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 […]

Protection

By Daniel de la Calle »Could the protection of marine areas be counterproductive? That is what Professor Ray Hilborn, from the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences, believes. Professor Hilborn stated in late February during an interview for an Australian radio station.  You can read the transcript HERE and listen to the […]

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 […]

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. […]

Saint Nicholas Post

By Daniel de la Calle  As advanced celebration of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker tomorrow, here are a few links, photos, videos and news for you all, stuffed inside the shoes you are putting out tonight:     •A team of scientists at Santa Cruz’s University of California have spent the past three years studying the submarine […]

Sanctuary

By Daniel de la Calle       Islands make for miniature universes, like snow globes: they transform a few miles distance into the crossing of a continent, produce insular dwarfism (where even the animals try to scale down and look only into the restricted cosmos) and remarkable adaptation from its species.  I know what it […]

The Hook that Caught the Fish that Saves the Corals that Inspired the Artist

By Daniel de la Calle   Here are a few Ocean and Ocean Acidification news bits found while surfing the web over the past week.  I hope some are news to you:     •How long has man been catching fish from the open ocean? 42,000 years at the very least. Archeologists from the Australian National […]

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 […]

Ocean Acidification News on the Web

By Daniel de la Calle Some Ocean Acidification news for this beginning of May:     ¤Symposium on Ocean Acidification to be held in Canberra, Australia from the 15th to the 17th of June 2011. The event is titled Ocean Acidification and Implications for Living Marine Resources in the Southern Hemisphere and aims to: “enhance the […]

Ocean Acidification News, Again

By Daniel de la Calle   I know it has been a while since we last posted news about Ocean Acidification and other related environmental problems on the blog.  In an effort to catch up with the latest information out there, here we offer a first list:     •Scientists launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature […]

In South America This Fall: In April!

By Daniel de la Calle   Today we want to briefly share with you our plans for A Sea Change during the upcoming months.  During the last few months last year, we had been discussing our possible presence during the RIO+20 summit this coming June.  We kept receiving mixed signals: encouraging, hopeful news together with […]

The Tough Choice

By Daniel de la Calle Let me ask you this question:  in the fight to save ecosystems and biodiversity around the globe, do you think we should begin targeting those areas and species with more chances of survival?  Or should most funding resources still go to those areas that seem more fragile, more threatened by […]

Interview with Sven

By Daniel de la Calle     On this rainy morning I had the chance to meet with Sven for a cup of tea and a half hour chat in his kitchen.  We had not done an official interview for the blog since May of last year, so an update on A Sea Change and the […]

To Save Corals

By Daniel de la Calle   Right where you read these words now many others have stood, layer upon layer, in a frustrated attempt to write about corals and my dives at the Tayrona National Park back in June.  They were not the problem, the source of trouble was the confusing mixture of sensations and […]

Taganga

By Daniel de la Calle While in Santa Marta, on Colombia’s eastern Caribbean coast, a old beggar in front of a supermarket told me he was a fisherman in a small neighboring village called Taganga. He explained that fishing was worse these days.  The last few days he caught enough to eat, but was there […]

Autumn News

By Daniel de la Calle       •Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute scientists have launched a sophisticated, unique tool to study the effects of Ocean Acidification on deep-sea animals in their native habitat, using free-flowing water.  The idea behind Free-Ocean Carbon Enrichment (FOCE) is to create a test area on the seafloor where seawater pH […]

Little Red Dots

By Daniel de la Calle•   Don’t be afraid to scratch if they itch:     •Anyone who has been to the Pacific Northeast in general and to Puget Sound in particular can bear witness to its beauty and uniqueness.  An invisible contributor to this distinctiveness lies in the origin of its waters: strong currents bring […]

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 […]

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 […]

That Elusive Golden Past

By Daniel de la Calle The screening at Maloka and the countless interviews in Bogotá couldn’t have gone any better.  Some sort of miracle, some magic must have turned my pumpkin backpack into the Ocean Acidification ambassador’s golden chariot (caught up in the worst traffic jams ever, though!) and I was welcomed like royalty, asked […]

News and a Rumor

By Daniel de la Calle Distilled from the World Wide Web for you:     -The Plymouth Marine Laboratory has launched a new short film on Ocean Acidification. Its title is “Ocean acidification: Connecting science, industry, policy and public”. Here it is     -Folks at United By Blue are organizing a cleanup on Saturday June 11th […]

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 […]

The Highest High, The Lowest Low

By Daniel de la Calle Today is World Water Day.  All kinds of events must be taking place around the planet with the spotlight on water, on its current state and its importance to us living creatures.  Some of them will surely point out our dependency on good water and the paradoxical way we treat […]

Enough of the “evil twin”

By Daniel de la Calle They might partly share its origin, but Ocean Acidification is not the “evil twin” of Global Warming.  They operate in quite a different fashion and their effects upon the planet, both present and future, even contrasting at times. Most importantly though, this “evil twin” business indirectly implies that there is […]