ABOUT YOUR CHLDRENS' OCEANS...

There are folks that say global warming is a hoax, no danger of overfishing, plenty of whales, same for the dodo, passenger pigeon, buffalo, polar bear who really gives a shit, but here you can see just a single day's worth of what is being done to YOUR oceans, to say nothing of the oceans of your children and theirs... and theirs...

These are just the shallow scourings, the ones you can see, the ones visible from space... The sight you have is nowhere near the netting, the trawling, the pollution and other aspects of blindness. Imagine a year's worth of everything invisible that's done to the oceans.

Enjoy that tuna sandwich.

source: Treehugger, via neatorama

"Arguably the single most destructive human action for the world's oceans, bottom trawling, a practice commonly used to dredge up deep water fish, leaves behind a trail of destruction that can clearly be seen from space. The above image of the Gulf of Mexico, captured by the Landsat satellite in late 1999, shows the sediment trails left behind by individual ships (the bright spots) - a testament to the utter devastation the practice exerts on vast seafloor ecosystems.

Les Watling, a zoologist at the University of Hawaii who was interviewed by LiveScience's Andrea Thompson, said that bottom trawling drags the equivalent of an area twice the size of the combined lower 48 states each year. The sediment plumes arise as ships drag their nets across the ocean floor, moving rocks, crushing reefs and stirring up various marine organisms.

Watling described these plumes as just the "tip of the iceberg," explaining that most trawling takes place in waters deep enough to mask the plumes from sight. He presented the results of his work at the AAAS meeting in Boston alongside John Amos of SkyTruth, the West Virginia-based remote sensing and digital mapping non-profit group that tracked the plumes."

WILL THE JAPANESE FISHERIES AGENCY KILL MISTER SPLASHY PANTS WITH AN EXPLODING HARPOON?

"With just a few clicks you can help save Mister Splashy Pants and his friends: sign our petition calling upon the Japanese Fisheries Agency to promise not to kill Mister Splashy Pants.

"For the people who voted for a name other than Mister Splashy Pants, take heart. The scientists involved in the Great Whale Trail tagged 20 humpback whales in the South Pacific. The top 7 names will be used to name whales with a further 5 whales being named by our Whale Defenders.

"In the coming days we will post photos of Splashy taken earlier this year in the Pacific. To keep up to date with all the latest news about Mister Splashy Pants and his friends, sign up for your free Whale Mail newsletter."

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And be sure to get your Mister Splashy Pants t-shirt before the JFA agents traditionally winch his corpse up onto the deck for scientific mincing, then stand amid the bits of former whale and say "We now know Mister Splashy Pants better than when he was merely alive."

Maybe there should be a Japanese Imagination Agency.

THE AHAB CACHET

Speaking of Mr. Splashy Pants, even though his name isn't yet official (the voting has been extended another week, partly out of early anxiety that "Mr. Splashy Pants" would be chosen, but good luck on stemming that tsunami) I just ordered some Mr. Splashy Pants buttons from Green Peace's spontaneous Mr. Splashy Pants store (click on buttons at left) and will give one button to each of the granddaughters to wear (with a suitably kiddy explanation), then I'm gonna wear a Mr. Splashy Pants button myself everywhere I go, except maybe to bath and bed, and get Japanese folks from all walks of life - to say nothing of the many treadmills - interested in the life and times of Mr. Splashy Pants in his blue worldwide home.

I will inform my buttonholed listeners as well regarding what their whale-hunting countrymen are deviously doing to Mr. Splashy Pants and his family, the lovely Mrs. Pants and all the bright Pants children, along with aunts and uncles in greatly diminished numbers compared to a century ago as the Japanese harpoons fly for the sake of Pants research, Pants autopsies and Pants family steaks in school cafeterias, while touching in no small way on overall genocidal doom.

On second thought, Kaya, Mitsuki and Miasa will do a much better job of it, with their cute smiles and irrefutable dimples; I'm beginning to look and sound too much like Ahab wearing a Mr. Splashy Pants button.

FAR BEYOND MAJESTY

Late afternoon is the time of sky when the light is entering its golden phase, when the trees and grasses shine undaunted into the face of the sun, as if to say, in strong green words: I am a masterpiece. There is a great and unsung pride manifest in what we are pleased to think of as mere vegetation.

Then as sunset nears, all the air itself realizes the transition and rises over the sun-warmed lake, as the cooler mountain air floods down in replacement; the whole mountain, lit aslant by the hovering sun, becomes the bed of a vast river of cool air, rushing down in cosmic obligation. To sit in that river, feel that flood, after splitting firewood in the hot sun for two hours, is like whitewatering the grand canyon while sitting still, all in the country of the soul...

Those same dark leaves lift into paleness at the first touch of the downmountain winds and gleam white in the setting sun - clearly they have an old local relationship - they carry their vastness in their seeds...

The repose of the mountains in such settings as this, shaded green, gray and black in the summer evening sun and breeze, is often described as 'majestic,' but there is more in those ancient faces than aristocracy can ever aspire to; it's a matter of interaction with eternity, not immediate lineage or ambition.

Then when all the air is balanced at last, from out of the overmountain light come galleons of windblown pink clouds, sailing over the mountains as slowly and stately as on a tropical lagoon, wending across the calm of the sky toward unknown shores...

And when all up there is yet light, as the earth below grows dark and cool, the dragonflies enjoy the same calm air, their dashing silhouettes clearly visible -- way up in that silence they zig and zag in the way of their kind on glassine wings, like thoughts in a blue mind, with no aim but to be...

Then comes the full moon, laying her tapestry of light over the darkling land, revealing lineaments we are blind to in the day... who has not stood out in that vapor of silver, lain over all with the touch of a goddess, and not grown thereby?

We can do no better in our dreams...