An Ocean Revolution (and intro to Puerto San Carlos)

We started exploring town yesterday, which was a lot to take in at once, but really great. I need to use my spanish more, and then it'll start coming back, I hope. Puerto San Carlos is tiny, which means that 16 americans are very noticeable, but the center has done a good job of keeping good relationships with people in the town. It's not perfect by any means, but it's improving all the time and there are a bunch of people in town who we know we can go to whenever we need something, want to practice our spanish, need some help, or whatever. There are a bunch of opportunities to do environmental ed, teach english classes, help with recycling, or lots of other things with the town, so i'm planning on doing a lot of that. There are apparently thousands of people coming to PSC in a couple of weeks for a whale festival, which should be really cool--we get to do a bunch of environmental ed there too. 

Parts of the town are REALLY poor (as opposed to the rest, which is just pretty poor), and the whole place is really undeveloped, so it's kind of hard walking around knowing that most of these people have a whole family living in a house smaller than the foss 6-man. It's hard not to feel really separate from the community, which I'm hoping I'll be able to work on by getting as involved as I can and meeting lots of people.

Today we had our first lecture, which was also our first guest lecture. It was from Wallace J. Nichols [www.wallacejnichols.org], who basically started turtle conservation in Baja and across the world [www.grupoturtuguero.org]. He spoke about the trouble our oceans are in, stemming from 3 main problems: 

Too Much In: huge volumes of plastics floating in the ocean in what have been named garbage patches, the effects of global warming on our oceans, the effects of sound pollution from fishing, ships, sonar, and more on marine animals, agricultural runoff, erosion, dead zones... Basically, everything ends up in the ocean at some point. 41% of the ocean is "highly impacted" by human activity, and pretty much nowhere is unaffected.  

Too Much Out: We're overfishing our oceans, and doing it in unsustainable ways. Fishing used to be powered by humans using natural, biodegradable materials to harvest fish for thier own consumption. Now its dependent on gasoline and plastics, and most ocean species are being "eaten into oblivion." Huge numbers of animals are killed as bycatch every year, with the larger animals, the top predators, being killed first and most often. In shrimp fisheries, 90% of what's caught is often bycatch--stuff that isn't shrimp that's ususally shovelled overboard, already dead. 40% bycatch is considered "clean" for a shrimp catch. Much of the bycatch ismade up of turtles, sharkes, large fish, and other things that need protection. [www.shrimpsuck.org].

  

Destruction of the Edge: High levels of coastal development, shoreline fish and shrimp farms that destroy mangroves, erosion, and so much more are destroying the vital edge habitats of the ocean. (Has anyone seen those islands Dubai is building on thier shoreline?)

The thing that was so amazing about J.'s talk was that he spent the whole second hour talking about what we can do about it. Most simply, we need to put less in, take less out, and protect the edge. He's started a bunch of organizations and done a ton of amazing work. One of his organizations, which is kind of the big one that the other ones come off of, is called Ocean Revolution [www.oceanrevolution.org] The three main things that are required for an ocean revolution are this: 

Unprecedented Knowledge: this is where the science comes in. The ocean was once thought of as inpenetrable, mysterious, and boundless. We now know better, and the more information we can gather about the ocean, the better we'll be able to protect it. New technologies are allowing us to study the ocean and marine life in more in depth ways (literally and figuratively) than ever before. We saw video from "crittercams" mounted on the backs of turtles and penguins (!!)  that gave new insight into the life and feeding patterns of these animals. We heard about the first sea turtle ever tracked electronically, with a transmitter on her back. She was released off the coast of Baja in 1996, and was tracked via a website that J Nichols and his collegues set up by scientists, kids and thier teachers, and animal lovers with internet access worldwide. This stuff gets me excited! That first turtle made the trek from Baja to Japan in just over a year, which changed forever previous understandings of turtle and marine animal behavior. One of the important things about science, which J pointed out, is that you have to be ready for your ideas to be totally wrong--that just means that science is working. 

Global network of activists: we have easy access to more people in more ways now than we ever have had before. (Excellent example: sitting in a town in Middle of Nowhere, Mexico, with wireless internet, updating all of you in the snowy north of my every day activities with the repeated pressing of a few buttons.) This makes it easy to build huge networks of communities, scientists, social scientists, and activists from all over the world, who can work together to create real change. Using the power of community and grassroots organizing!

Creative communication: this one is very connected to the last one, but think about how effective a great website, some flashy stickers and posters, and mass facebook groups, e-mail lists, blogs are. There are now many talented artists, graphic designers, musicians, and more, who are devoting thier talents to creating social change. 

Some of the take-home messages were this:

Build social networks and communicate with spirit, innovation, creativity, and love for the world around you and for what you are doing.  Lots of things seem impossible, but aren't. Don't let anyone stop you. 

 I loved hearing all of this from a scientist, a man who devotes his life to (successfully) saving a group of species and using science to do it. I hope that in 20 years, I'll be able to look back and say that I took these lessons and used them, and that I have been able to make real change with them. 

We all walked away from that lecture so inspired and excited, armed with stickers and postcards, along with a long list of websites (see below), and the knowledge that we get to apply what we just learned in that lecture immediately. We have the next three months to do it. 

Don't get used to these daily posts--for now we have a LOT of spare time, and everything is so exciting that we all walk around going "Oooooh I have to go put this in my blog," but I'm sure that as time goes on, we're going to be much busier, with papers, camping and turtle monitoring trips, and things in the community. For now though, check often, comment, and I'm going to go to my first "official" class now. 

Love and hugs!
~Emma