Author Archives
Reporter, journalist and author who has owned and operated a bookstore, a pool and spa full service business, an apple farm, and is now committed to environmental issues. She has written four books: The Gathering Basket, Connection with 48 Natural Contemplations, Seek Beauty, Find Joy: a Companion Journal to Natural Contemplations; and children's book, Isu Learns to Swim.
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Endangered Whales, Sea Turtles Protection Thrown Out
“The Trump administration has declared war on whales, dolphins and turtles off the coast of California,” Todd Steiner, director of the California-based Turtle Island Restoration Network, told the LA Times.
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Sir Richard Branson on World Oceans Day
“The ocean gives us oxygen, it gives us food, it gives of joy. We give it plastic, saturate it with carbon, and relentlessly extract the life out of it,” said Sir Richard Branson during the World Oceans Day conference. “The… Read More ›
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A Visit to the Coastal Discovery Center
Besides the natural attraction of seabirds, sea mammals, and other sea life, this wedge of California State Parks and MBNMS in old San Simeon, where native people thrived long before the arrival of Portuguese whalers and George Hearst, is where 17,000 visitors in 2016 discovered how special this corner of the world is.
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Hippocratic Oath For Ocean Protections?
The marine environment globally is challenged by a number of factors, including environmental degradation, habitat destruction, overfishing, and climate change, so there is a real need for protection. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the international community has agreed that we will protect 10 percent of the oceans in marine protected areas by 2020.
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Domoic Poison Strikes California’s Central Coast
Since the beginning of April, Julia Parker has seen 216 sick pelagic birds come into the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network. There were only four in February, and three in March. Of those 216, mostly loons, grebes, and murres, only 65 survived long enough to be transferred to the International Bird Rescue center in San Pedro. Many more have been found dead on nearby beaches.
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Transparency in Seafood Marketing
“At FishWise, we feel strongly that it’s important for a company to annually report on the status of its sustainable seafood program, even after a goal has been achieved, to ensure that the program stays on track. In many ways, transparency into how well a company is maintaining a credible seafood program is just as important as publicly disclosing progress on forward-facing goals and initiatives.”
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Nitrite Pollution Increase in Ocean Water
Researchers have more than once warned of “dead zones” and toxic algal blooms as a consequence of changing climatic conditions. Ocean temperatures are increasing, and this in turn encourages a new set of biochemical processes.
Professor Hollibaugh and a colleague report in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that over the course of eight summers they measured peaks of nitrite, alongside massive increases in the numbers of the microorganisms that produce it, in coastal waters off Georgia.
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NOAA Reports Elevated Humpback Whale Mortalities
So far, 15 additional dead humpback whales have shown up along the east coast, bringing the total to 41. The high number led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to open an investigation into what is now officially classified as an unusual mortality event.
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Coral Reef Death Impacting Sea Levels
In the Florida Keys, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Maui, coral reef degradation has caused sea floor depths to increase as sand and other sea floor materials have eroded over the past few decades, the USGS study found. In the waters around Maui, the sea floor losses amounted to 81 million cubic meters of sand, rock and other material – about what it would take to fill up the Empire State Building 81 times, the researchers calculated.
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Plastic Debris Swarms Arctic Ocean
Hundreds of tonnes of plastic are cluttering the once pristine Arctic Ocean and doing great damage to the planet, a new report has found. On top of the danger of fish and other wildlife swallowing the plastic, the material contains… Read More ›
Neptune 911! 