,000 years we have been inspired by nature, driven to reproduce and depict it in drawings, carvings, photography or film. That original motivation might have been shamanistic, triggered by a dependence on other species for survival, but in many cases there are also unquestionable examples of our […]
Soon shall the winter’s foil be here
By Walt Whitman
100 Screenings in Chile
By Daniel de la Calle About a year ago I traveled with our documentary to Chile for a series of screenings in Santiago, Valparaiso and Puerto Montt. While in Valparaiso I had the chance to meet with some of the local Natural History Museum staff, under renovation at the time. They liked the film for […]
400 Blows
By Daniel de la Calle 400 blows do not raise hell after all: This month of May 2013 will be remembered as the time when we passed that 400ppm line of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. The media often uses the crossing of such a round, numeric Rubicons to begin global campaigns and to instigate […]
Deceptive December
By Daniel de la Calle December in the Southern Hemisphere equals summer heat and the end of the school year, but thanks to the winds from the north we still get snowflake and icicle lighting on the streets of Rio de Janeiro and the ever-present image of that famous obese man promising presents, provokingly overdressed […]
The Doom of Hope
By Daniel de la Calle Two weeks ago Professor Roger Bradbury (Australian National University) signed a New York Times op-ed piece in which the real situation and improbably future of coral reefs was for once spelled with all its letters, not softened by gentle words and nonexistent bright sides. As a specie we might […]
Winterless Spring
By Daniel de la Calle As seasons disappear and blend together, summer swallowing autumn and winter coming in glimpses and bursts, spring is still our queen of hope, a beginning, the unraveling of emotions and profusion: creativity. If you live in a city spring might make you lust green in the eyes and in mouth, […]
The Shape of Shells
By Daniel de la Calle Every shell protects the life of the creature that builds it and many of them continue to have a brief second existence as homes for hermit crabs or the base surface onto which algae and intrepid barnacles attach, but with time they inexorably break into sand. The ones I want […]
Information & Communication
By Daniel de la Calle Information and communication, going hand in hand as should be: »Lecture near Lake Tahoe: Dr. Howard Spero, UC Davis, will deliver a lecture titled Changing Seas about the earth’s climate, climate change throughout history and ocean (and Lake Tahoe) acidification. The date is March 22nd at 5:30PM and the location […]
Symposia, Volunteer Work, A Job Offer And A Video
By Daniel de la Calle »The Georges River Tidewater Association seeks volunteers to monitor acidification in St. George Estuary (Maine). “GRTA has been developing a monitoring program with assistance from Friends of Casco Bay, the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. GRTA is investing in sampling […]
All Sorts Of News
By Daniel de la Calle »When the media loves something it just takes over the internet. News came out yesterday about the new study by the Stockholm Environment Institute titled “Valuing the Ocean” where marine experts analyzed the most severe threats facing the world’s marine environment and estimated the cost of damage a year coming […]
Chile, From Santiago to Valparaíso
By Daniel de la Calle After Puerto Montt, the second half of the series of screenings in Chile unfolded at universities in Santiago and Valparaíso. Although they shared the name, “Universidad Católica”, there was no connection between the two. We were in Santiago thanks to an invitation by Professor José M. Farina, showing the film […]
Moncktons And Abrahams
By Daniel de la Calle Whether in our tangible daily slippers-and-ties lives or in our ever growing virtual internet browsing hours, we are often faced with opinions and discourses about the environment, about scientific work and data that are diametrically opposed to what we see and read everywhere. The environment has become a polarized political […]
The Transit of Venus
By Daniel de la Calle From Maya Lin’s interview in our film to the recent NYC Pteropod exhibit by Cornelia Kavanagh that we wrote about in April, we have always enjoyed looking at nature, science or Ocean Acidification through an artistic filter. With that in mind we bring you now a sample plate made of […]
THE FUTURE WE WANT and THE FUTURE WE DON’T WANT
By Daniel de la Calle I am sure you have seen this image all over the media these days. I took it on my way to the airport, the night I was leaving Rio: Fish made out of plastic bottles, illuminated at night. They were placed on Botafogo beach, the nearest beach to downtown Rio […]
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
By Daniel de la Calle Two news, one good and one bad. Then the ugly: THE GOOD: NASA claims to have developed an innovative method called OMEGA (Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae), that grows algae, cleans waste-water, captures carbon dioxide and ultimately generates biofuel without competing with agriculture for water, fertilizer or land. Wow. […]
“O Rio De Janeiro Continua Lindo”
By Daniel de la Calle After the visit to Southern and Central Chile in early May we are catching up with some of the latest news on Ocean Acidification while preparing as well for the +20 summit at the end of June in “lindo” Rio de Janeiro. Here are some news sifted through the web […]
Summer News Sample
By Daniel de la Calle Children in Rio de Janeiro were on vacation during the three days of the Rio+20 summit. Some schools organized activities for them, such as art projects using plastics and recyclable materials. ≈Science Magazine recently published an article on Ocean Acidification and the results coming from a new high resolution computer […]
When in Rio
By Daniel de la Calle Yesterday was the first of our two screenings at Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) museums during the RIO+20 summit. The brand new Environmental Museum (Museu do Meio Ambiente), located beside the Botanical Gardens has the glow of the brand new and still smells of paint, having been inaugurated just four days […]
Fog
By Daniel de la Calle June 20th, with the RIO+20 summit here in Brazil. An agreement to be signed by the heads of governments and ministers was reached yesterday. It is raining, misty, clouds cover at times the peaks encircling Guanabara Bay. We have a screening downtown, in the Museu da República, at 6:30PM […]
News Wire
By Daniel de la Calle Woke up today missing Jimmy McNulty, hence the title. News, unstoppable, like rolling trains filled with sea adventures, awards, money, great videos and mahi mahi. Who could possibly offer you more?: •MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) researchers started carrying out this past February a three month expedition along the […]
News In Pairs Like Castanets
By Daniel de la Calle Maybe influenced by the traditional Spanish music I was listening to while writing, here are some news in twos: Ω There are two billion tonnes of fish in the oceans, which is about 660 pounds/300 kilograms for each human being on the planet. Villy Christensen, ecosystem modeller with the University […]
Summer News
By Daniel de la Calle Children in Rio de Janeiro were on vacation for the three Rio+20 summit days. Schools organized activities that involved the environment, sustainability, recycling, awareness; like this sculpture made out of used plastic bottles. ≈Science Magazine recently published an article on Ocean Acidification and the results coming from a new high […]