CONGRATULATIONS TO PROJECT SOAR CO-FOUNDERS!!!!

See the Award Winning CSG Students

Singing

FRED THE HAPPY EYE MONKEY

AND

TALKING STORY ABOUT PROJECT SOAR:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IE78y5od0c

The International Reading Association

has just announced:

Debbie Charna's Students at Columbus School for Girls

FIRST PLACE WINNERS

of

THE LITERACY AND SERVICE RECOGNITION AWARD

for

"Developing and expanding Project S.O.A.R.

SAVE OUR ALBATROSSES/RESEARCH.

In announcing the award to Debbie Charna and her students,

Denise H. Stuart, Ph.D.

Co-Chair and Literacy and Service Award at IRA

stated further:

"They purposefully put literacy skills into caring action, while developing

international friendships and chains of communication arond concern for

enviromental awareness and responsibility.

These young girls exemplify the kind of leadership

we want to recognize."

They have been invited to Orlando, Florida on May 10th to accept their award!!!

The five students have been a major part of what I have been attempting here at SOAR

and I have had the honor

to continue working with Debbie and her incredible kids at CSG.

In past weeks, we have collaborated with NOAA, schools in the Dominican Republic

and Israel. 

We've also started to explore ways of connecting whales and freshwater systems

by focusing on Orcas and Dragonflies.

Friends of Fred teaching kits with Orca and Dragonfly information

and educational projects are off and away to Rhode Island and Norway

where we will launch our first connection with a Marine National Park

in the Scandinavian reaches of the ocean.

None of this would have been possible without the help and inspiration 

of Debbie Charna, her students, and the many other

teachers, parents, and partners at NOAA, USFWS, and other agencies

and Not For Profits!!!

CONGRATULATIONS DEBBIE AND STUDENTS!!!

OCEAN VALENTINE FROM FRED X193

ALOHA NUI LOA

From Fred X193

Just before heading out into the world to explore Dragonflies.

First stop, Kauai with Yumi, then on to Rhode Island and beyond.........

But first, a big Valentine Aloha to Linda Schubert and Ann Bell.

Thanks to both of them, Fred has a way about him not possible

without their help and sense of humor........

Fred's Cousin, X310 gotta lotta Aloha from Linda and Ann.

Fred X193 is aiming to catch up with all of them, sometime, someplace

on a planet not so full of all those bottle caps,

THANKS TO KIDS WHO KNOW WHO THEY ARE!!!!!

Thanks kids for cleaning up your world by removing bottle caps

from watersheds of planet earth.

Just you watch.........that heart can change the world. One heart.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE........

For those of us who came to know responsibility with the help of poetic music

of the sixties and early seventies,

These words ring. Where have all the flowers gone......Okay, Pete got alot of us

thinking as we entered our professional lives. 

In his song, as in many of his works, we might think about injustices

related to war and the hope of peace on the planet.

Tonight, I walked the beach here on Marrowstone Island.

Susan and Howard Berta of the Orca Network had sent out a note

to let us know there were whales in the area........And so, I went on my

evening beach walk and cleanup a bit earlier than normal. It was easy.

We had SUN today and Monsoon was eager to swim.

I hoped to see the whales, but when I got to the beach, a lot of military

boat traffic apparently frightened the whales. They were actually within

a reach of water I could see in the distance --- down near Point No Point,

a very historic place.........But then, they suddenly turned south

as the shipping noise probably interfered with their movements.

Sonar perhaps.........not uncommon and needed to be sure during

our time of war.......

Monsoon and I walked the beach and found a lot of mesh netting. We stopped a lot,

scanning the water as the ships disappeared only to be replaced by the

endless stream of freighters leaving Seattle and Tacoma.

No whales in sight.

I kept putting the binocs on Craven Rock to my south.

Sea Lions perched atop the rock sat without making any sound.

No seals were in the water. No porpoises. 

As it grew dark, I walked to the very northern tip of the island and 

began a closer look at the drift line where high tide dropped 

some of what you see in the above photo......... 

Right there, Tangled together in seaweed ---

a plastic flower and one Green Soldier.

Now the soldier rests on my desk with a blue one....

but this green guy fascinates. He holds binoculars, not a rifle..........

and, curiously, mixed in the very same tangle was a tiny plastic bag.

If you look closely at the photo you will see dollar signs printed on the tiny plastic pouch.

Where have all the plastic flowers gone? All I know is that some wash up on our shore. 

Some have gone to soldiers. Some float with plastic bags once holding funds of some sort.

If you notice too.........that tiny Earth squeeze ball above the flower.......

It was a gift from some young students......I pick it up daily and give it a few squeezes.

Printed on the Earth:

"Reduce Stress

on the Earth:

Support Family Planning"

As many kids say to me, this is what it is all about. What it comes down to.

There are simply too many plastic soldiers on the planet because, well, hey,

there are far too many of everyting. Apparently there are now so many

plastic flowers that we need another Pete Seeger to sing their song.

   

SUPER SIZED STRINGBALL ON SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

It has been a while since I quantified Beach Plastics and so, yesterday being Super Bowl Sunday, I thought I'd hop aboard the competitive spirit train and offer you this. Here is a listing of all the plastic I picked up just before half time on Super Bowl Sunday at Marrowstone Point, along the eastern shore of the island from what we call The Goat Ponds to just about the tip of the point..........a distance of about half a mile. All plastic counted was washed ashore on the first high tide on 6 February 2011, so this is freshly dropped trash, mostly brought in on the tide after a moderate wind from the south (Once again, Thank you Seattle for all your trash - it is mostly added to the now netted Stringball, supersized on Super Bowl Sunday:

Plastic Lumber    1 five foot 2x2

Plastic Bags (clear)    15

Plastic Sheeting/film     19 pieces about enough to cover an average back yard

Food and Candy Wrappers (most very fresh and some with mints)     21

Other Wrappers     4

Bottles    1  

Tire Buoys  (styrofoam filled tires)  2

Lighters    5

Shotgun Shells     4

Shotgun Shell Shot Sleeves (the pieces that look like squid) 12

Rope     4

Planter   1

Fencing   1 section

Unidentified     10

Cargo Netting   1 piece (visible in photo above)

Toys     4 (frisbee piece, balls)

Fireworks     3

Bottle Caps     13

Flip Flop     1

Health and Beauty Aids     4

Ant Trap    1   (printed with CAUTION and listing of contents: Hydramethylnon, EPA reg. no. 1663-33)

Mesh Tubing/Bag     12

Balloons     3

Food Containers     2

Tool or Brush Handles     2

Tape    3 chunks

Glove    1

Buckets      1

Large Handles     1

Fishing Lures/Gear   2

Tags (includes shellfish identification tag from Skokomish Harvest)   2

Straws     10

Note that I only found one bottle. That is unusual for any time of year, but many of these are blown up and away from the high water mark, so tonight I might recover many more of these. The Cargo Netting was disturbing in that these larger pieces of debris are usually found in outer coastal areas and are major problems for marine mammals. When I was on Midway, Cargo Netting was a major part of the trash washed ashore just as it is on the windward sides of each of the main Hawaiian Islands.

Of interest too, I found a section of what I do believe is a rib bone from a whale.

You have to wonder about the ant trap and its contents. Rodent traps, mosquito repellent, and other liquid biocides wash into our waters, but how to quanitify these and to what extent do they enter marine foods we eat, not to mention the foods eaten by seabirds, fish, and marine mammals. 

Note:   My stringball receives only a fraction of the trash since much of it needs to be disposed of in other ways or simply reused or recycled.   

ORCAS AND PLASTIC SNEAK PAST MARROWSTONE ISLAND

Stringball. 3 February 2011.

On February 1st, two pods of Orcas snuck past Marrowstone Island

in the middle of the night......well, snuck might not be the right word, but for

those of us who enjoy seeing them, it works. They were heard on the local

hydrophone, then seen near Seattle yesterday. They were on the nightly

TV news late last night, thrilling ferry riders.

They are, as I type, somewhere just to the south of here. Some, 

according to the Orca Network's Susan Berta, down around Tacoma.

Others are headed north from around Seattle so they might show up here

in the middle of the night again. 

Sometime in that same time frame, tons of plastic drifted past Marrowstone.

This morning, I hauled 31 more Mussel discs off the beach, each wrapped along

a plastic mesh bag used by mussel farmers.

The discs are those round black plastic objects on the outer rim of the

ever enlarging stringball.........You can also see a bright orange crab bait box,

plastic bottles, rope, crab buoys (with names of owners), and a pink flip flop - one of more than

a dozen so far attached.

All this simply to show you what washes up. You can imagine what remains

out there in waters where orcas, seals, sea lions, fish, seabirds, humpbacks,

and other ocean animals are trying to survive in a world in which

their food sources are diminishing. It is no wonder so many end up

mistaking plastic for food.

See the Orca Network for today's announcement from NOAA

that allows killer whales a share in the harvest of chinook salmon - meaning

that salmon fishermen will have fewer salmon to harvest so that orcas

might have a larger share of this valuable food source.

No one, however, is talking about who should take how much of the

JUVENILE salmon population that will soon leave rivers and streams

and enter the ocean world where hungry humpbacks dine on them

along with herring, sandlance, candlefish, smelt, and other small fish.

Just a guess, but an educated guess.........Humpback Whale population increases

are taking a large share of the orca's chinook, probably a much larger

share than that taken when the chinooks grow to adult size and become

targets of commercial and recreational human fishermen. Not an easy issue

to study, so no one is able to work on this in a meaningful way. So far.

Meanwhile, plastics continue to enter the ocean in far greater quantities

than baby salmon.......And so, many whales will die from our inability

to manage our waste stream.