State of The Oceans: Bad

“World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline” proclaims the BBC website, based upon the outcome of this workshop by the IPSO.  Well, yes. Given the steadily rising human population on the planet, particularly the numbers that live in coastal zones and depend upon the sea for their subsistence or income, significant pollution and biodiversity loss is pretty much inevitable.

The obvious question to follow this astounding insight is: “What are we going to do about it?” To which no-one has any more satisfactory answer than “fiddle at the margins” (obviously I am paraphrasing). Whilst individual countries can contribute significantly to sustaining the diversity and health of their own coastal waters, in the face of the kind of global apathy and coordinated sociopathy that currently predominates in international forums, they are all but powerless. The plethora of human activities which contribute to the observed decline are near-impossible to influence on a national basis due to the global nature of the legislation governing many of those activities. That and the geopolitical infighting afflicting those same international organisations as dominant powers struggle to capture as many natural resources as possible to fuel their own supremacist struggles.

:~(

website

I am currently trying out a variety of Content Management Systems with a view to setting up my personal site. It might end up here as I’m actually quite taken with the flexible yet simple interface and the ability to cross-post stuff. Now to buy a domain . .. .

Dolphin steak, anyone?

Apparently dolphins have dark, gamey meat, like venison. A friend of mine pointed out that in Peru they call it “pig of the sea”. Mind you they eat guinea pigs in Peru too so they’re clearly fans of a varied diet. 

This is the unfortunate, but inevitable consequence of our planet’s rising population. Its hard to teach a starving man the value of the biodiversity surrounding him. 

Hayden’s Harbour Clean

I went out with Hayden the other day to collect plastic flotsam & jetsom from around the Waitemata Harbour. He’s a pretty cool fellow who recently flew to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch North of Hawaii to witness the extent of the epic plastic pollution that collects there. It was a fantastic experience, despite the wind gusting 47 knots and having to head back in for shelter and I’m looking forward to going out with him again on a brighter day!

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