The Crossing Of The Andes
By Daniel de la Calle You can fool and distract yourself in the days leading to a trip, go through the motions of packing, closing doors and taking cabs in hypnotic discipline, behave in such a drowsy way during the flight that the experience nears teletransportation, but when the captain’s voice comes in the speaker […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
News, Some Good
By Daniel de la Calle »Washington State became last month the first in the USA to create an expert panel on Ocean Acidification. The panel, convened by Gov. Chris Gregoire, is made up of scientists, seafood industry representatives and local and tribal officials. It has set up three tasks: 1 Survey the latest […]
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 […]
Ocean Acidification and Education
By Daniel de la Calle Inspired by our upcoming screenings for students this Thursday and Friday in the Southern Chilean town of Puerto Montt we want to post information for and about students and Ocean Acidification: »Students from the Ridgeway School (Plymouth, UK) were commissioned by the European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA) and the […]
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 […]
On Acid
By Daniel de la Calle Considering this is the A Sea Change website on Ocean Acidification and not forgetting this denomination and the various effects of OA on diatoms, oysters, clownfish and whales I guess we should have included this graph a long time ago. What is acid?: ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈ This one is very interesting as […]
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 […]
President Obama And The Giant Pteropods
By Daniel de la Calle A couple news for the first half of the week: »US President Barak Obama’s weekly address this past Saturday was a remarkable attempt at pushing for a more environmental and alternative energy agenda while making it sound like the opposite. Speaking from a jet-engine factory Mr. Obama seemed to […]
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, […]
Belated Post About a Belated Award
By Daniel de la Calle Two weeks ago our director Barbara Ettinger was informed that A Sea Change won last year’s Best Environmental Documentary Award at the Ventura Film Festival in California! Talk of a job taken seriously, twelve months for the jury to choose us; the value of this acknowledgement must at least be […]
ON THE ISLAND OF SAN ANDRÉS
Three months ago A Sea Change was in Colombia for a series of screenings in the cities of Bogotá, Medellín and Cartagena de Indias. We did numerous television, radio and newspaper interviews and maybe due to all that media coverage of Ocean Acidification and the film we were invited to the only two environmental film […]
Videos Of Present & Future Inventions
By Daniel de la Calle This weekend I wanted to take a look at inventions, some that look like science fiction but are in fact here with us now, other technologies that still need years or decades in development to be functional but that look promising, ingenious, and cheap simple ideas that are changing the […]
Building Things Up For RIO+20
By Daniel de la Calle As we get slowly closer to the month of June and RIO+20 we begin to see more online information linking the summit and Ocean Acidification, which is encouraging. I have also included some related news items to our usual list: »In an article on RTCC (a Non-Governmental Organization and […]
Paradise Lost
By Daniel de la Calle In a world of persistent human interference and degradation we sometimes forget that, unbelievable as it now may seem, there still are a few barely touched paradises left in this ever-shrinking planet. While extreme northern and southern locations have inclement weather and remoteness as their accomplices, to imagine a […]
Weekend Material
By Daniel de la Calle ¤Marine Spacial Planning presents a rational approach to ocean management. The system tries to “allocate space in the ocean allowing compatible uses to coexist, separating incompatible ones, all while protecting the environment”. This video presentation with Philippe Cousteau explains things in more detail: “The ocean economy in the USA […]
Colombian Countryside Festival
By Daniel de la Calle After almost half a century of fear, murder, blackmailing and threats the “Basque separatist group” ETA, as the New York Times offensively always chose to refer to them, the terrorists responsible for the death of many hundreds of children, housewives, politicians, policemen, military men and college professors has been forced […]
Pizza Vs. Sushi
By Daniel de la Calle Researchers believe we should prepare ourselves for a world with more anchovies and less tuna: Various recent studies indicate a constant decrease in the number of marine predators; from sharks to tuna, our “lions and tigers of the seas” are becoming less and less abundant. If certain key elements […]
Environmental Capitalism
By Daniel de la Calle Richard Conniff wrote a brilliant piece last year titled “What are species worth? Putting a price on biodiversity” : Had you ever heard about Prochlorococcus, a cyanobacteria responsible for 20% of the oxygen we breathe? It might have only been discovered 25 years ago, but was playing this vital role […]
Reconsider Your Shrimp
By Daniel de la Calle » Williams College, in Williamstown, Mass. is hosting an Oceans Symposium and next Monday, Feb. 27, at 7 p.m., Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer at The New Yorker, will lead a discussion following a showing of A Sea Change, Imagine a World Without Fish. » Beautiful new documentary on the oceans […]
Eulogy
The question I have been asked the most over these three years of work for A Sea Change was not related to Ocean Acidification, to the film, Sven Huseby, or the places we went to, the question I was asked at almost every screening and when talking to friends was: “what does Niijii mean?” Niijii […]
Research News and Job Opportunities
By Daniel de la Calle I bring you some research news and job opportunities to start the week: •The University of Alaska Fairbanks placed its first Ocean Acidification buoy in Alaskan waters last April. “This is the first dedicated ocean acidification mooring to be deployed in a high-latitude coastal sea,” said Jeremy Mathis, principal […]