From the Surfrider Foundation–Raptoberfest Just like everyone has a carbon footprint, people also have a plastic footprint – which measures how much plastic a person uses during a given time period. While it is impossible – and arguably… Read More ›
Plastics and marine mammals
Recycle Your Cell Phone-Help Clean Oceans Project
October is recycle your cell phone month at The Clean Oceans Project. There are more than 500 million used cell phones in the U.S. sitting in people’s drawers, or worse, in our landfills. Another 130 million will be added… Read More ›
Marine Mammal Entanglement Up Close & Personal
By Charmaine Coimbra This year I’ve been up close and personal with marine entanglement. A near-handful of northern elephant seals that hauled out to molt at Piedras Blancas, where I volunteer as a docent, arrived with strapping bands around their necks. If the straps… Read More ›
Plastics: “Most pervasive pollution problems facing the world’s oceans…”
Editor’s Note: Before reading another dismal report on the conditions our ocean’s face, some communities are trying to stop one use plastics within their communites, such as this report from Surfrider Foundation: Supermarkets, pharmacies and certain retail stores in Long… Read More ›
Our Trash Chokes A Northern Elephant Seal
It’s ironic that the northern elephant seal’s worst nightmare was the human mammal–not its natural predators the great white shark and orca. In the 1800s oil hunters slaughtered nearly the entire northern elephant seal population…
A North Pacific Gray Whale Obstacle Course
If he skips entanglement, then our garbage still threatens him. Last year, a necropsy on a near-adult gray (so it wasn’t Skippy) discovered 20 plastic bags, small towels, surgical gloves, sweat pants, plastic pieces, duct tape, and a golf ball in its stomach.
Crumpling Oceans, Like Dominos Falling
Dominos. It’s like 150 years of stacked dominoes collapsing in four directions from Rugby, North Dakota, North America’s geographical center and from every geographical center of every continent on Planet Earth—with the final dominos landing in every sea that touches every continent. Collapsing dominos. That’s how I envision the condition of our seas today.
Simple Ways We Can Help Save Our Seas
Our oceans provide every other breath that we take. Healthy oceans are essential to our overall well-being, but they are in crisis and frantically dial 911.
Sea Otter Survey: Numbers Remain Threatened
California sea otters are cute, entertaining, and still not out of the kelp (or woods) as far as their environmental well-being goes. In other words, this species remains ”threatened” on the Endangered Species list after a recent census …
Mermaid Tears — Another Nautical Disaster
From my window, the Pacific Ocean looks endless and impenetrable. It is so big, that surely, one little accidental drop of trash, like a plastic bottle that blew out from my hands, could not hurt this water giant.
Neptune 911! 