NATURALLY SPEAKING: October 2008 Archives

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October 24, 2008

Loggerhead Turtles At Loggerheads With Fishing Industry

Sea turtles can be found all over the world, and yet all sea turtle species are on the endangered species listing. The loggerhead turtle is among these.

In the Pacific, loggerhead turtles are born on the beaches of Japan. The baby turtles hatch from their shells at night, in hopes of avoiding being spotted by a predator and being eaten. They make their way toward to ocean, navigating by light. In the past, this the brighest light at night was the sea itself, but manmade lights can now disrupt and confuse these little turtles. Only a portion of the babies make it down the sand and into the ocean.

Where scientists, who've mounted tracking devices on these little guys, now know that the turtles swim almost 10,000 miles to Baja, California. Here the turtles stay for decades, eating and growing. Finally, once they've matured, they start the long trek back to the beaches of Japan.

Along the way, they find mates. In fact, the loggerhead is the only marine turtle to mate along the way to the breeding ground instead of at the destination. One might hope that this would give the loggerhead turtle an advantage-a larger mating ground less likely to cause problems-but the loggerhead turtles must navigate through the fishing-industry-infested waters.

Now a new study from my Alma mater the University of California Santa Cruz has found that the number of nesting turtles on the shores of Japan has declined by 50 to 80 percent over the past decade. The study determined that many loggerhead turtles are never leaving their feeding grounds in Baja, but instead are washing up dead due to tangled fishing nets and lines.

Along the southern coast of Baja California, Mexico, scientists have been counting the carcasses of endangered sea turtles for a decade as part of an effort to assess and eliminate threats to loggerhead sea turtle populations. Their findings, published this week, are shocking: almost 3,000 sea turtles were found dead along a 27-mile stretch of coast during a five-year period from 2003 to 2007.

Led by Hoyt Peckham, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the study underscores the enormous impact of bycatch (marine life accidentally killed by fishing operations) on sea turtles. Bycatch and, to a lesser degree, poaching are both significant threats to the survival of the endangered Pacific loggerhead sea turtle population, Peckham said.

The study has given us solid proof that sea turtles like the loggerhead require more conservation actions. Their habitat needs protecting and the fishing industry-while vital-needs reform when it comes to best practices.

Photograph Note: This is actually a Hawaiian Green Sea turtle, as I've not had the opportunity to take photos of the North Pacific loggerhead. Hopefully, I'll get the chance someday.

Posted by sorsha at 12:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 23, 2008

It's Getting Chilly

Autumn 2008, originally uploaded by perlgurl.org.

Posted by sorsha at 8:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 13, 2008

Green Gadgets: The Automatic Composter

This is another article in our "Green Gadgets" column written by Shane Conder, a guest blogger.

The NatureMill PRO Automatic Composter certainly sounds like a green gadget. We just purchased one and have gone through our first week with it. Here are our thoughts and initial impressions about it.

This composter allows you to compost all of your kitchen items indoors and within just weeks. It does this by mildly heating the interior and automatically stirring the compost to keep it active and warm. When the compost is ready, you press one button and it will drop it in to a lower chamber. From there, you can let the compost rest for longer and then remove it for placing in the garden.

It comes with sawdust pellets and baking soda, useful for keeping the balance of brown and green and minimizing any smell that might be generated. It also comes with a replacement air filter, which is great. However, given that the air filters last 3-4 years, we now have a filter we have to keep track of for years.

To get things started, though, you have to get a couple of cups of soil from outside. This puts the bacteria in place that help the compost to actually decompose.

We did everything as we were supposed to. The first mixing cycle, though, is where the first thing went wrong: it jammed leading to a red blinking light. A quick check of the manual showed that we could just hit the single button to get it to try to mix again. The manual also recommended just waiting 24 hours and trying again as things may soften up. We did this and it worked brilliantly. Until it jammed again. This time, I must have accidentally pressed the button twice because after it mixed it dropped everything to the lower chamber. Well, the first week wasn’t done yet so I had to transfer that back to the top chamber.

I was surprised, though, at how little it smelled and how broken down and dry it was. It seems the composter is working great! Although, since it was dry, we decided to start adding stuff a couple of days early. This jammed the mixer again, but we’re getting used to just waiting overnight and hitting the button. That seems to work great.

Power use is fairly minimal. It seems to use just 16 watts of power most of the time. I haven’t caught it will running the mixer motor but it sounds like the fan goes off for this. We’ve been running it for a week now and it’s used just about 2 kWh of power, which comes in at only about 12-14 watts. So, if we just assume an average of 15 watts and 16 cents per kWh we can see that it will cost just about $1.75 a month to operate.

The machine is relatively quiet and is supposed to get quieter. While mixing, there can definitely be some startling thumps when the house is quiet. Smell has not been an issue, but keep your head back when opening the top. The heat create a rush of steam that doesn’t smell so great when it slaps you across the face. However, if noise or even minor smell is a problem, it can be placed in a cabinet, in your garage, or even outside year round.

I was surprised that most of the machine was made of Styrofoam. That’s decidedly not a green item. The bottom bucket is like a rectangular plant pot and is made of plastic. It contains a small catch for liquids, but very little liquid has ended up in ours so far. This bucket feels like it’s scraping the sides as it’s removed and inserted. Given that the sides are Styrofoam, I’m concerned about the longevity. Given the price of this, I would have hoped for a more solid construction – or at least a plastic shell to help protect the outer surfaces. The machine is light, however, which is nice.

We’re happy we have it because we aren’t able to put compost outside during about half the year when snow is on the ground. This machine also speeds up the compost process, which should give us some nice compost for planting outside this coming spring. (You’re warned not to use the compost inside unless you let it cure for 5-6 months first.) In addition, we can now compost some items we couldn’t before. For instance, we can compost meat because of the heat that’s used and there is little danger of attracting pests to it.

The automatic composter is expensive, though. I also question its durability and longevity, which is not a good thing at this price. We would recommend it, though, if you want to keep composting year round or want to speed up the composting process. We’d also be happy to offer a coupon code for $30 off an automatic composter when ordered directly from naturemill.com. Just email us or leave a comment with a valid email and we’ll send it to you.

Posted by shane at 8:38 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 9, 2008

Are Humans An Endangered Species?

Are humans an endangered species?

My answer: Not yet.

But give us time. As the biodiversity of our planet suffers, we become more and more vulnerable, but the good news is: we have the ability to change our habits.

Most of the species that thrive on this planet do not do so in a vaccuum, but through cooperation, or at the very least, balance. Predators hunt prey, keeping their populations strong and healthy. It's a naturally self-regulating system.

On our planet, plant and animal species come and go. Every day, species go extinct and new ones spring up in their place. It's the nature of our world.

The tricky part comes when peoples' actions start influencing the rates at which these two things occur. Just like climate destabilization, you end up with biodiversity disruption. That's why we've starting hearing phrases like "mass extinction" and "species crash".

Now some might argue that when humans cause other species to go extinct, it's just like any other species pushing competing species out of the plant and animal kingdom. Perhaps that's true. Still, there's no question that humans have interfered in a large way with nature's regulation of our planet.

Really, whether you believe humans are a cut above the rest of the species kingdom or just another hairless ape and it's survival of the fittest, we still have the ability to change our behavior. We do it especially well when it serves our best interests-and make no mistake, biodiversity is important to our survival as a species.

First, We Eat

Food, drink, vitamins, nutrients. Most of this is organic matter. Alive.

We're at the top of the food chain, too, so that means that while we might not consume something directly, the trickle-down theory works here. We might not eat it, but somewhere down the food chain, something does.

Then, we sit back and let nature do its business-for us

Now, I'm not just talking about the horse pulling the cart.

In Leonardo DiCaprio's climate-change documentary The Eleventh Hour, science broadcaster David Suzuki estimates that it would cost us $35 trillion a year to do what nature is doing for us for free. That's more than half the world's annual gross domestic product (GDP), which stands at about $55 trillion, according to Wikipedia (they got their numbers from IMF, World Bank and the CIA World Factbook).

There are the helpers, like pollinators. We've heard about the disappearing honey bees, a major agricultural tool. And let's not forget all the microscopic dudes that help break down organic matter, that stuff we love in our compost piles that fertilizes our crops. The tiny critters that live in our intestines and help us break down what we eat and absorb the stuff our body needs.

Perhaps you could just argue that we don't need such wonderous variety. We rely on only a few types of plants to eat, for example. But by relying on just one species too heavily, like corn, for example, or honey bees, we leave ourselves exposed to a huge risk. If something goes wrong, if that species is chosen for extinction-whether purposefully by our human habits, or through natural selection, we're the ones left in a lurch.

Natural Remedies

According to Wikipedia, more than 40% of medicinal drugs used in the United States come from natural compounds and we've only just started to research the beneficial properties provided to us by nature.

Most of nature's miracles remain untapped by man.

Bio-Mimicry: Exploiting Nature's Brilliance For Our Own Benefit

One thing nature has shown is that it doesnt value excess, or wasted energy. The plant or animal species that doesn't live efficiently and effectively, using its resources prudently, generally doesnt live long.

So it makes sense with all the resource intensive stuff we do every day, we would be looking for solutions that use less energy. How do cactus live in arid, dry environments? How do frogs and lizards climb walls? How do boneless oysters make super-hard shells?

Nowadays, we're moving way beyond the chemistry and developing technologies based on the cool stuff animals and plants do naturally. One example of such research involves how the humpback whale regulates its heartbeat.

Humpback whales, for instance, pump six bathtubs of blood around their bodies and regulate the beats with electrical signals passing through thick non-conductive blubber shielding the heart from cold.

Based on research at the Whale Heart Satellite Tracking Program in Colombia, a cheap operation for humans that bridged damaged heart muscles by mimicking the tiny "wiring" could cut demand for battery-powered pacemakers in humans.

It can cost up to $50,000 per patient to fit a new pacemaker and the world market is projected at $3.7 billion by 2010.

More at: redOrbit: Animal Bio-Mimicry Inspires Tech Developments

We may have gotten the idea of flight from birds, but we're way past that now.

Posted by sorsha at 4:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 7, 2008

Pumpkin Time!

Autumn 2008, originally uploaded by perlgurl.org.

We went out today to a local farm and picked out some pumpkins and squash, many of them native to the area. You can see more pictures of our fall harvest trip on Flickr.

Posted by sorsha at 2:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack