This is from one egg. How did that happen?
A Day In the Life of Jordan Arce
"In wilderness is the preservation of the world."
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment.
David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals (2002)
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Men and women can now thank a dozen brain regions for their romantic fervor.
Researchers have revealed the fonts of desire by comparing functional MRI studies of people who indicated they were experiencing passionate love, maternal love or unconditional love. Together, the regions release neurotransmitters and other chemicals in the brain and blood that prompt greater euphoric sensations such as attraction and pleasure. Conversely, psychiatrists might someday help individuals who become dangerously depressed after a heartbreak by adjusting those chemicals.
Passion also heightens several cognitive functions, as the brain regions and chemicals surge. “It’s all about how that network interacts,” says Stephanie Ortigue, an assistant professor of psychology at Syracuse University, who led the study. The cognitive functions, in turn, “are triggers that fully activate the love network.” Tell that to your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day.
Graphics by: James W. Lewis, West Virginia University (brain), and Jen Christiansen.
(via mothernaturenetwork)
Moby Dick
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee.”
These are the words of Herman Melville that should have been coming out of my mouth to fully appreciate the moment: driving towards whale spouts in the distant horizon with the boat’s steering wheel in my hand the ocean spray in my face.
Finding ourselves a mile offshore west of the Scripps Pier after a long day of shark fishing, we waited. A 30 foot radius of calm unrippled water surrounded our 17 foot boat; the “footprint” left by a large aquatic mammal that had just dove from the surface.
And then- we saw it. A couple hundred feet from us was a small blue island skating the surface, only recognizable by the small dorsal fin. A BLUE WHALE. The largest creature living or has ever lived on planet earth. They can grow up to 100 feet long. And we were surrounded.
No words can describe how immensely exhilarating and frightening is the sudden spray from the blue whale’s blowhole every time it reaches the surface. Half a dozen surrounded our boat; at one point there was not ten seconds between each spray that would hit our faces like a fresh foggy mist.
We bobbed in the water for another half an hour like rubber duckies in a bath tab. Miniscule and unimpressive. A bath toy to the ocean’s true dwelling giants. I steered the boat back to SIO with the sunset behind beckoning me to come back and witness these amazing creatures once again.
An Ocean Miracle in the Gulf of California
For generations we have been taking fish out of the ocean at a rate faster than they can reproduce. The problem is that there are fewer and fewer fish to meet an ever-increasing demand. The solution is simply to take less so that we can continue eating fish for a longer time.
Opponents of conservation, however, argue that regulating fishing will destroy jobs and hurt the economy–but they are wrong, and there are real-world examples that prove this. A scientific study published today by the Public Library of Science shows that protecting an area brings the fish back, and creates jobs and increases economic revenue for the local communities. I have seen it with my own eyes and, believe me, it is like a miracle, only that it is not–it’s just common business sense.
Cabo Pulmo National Park in Baja California, Mexico, was protected in 1995 to safeguard the largest coral community in the Gulf of California. When I dove there for the first time in 1999, I thought the corals were very nice, but there were not so many fishes, and I didn’t think the place was extraordinary. Together with Octavio Aburto and other Mexican colleagues we dove at many sites in the gulf, in a region spanning over 1,000 km. Cabo Pulmo was just like most other places I’d seen in the Gulf of California.
But the Cabo Pulmo villagers wanted more. They decided that the waters in front of their settlement were going to be a no-take marine reserve – fishing was banned with the hopes of bringing the fish back. They had a vision, and they succeeded in a way that exceeded all expectations, including mine.
In 2009 we went back to Cabo Pulmo to monitor the fish populations. We jumped in the water, expecting fishes to be more abundant after 10 years of protection. But we could not believe what we saw–thousands upon thousands of large fishes such as snappers, groupers, trevally, and manta rays. They were so abundant that we could not see each other if we were fifteen meters apart. We saw more sharks in one dive at Cabo Pulmo than in 10 years of diving throughout the Gulf of California!
Our research indicated that the fish biomass increased by 460% at Cabo Pulmo–to a level similar to remote pristine coral reefs that have never been fished. In contrast, all other sites in the Gulf of California that we revisited in 2009 were as degraded as ten years earlier. This shows that it is possible to bring back the former richness of the ocean that man has obliterated, but that without our dedication, the degradation will continue.
Most importantly for the people of Cabo Pulmo, since their reef is now the only healthy reef left in the Gulf of California, it has attracted divers, which bring economic revenue. And fishermen around the marine reserve are catching more fish than before thanks to the spillover of fish from the no-take marine reserve. It seems like a win-win to me!
The question is: how can we have more of these?
Environmental sustainability is possible.
(via mothernaturenetwork)
Nele Azevedo’s ice sculptures are meant to question the role of monuments in cities, but Azevedo says she’s glad her art can also “speak of urgent matters that threaten our existence on this planet.” In 2009 Azevedo teamed up with the World Wildlife Fund to place 1,000 of her ice figures on steps in Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt Square to show the effects of climate change.
14 artists with a green message
I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.
Robert F. Kennedy, address to the University of Cape Town, South Africa, June 6, 1966, during the regime of Apartheid.
Language.
“If bilingual means you can speak two languages, and trilingual means you can speak three languages, what is the term for someone who can speak only one language?”
“American.”
