WHY SOAR?

SOAR has a serious side in its missions to help kids find ways of helping the ocean and watersheds throughout the world. I started on having seen hundreds of albatrosses killed by plastic debris at Pihemanu (Midway Atoll). I was inspired by the questions of young people in Ohio and by USFWS biologists working hard to protect endangered species and damaged habitats.



SOAR has a very fun and tough to define side.....thanks to FRED AND FRIENDS, Project SOAR helps with watershed and ocean workshops throughout the world, and generally makes people smile while they learn some tough stuff about how we treat our rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, and the one ocean on planet earth..........

INVITING SOAR INTO YOUR SCHOOL, ORGANIZATION, AND COMMUNITY

SOAR introduces young people to ways they can make a difference in their local community and the wider world.



Take advantage by:



1) Invite a SOAR learning kit or bring Ron Hirschi to your school as a guest author or speaker for your organization. Ron has many years experience as an author and as a biologist. SOAR adds another dimension to his list of hands on projects he shares in writing, art, and ecology workshops.



Many schools invite Ron for his work as author of more than 50 nonfiction books, including many with ocean themes. Others bring him to school as a scientist or artist, but the best fit is always when schools use Ron to help them integrate curriculum.



Tom Bates, Principal at Tremont Elementary in Ohio recently said in an interview following Ron's visit, "What stood out to me was how Ron was able to gear his activities and discussion and information so it was meaningful to the students, whether they were in kindergarten or fifth grade."



Be in touch at whalemail@waypoint.com for visit information.



2) SOAR now has a new kit circling the globe along with a Laysan Albatross "Friend of Fred". This duo is packaged with a box full of ideas, activities, information about Papahanaumokuakea, ocean debris, and other materials aimed at sparking new projects related to the sea. Also included is a journal chronicling Fred's adventures, all of which began when kids at Columbus School for Girls (CSG) learned how they could take action to help the ocean.



Currently, this treasured package is in the hands of The Bush School in Seattle.


NOTE: You might also be lucky to receive one of the earlier packages with a FRED and Friend, already traveling. To date, Fred has visited Australia, Switzerland, Israel, England, The Dominican Republic, and many corners of the United States.

13 September 2011

A NEW SPECIES OF SHEARWATER AND OTHER SEABIRD NEWS


These articles recently appeared in journals, including the announcement of a proposed new species! Discovering a new bird on the planet may seem unlikely, but researchers are sure they have found a previously unknown Shearwater, one of the most amazing seabirds. Like Albatrosses, Shearwaters soar out over the ocean, clocking hundreds and even thousands of miles on feeding flights. The new species, Bryan's Shearwater needs attention.............Here is the citation along with two other articles:

Pyle, P., Welch, A.J., and R.C. Fleischer. 2011. A new species of shearwater recorded from Midway Atoll, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Condor 113 (3): 518-527.

The authors are proposing a new species based on a specimen collected on Midway in 1963. This small shearwater's breeding and nonbreeding ranges are not known and the authors call for more investigation. The ocean is vast and research opportunities like this might call a young scientist to seek information needed to possibly save this bird from disappearing before we know much about it.


Doughty, R.W. 2010. Saving the Albatross: Fashioning an environmental regime. Geographical Review. 100 (2): 216-228.

I have to say I've only been able to read an abstract of this article, but look forward to a trip to the UW library to read more of what Doughty has to say in this review of the history of exploitation as well as  protective efforts meant to save albatrosses, one of the most threatened of all bird groups. Saving Albatrosses is all about saving the world oceans since these birds reflect so many of our impacts, both negative and postive.


Volter, S.C., Archibald, K., Morgan, G., and Morgan L. 2011. The use of plastic debris as nesting material by a colonial seabird and associated entanglement mortality. Marine Pollution Bulletin. 62 (1): 168-172.

Plastics appear in nests of many birds. Check out an Osprey nest in Wyoming or Montana, and you might see some orange baling twine dangling from the stick structure. Out at sea, many birds pick plastic as food, but, as these authors report, Northern Gannets gather great quantities for their nesting material. They studied a Gannet colony at which nests were found to contain an average of about 470g of plastic, mostly rope, for a colony total of more than 18 tons. Yearly entanglement in the colony ranged from 33-109 birds, mainly nestlings. 

As more and more plastics enter the sea, it is not surprising to see birds "repurpose" the material. Most of us can remember photos of those six pack rings entangling sea creatures, including birds, turtles, and marine mammals. Rope tangles wash ashore on all ocean beaches and so,

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO WILL BE PARTICIPATING THIS WEEKEND IN THE INTERNATIONAL BEACH CLEANUP.

If you live away from the ocean, help out by cleaning a stream, lake shore, or other waterway. You might be saving an Albatross and removing rope that would otherwise become a hazard for young Gannets!
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X310 Plastic Ocean Activity


It's me, Fred, the Monkey.

If you look closely, you can see I wear X310's leg band around my neck. It's to remind me of her. She was a Laysan Albatross. She was born in March 2008 and lived on Pihemanu, one of the most remote atolls on earth, now part of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

You can wonder about Pihemanu and about X310. She didn't live very long, dying in June 2008. Her parents flew thousands and thousands of miles finding food for her. But x310, like lots of baby albatrosses died before she got to soar the seas. Some albatrosses fly three million miles during their life. Like X310's parents, their sea is a new challenge in food finding because of our actions on land.

Adult albatrosses fly more than a thousand miles just to get a single meal for their babies. But the ocean is full of plastic. And if you read my buddy, Ron's blog and website, you learn about plastic in the sea. It is everywhere and babies like X310 die because they eat so much plastic, they can not get it out of their stomachs.

Where's all this plastic come from?
Where does it go?

Here is a simple activity:

Get up from your chair and walk around the classroom or wherever you are sitting.

Write down each thing around you that is made of plastic.

Everybody compare lists and make a total of the plastic products.

Now, the hard part of this activity:

Can you find alternatives for the things you use, alternatives not made of plastic?
Maybe start with drinking water from a fountain or glass or reuseable container?
Maybe start a really good recycling project?
Maybe make some art from recycled plastic?
Learn more on links here on this site and others.
Talk about times with no plastic.
X310 would have appreciated if people, just a few years ago had decided to make a plastic-free world for you....
You and X310.

Learn how you can SOAR with FRED by arranging a visit with Fred and his ocean teaching kit by emailing his banana provider at whalemail@waypoint.com

FEEDING A BABY ALBATROSS OCEAN ACTIVITY

What you need:

Pint size plastic beverage container with wide mouth (about 1.5 inches) ---This approximates the size of a baby albatross stomach and esophagus.

Important to have the lid too.

Enough plastic items (bottle caps, toothbrush, legos, fishing line, small chunks of nylon rope, markers, pens, more bottle caps and even a few more bottle caps since they are pretty much the most common marine debris.

Talk with your audience of kids of any age about ocean debris and the way adult albatrosses fly out a few hundred or even a thousand miles to find flying fish eggs and squid for the little ones. They return to Pihe Manu or up on the Northeast shore of Kauai, find their young one among thousands of others and begin to feed by regurgitating "food".......

As you talk about this, have the kids place one or two pieces of the plastic into the bottle.

Replace cap with each addition of plastic. Shake gently to mimic bird moving around the nesting area a bit.

Remove cap. Shake gently to mimic the bird trying to dislodge "food" that can not be digested. In a perfect ocean, this would be squid beaks, fish bones, or other natural pieces of food.

Add more plastic, repeating above until no plastic falls out of the bottle when cap is removed (bill is opened) and the bird tries and tries, but can not toss up the mass of debris. See how much and how many different kinds of plastic can be added. Does the rope tangle with the legos and bottle caps. Do five bottle caps cause a blockage in the esophagus???

In nature, the upchucked mass is like an owl pellet and is known as a bolus. Natural foods slip freely through the esophagus and more feeding can continue. Most times, a baby albatross will toss up one bolus before leaving the nesting island. Unfortunately, thousands die because plastic blocks the stomach completely.

Your feeding the baby albatross activity can lead to a lot of discussion of plastics we use, discard, then find their way into the ocean and into the mouth of a baby albatross.

If you want to have a Baby Albatross Feeding Kit, complete with some plastic items that actually came from once living albatross at Pihe Manu, Papahanaumokuakea, be in touch.