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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A List of Lists
By Daniel de la Calle We are still in January, the month of lists and resolutions for the remaining 11 months or the rest of our lives. Here I list of some of those lists: •The Center for Biological Diversity announced their Top Ten priorities for 2012. Here is the list: 1 Save the […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Artistic License
By Daniel de la Calle Creative work filters life, the natural world, history, words, even our ambiguous, volatile human emotions through the distorted prism of the artist’s senses. When done with genius this does the magic of shedding a certain light and revelation to that reality; it somehow touches us more profoundly and brings us […]
That Cranky Old Man
By Daniel de la Calle A few years from now I will inevitably become an insufferable cranky old man. I am actually almost there now: On World Water Day last week I turned my forgotten TV set on, the one that comes back to life during cycling season, and watched the 3 p.m. news. […]
“The Death of the Oceans?”
By Daniel de la Calle Same day the Census For Marine Life made public the results of those ten years of research (read October 16th blog post) the BBC broadcast a new documentary narrated by David Attenborough and titled “The Death of the Oceans?”. The hour long film shows the outstanding marine footage we have […]
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 […]
Oceanic News
By Daniel de la Calle I just spent five hours flying over the Atlantic and as a tribute to it have decided to list five nuggets of information about our oceans, those two thirds of Earth that we normally see as highways, supermarkets, dumpsters, bounties of riches or playgrounds, but are seldom given the importance […]
Screening at the Oil Company
By Daniel de la Calle from Ipanema Beach, Brazil This past Friday the 28th A Sea Change screened at the CENPES center in Rio de Janeiro. It is a massive 25 acre complex that employs over 1,500 biologists, chemists, marine ecologists and engineers working in interdisciplinary groups at the Petrobras headquarters, one of the leading […]