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 […]
Shepherd Dolphins
By Daniel de la Calle If we finished the month of May with our classic news, photo and video update I thought it is only fair to also begin June in the same fashion and color. Here they are, a few more news items as we slowly catch up with the latest on the oceans […]
Information & Communication
By Daniel de la Calle Information and communication, going hand in hand as should be: »Lecture near Lake Tahoe: Dr. Howard Spero, UC Davis, will deliver a lecture titled Changing Seas about the earth’s climate, climate change throughout history and ocean (and Lake Tahoe) acidification. The date is March 22nd at 5:30PM and the location […]
SINK, a Shell Dissolving Objet d’art
By Daniel de la Calle Artist Julian Priest has created SINK, “a model of anthropogenic ocean acidification”. The materials used are a scallop shell, an internal combustion engine, glass walls, aluminum framing, copper piping, brine and methanol. How it works: “Fuel is burnt by an internal combustion engine to turn a propeller. The carbon dioxide […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Angry Denials
By Daniel de la Calle The internet, that jungle out there. If you have looked for articles about ocean acidification or any of the uncountable environmental problems we are facing I am certain you have already stumbled upon a website or personal blog where it is all refuted and mocked, most times with a shockingly […]
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 […]