Sea Notes

Underwater Exploring - by Alexa

 

WOW!!!!!!!!! Surfperch and anemones and bat stars, oh my! Can you guess why I’m so happy???? Just this weekend, I became a certified scuba diver! And I got certified right here in Monterey Bay!
 
I bet some of you are thinking; “What’s there to see? It’s just a bunch of kelp!” Well...yes, there is kelp… but no… there is a TON of other stuff! I saw this awesome type of fish called a scorpion fish, which have a sting, which is really a spine coated with venomous mucus. But they are soooo beautiful, and as long as you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. I also saw tube anemones, which look sort of like regular anemones, but I think they look just a little but cooler. They have longer tentacles, and tend to be more tube-ish. And you wouldn’t believe how many sea stars I saw! They were everywhere, and they had so many different colors!

The other awesome thing I saw were the decorator crabs. I’m sure that there was a decorator crab to match every color of the rainbow. Decorator crabs put little objects from their environment to make themselves blend in to what’s around them. So there were squishy crabs with sea anemones on then, and red crabs with kelp on them, and plenty of others besides. 

If you want to start diving, a great first step would be the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Underwater Explorers program. I did it a few years ago, and LOVED it! You dive in the Aquarium’s great tide pool, and get to see some pretty cool stuff. I saw a Monkeyface-eel, a sea cucumber, lots of fish, and sea stars. This program is available for ages 8-14, although it’s only available in the summer.  If you want to learn, please go online to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s website, go to Fun & learning, and then click on Discover Diving.  Hope to see you in the water next summer!

Alexa's Reef Revelations

I went to St. Thomas in the American Virgin Islands with my friend, Abby. While we were there, we went snorkeling, swimming, and hiking through a dense jungle of vines, trees, and small shrubs. But my favorite part was visiting a picturesque, uninhabited island. The first cool thing we saw were the hermit crabs. There they were the largest hermit crabs I’ve ever seen-- largest one was bigger than a baseball! Then I saw a Queen conch shell. Apparently people gather them to eat. But the Blue Ocean Institute says that the Queen conch, “remains threatened by overfishing and poaching throughout most of its range” and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program lists the Queen Conch as seafood to be avoided. So if you ever see anything like conch fritters on your menu, please consider ordering something else.

St. Thomas has spectacular, deep blue waters with a variety of undersea creatures. I went snorkeling twice, once near a small island and the second time in one of St. Thomas’s bays. Near the island I swam around a beautiful reef. It was amazing. I saw too many fish to count, several different types of urchins, a giant Feather Duster, and one octopus. Feather Dusters are undersea worms that live in a permanent burrows. They have feathery projections called radioles. The radioles catch food and help the worms breathe. Sadly, our magnificent reefs are at risk. The US Coral Reef Task Force states that "70% of the worlds’ coral reefs are threatened or destroyed, 20% of those are damaged beyond repair, and within the Caribbean alone, many coral reefs have lost 80% of coral species”. They continue that although critical information is still missing evidence suggests that this damage results from a combination of human forces (such as increased population, shoreline development, land-based sources of pollution, increased sediments in the water, damage by tourists and divers, poor water quality from run-off and over-fishing), global warming, and some natural factors (hurricanes and disease). And these reefs are so important: the Task Force explains that they provide “habitat for one-third of all marine fish species, build tropical islands, protect coasts from waves and storms, contain an array of potential pharmaceuticals, and support tourism and fishing industries worth billions of dollars.” The good news is there are many things you can do! Be sure to conserve water so less wastewater reaches the reef. Also, help clean up your beach if you live near one. Of course, refrain from using pesticides and remember the 4 R’s – refuse, reduce, recycle, and reuse. If you do snorkel or scuba, don’t touch anything, it will almost certainly hurt the reef. Make sure that what you eat is caught or harvested in an environmentally friendly way by consulting the Seafood Watch Program. Finally and most importantly; spread the word!

-Alexa PS. If all goes well next time I write to you I will be a certified scuba diver!

Why I love sushi, and want to help - by Alexa

Okay, I love sushi! I think sushi is pretty amazing. But, not all of it is sustainable, which can mean big problems for the ocean. For instance, look at the bluefin tuna. This species of tuna is one of the most popular menu items. But they are in trouble. And this is true for countless other species. Soooooo, that’s why the Seafood Watch program created the new pocket sushi guide! Isn’t this great?! Now, whenever you go out for sushi, you can just get out your handy card, and almost instantly figure out what’s sustainable and what’s not.

Seafood Watch is a program of Monterey Bay Aquarium designed to raise awareness about the importance of buying seafood from sustainable sources. The Monterey Bay Aquarium defines sustainable seafood as seafood from sources, either fished or farmed, that can exist over the long-term without compromising species' survival, or the health of the surrounding ecosystem. The Seafood Watch Program recommends which seafood to buy or avoid and provides the information and resources to help others for advocate environmentally-friendly seafood.

Seafood Watch was first started when the Fishing for Solutions, an exhibit that was here at Monterey Bay Aquarium from 1997- 1999, created a list of sustainable seafood choices. This original list expanded over time and the current list is available on the website.  In addition, regional lists and pockets guides are available so that you can make good choices when you are out and about shopping or selecting food at restaurants. .

Are you wondering what you can do to help out this awesome program? Well, you can print out a pocket guide for your region and the sushi guide and use them whenever you go out to dinner or to shop for dinner.  You can also encourage others to think about what they eat or, serve (if it’s a restaurant), or sell  (if it is a market)!  One way to do this is to forward information about this site to everyone you know and ask them to use the Seafood Watch Program to protect our precious oceans. There is even an E-card available to help you do this on the Seafood Website. So carry the card and maybe you’ll save a tuna!

PS. Please come and explore the many different Feathered Friends living at Aquarium on November 22 and 23, 2008. We’ll get a chance to see many of the birds and explore how the Aquarium experts train and care for them. Hope to see you there! ~Alexa

Monday's Photo: Secret Seahorses by Alexa

As some of you know, the amazing exhibit, Jellies: Living Art has closed! Doesn’t that just make you want to cry? I certainly wanted to! But as sad as that may be, a brand new exhibit is opening up this April! Can you guess what it is? It’s all about seahorses! So this blog is going to tell you a wee bit about seahorses, their conservation efforts, and the new exhibit called, The Secret Lives of Seahorses.

Believe it or not, seahorses are fish, but they don’t have scales. They have a thin skin stretched over their whole body. But, unlike most animal species, it isn’t the female who has the babies! Weird, right? The female lays her eggs into the male’s pouch, and then when the eggs hatch, the babies come out of the pouch and swim away. Another totally awesome thing about seahorses; they suck up food with their vacuum-y snout! Isn’t that incredible?

Unfortunately, the pet trade and habitat destruction are taking their toll on these magical creatures. Believe it or not, 25 million seahorses were taken in 2001. Seahorse numbers are declining. So please, protect these animals and their homes. If you don’t buy seahorses, people won’t fish for them in future. You can also protect seahorses by participating in beach clean- ups, and by trying not to litter.

Okay, on to happier stuff! The Secret Lives of Seahorses is opening April 6th! At this exhibit, you’ll meet nine different species of seahorses and a few of their cousins, like the pipefish shown above. And believe me, their cousins are almost as cool as they are! This exhibit will be divided into four galleries. In the first gallery you’ll meet the seahorse’s extended family, including fish with fused jaws and bony skeletons instead of scales. The next three galleries are all about seahorses and only seahorses: where they live, how they develop, their crazy mating displays, what they do to survive, and why the dad has the babies instead of the mom.

See you in April! ~ Alexa

Old Bags Day

A region of South Australia is planning "old bags day" - a day where no new plastic bags can be used! This is anticipation that legislation will pass through the upper house of government to ban single-use plastic bags altogether.

Similar measures are being passed in cities around the U.S., and as Alexa reports, plastic is a huge problem in our oceans.

Everybody knows how dangerous plastic material can be to sea life. But nobody knows just how much ends up in the ocean. Actually, most people think that most of the trash that is in the ocean gets there because it is thrown off a boat or into the sea by a careless beach-goer. Oh, I wish. It is estimated that there is more than 100 million tons of plastic in the world oceans.  Of this, about 80% is thought to come from land-based sources.

As worrisome as that may be, the effects are more devastating. Some of the plastic ends up getting ingested by a turtle or the chick of a Laysan Albatross. Believe it or not, 40% of Laysan Albatross chicks have ingested plastics, 95% of dead fulmars that washed ashore in the North Sea had plastic trash in their stomach, and 10 of 33 dead Leatherback Turtles that washed ashore between 1979 and 1988 had plastic debris in their stomach. But where are these animals finding the plastic to eat?

Would you believe that there is patch of trash the size of the U.S.A. floating in the Pacific Ocean? Well, it exists. Some people call it the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and I think that it is scary. The Garbage patch was first predicted in 1988 by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and then was described by Charles Moore, a sea captain and ocean researcher. It occurs in a place where many oceanic currents meet and rotate. And this is not the only one. Often it is from these garbage patches that animals find the plastics to eat.

But some of these horrific things can be prevented and stopped if we can recycle more, and litter way less. I know it seems easy, but if it was as easy as it sounds, we might not have any garbage patches at all. We can do it, but it’s not going to be stopped by one person, everyone must help. Or in a few years, we may have no sea turtles or albatrosses. For more information or a list of actions that you can take go to http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/oceanissues/plastics_albatross/

Jellies galore - by Alexa

When MBARI celebrated their 20th birthday in 2007, they created a list of the top 20 most important accomplishments since their founding. The number ten accomplishment was discovering that one third of the oceanic biomass is made up of JELLY!!!!!!!!!! That’s right, gelatinous animals made up about 1/3 of the oceanic biomass in marine food webs!

The coolest part of that announcement; jelly-ish animals happen to be my favorite creatures in the whole world! To all of you who are laughing at that pronouncement, I’m sure that by the end of the blog you too will agree with me.

I’m sorry, I bet some of you have no idea what MBARI is. MBARI stands for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. It is a center dedicated to the research and preservation of the ocean. Research also involves discovering amazing new species!

“Every time we dive below 2,000 meters, we see species that are new to science” said MBARI researcher Steve Haddock. It would take a few years to tell you all of the new animals, so I’m only going to mention a few here.  But if you want more information about MBARI and their wonderful accomplishments go to http://www.mbari.org, or if you specifically interested in jellies, check this page.

One of my favorite discoveries is a species of sea butterfly, like the one shown at the top of this blog. Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? I bet you won’t believe that it’s related to a common garden snail! Some species even have a shell inside of them. Go to the MBARI website to see more jellies like red bulbous jellies, bumpy jellies and jellies that use glowing red lures to attract lunch.  They are remarkable!

- Alexa Stefanko - 2008 Official Explorer

Committing to Action

In my last blog I talked about the TUNZA children’s conference  in Stavanger, Norway that I attended. In one of the workshops I participated in, we concluded that to solve pressing world problems we would all need to work together. That doesn’t just mean all of us in the U.S., that means all of us in the entire WORLD. If we don’t, we might end up having to move to Mars to escape the state of the earth. When we work together, we can address everyone’s needs, and use our collective thinking to solve our problems.

To this end, at the conference we met three times over the course of five days  in  “action groups”. We met in these groups to discuss ways to better protect our environment. At the end of the conference, all of our ideas were summarized into a list of commitments that we hoped every child in the world would work to implement.

We brainstormed  commitments on 4 themes; water, energy, biodiversity, and production and consumption. These commitments are things that each and every one of us can do every day to help our earth. I truly enjoyed attending the action groups. It was really rewarding and it was wonderful to hear the ideas from  people from other countries.

Here is an example of a commitment that we made in each of the four categories:

• Water: Participate in a beach, river, or lake clean-up.
• Energy: Turn off lights when not in use.
• Biodiversity: Plant a tree on every birthday.
• Production and Consumption: Minimize the use of plastic bags and paper. (For example, always remember to write on both sides of paper and then recycle it!)

The rest of the commitments that we came up with are listed on UNEP's web site. I am going to try to implement each and every one of these commitments. You can read the commitments agreed upon at the conference and implement them in your life too! 

Tunza (treat with care or affection)

This June I attended the TUNZA children’s conference in Stavanger, Norway. Tunza is a United Nations Environmental Program designed to inspire, inform, and enable children and youth to care for the environment. Children get to learn about environmental issues, share experiences and opinions, and collectively voice their concerns for the environment. The conference is also intended to inspire children to implement environmental projects in their communities. This year’s conference brought together children from 105 countries and focused on energy, water and sustainability.

There were over 50 workshops and fieldtrips offered. My favorite workshop was called, “Friends and Foes.” It examined the way the world works. The only problem is; our world isn’t working too well. We have significant environmental, political, and economic problems that need to be solved. In my action group we thought about how to fix our ailing world and centered on one solution, although I’m sure that there are others. Our solution sounds simple; we ALL must work together.

My favorite part of the conference was meeting children from all over the world committed to caring for the planet. They all offered new ideas and possibilities that I hadn’t even considered. I met an Egyptian girl who started a project which recycled everyday waste into amazing and fabulous works of art. I also learned about a girl from New Zealand who works to conserve an endangered species of bird called the takahe. I met a girl from Japan who is part of a group who saves owls. Then there was a group of Malaysian children called the Tree Theatre Group, who used drama to help people understand the importance of saving the forests.  And  then there was a group of children from Mexico who are devoted to the conservation of Cuatro Cienigas, which is the home to dozens of species endemic to their region. Another boy from Germany is dedicated to keeping the dream of planting a billion trees all over Europe alive. All of these children demonstrated extraordinary initiative and creativity. It was an honor to be able to talk to them and learn about them.

The TUNZA conference has to have been the most fantastic and moving experience of my life. I wish I was able to go back, but I’ll be too old when the next conference rolls around. The next conference is in Korea, maybe you would like to attend it?  If so just go to the Tunza webpage for more information.  But even if you can’t attend, please read the commitments with the adults in your life and implement in your home!  Or get your friends together and start a project caring for our precious environment.

Swap-o-Rama-Rama (by Alexa)

So I spent Earth Day weekend knee-deep in used clothes! Why you ask? Because we were holding a Swap O Rama Rama at the Coyote Point Museum! What’s that? What’s a Swap O Rama Rama? (I’ll bet this is feeling a bit like a strange vocabulary test, huh?!).

Swap O Rama Ramas are part of an international network of events created by the brilliant Wendy Tremayne in 2005 and protected under a Creative Commons License.

At a Swap, people bring a bag of used clothes and then they swap those clothes for other used clothes. Then with help of talented designers and artists, they transform those clothes into unique and creative recycled fashions. Earlier this year two incredible friends, Elena and Abby, and I decided to plan a Swap O Rama Rama and other activities to help raise money for Coyote Point Museum, a museum that does incredible work teaching kids how to care for the planet.

Our Swap O Rama Rama was very similar to a traditional one, except it was geared more towards youth. It was held on Saturday, April 19th, at Coyote Point Museum as a part of their big Earth celebration. And, because the event was geared to youth, we wanted to make sure everyone had the help they needed to transform their used clothes into wearable art.

Boy, did the creative community come through! About 50 people volunteered their expertise and time including clothes designers, knitters, jewelry designers, silk screeners, fabric embellishment artists, and organizers extraordinaire. Then, after we posted on Freecycle and Craigslist, people donated the supplies that was needed for the Swap O Rama Rama. We were given donations including sewing machines (thanks to Ray’s Sewing Center of San Jose), sewing notions and supplies, and jewelery-making, knittting, silkscreening, iand iron-on supplies. So when we opened our doors we had clothing designers at seven sewing stations, plus handsewing, knitting, silkcreening, embroidery, iron-on and jewelry-making workshops. And good thing we did - because lots of people came with their bags of used clothes, many staying the entire day, and some making entirely new outfits. And the fun didn’t stop there. After the Swap O Rama Rama we held a fashion show so people could show off their creations. Everybody looked great walking down the runway but my favorite outfit was an incredible little dress made out of a green lace top and a dark brown embellished skirt. Judges considered the entries and awarded prizes which included supplies from the event that we recycled into prizes! Most importantly everyone had a great experience doing creative recycling.

We really wanted people to see how much fun reusing is and how cool the things that you create can be. So we also collected recycled, upcycled, and repurposed donations from around the world and auctioned them off at a Green Auction. There; was a purse made of recycled jeans from Finland, a serving platter made of street signs from the US, altered couture from Canada, and many, many more items. My favorite was a stuffed Asiatic Mouflon, (that’s a sort of mountain goat) made out of recycled upholstery fabric! Wendy explains that when you go to a Swap O Rama Rama you reuse rather than buy new and create rather than consume. So next time you are cleaning out your closet, ask yourself; do I want these clothes and accessories; to go into a landfill, or can the get used by someone else or can I use them again myself?

Above all else, remember the three Rs and one C; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Create!

Dia del Nino (Day of the Child)

On  April 27th, Monterey Bay Aquarium celebrated Día Del Niño, or ‘Day Of The Child’! Día Del Niño celebrated children and the enormous power they hold in their hands. Because it was their day, children under 12 were admitted free. Día Del Niño featured splendid family-oriented, educational events. There was so much going on at the event  I didn’t get to see it all but I’ll tell you about as much as I can.

First, there were two great presentations including “Working With White Sharks” presented by Associate Curator Manny Ezcurra and “Seahorse Magic”. Both were presented in English and Spanish.  El Teatro Campesino was also there presenting, Basta Basura (or Enough Trash), a great musical that teaches us about the dangers of throwing garbage into the ocean.

 

Next, there was lively music and infectious dance wherever I went. There was a mariachi performance by Mariachi California De Javier Vargas and  an incredible harpist named William Faulkner.  There were also dancers from Águila Real and although I have never thought of myself as a dancer, even I was moving to the music at this event!

 

There were also hands-on activities in the craft room.Here people made a traditional Mexican toy called a Boleros Cup. A Boleros Cup is a cup - usually wooden, although ours were paper- with a little ball or figurine attached to it with a string. The object of the game is to get the little ball into the cup. Sounds easy, right? I thought so too, until I tried it. It’s really is hard! But the paper cones that everyone decorated were gorgeous! There were so many bright colors and unique designs! I had a lot of fun there, but I have to admit I had just as much fun at the Prize Wheel.

The Prize Wheel is a lot like the Wheel of Fortune, except there is no letter- guessing. Someone would spin the huge wheel on a table. Then, depending on what color the spinner it landed on, the person spinning would get one of four prizes. The prizes were; a rubber otter, four tickets for the Aquarium, a Wild About Otters poster, or some fantastic stickers. The prize wheel was so cool! Sometimes, all of the people would start chanting the name of the prize they wanted! It seemed all of the adults wanted tickets, but the most popular prize among the children was the rubber otter. And when the person won the item they wanted, everyone whooped and hollered with excitement.  I had fun making prize announcements as interesting and varied as I could.

 

Día Del Niño was groovy and the best news is that more events like this one are planned for the future.  Mark your calendar for October 12th so you can come party at Fiesta Del Mar! This event celebrates the Latin American culture and rejoices in our magnificent and mysterious seas. The highlight of the day will be the Heroe del Medio Ambiente (Hero of the Environment) award ceremony. Like Día Del Niño, children 12 and under will be admitted all day for free! I will definitely see you there!