Miscellaneous

Three years ago tomorrow, Hurricane Katrina steamed through the Gulf Coast and left a trail of human and environmental suffering that is still largely unhealed. As Gustav eyes the Big Easy this week, I can't help but think back on my time as a New Orleans resident. From 2001-2005, I maintained the naive idea that "the big one" would always miss the city. In 2004 I waited out Hurricane Ivan at Igor's on St. Charles Avenue, sipping Bloody Marys and playing pool.

Katrina was big enough to expose the shoddy engineering and poor planning that plagued southeastern Louisiana three years ago. It's easy to get mad when I think about everything that went wrong, but a book I'm reading now is helping put things into better perspective by acknowledging the countless heroes who helped save people's lives and sanity.

After three months of sailing across the Pacific ocean to raise awareness about plastic pollution in the sea, the Junk Raft has made land in Hawaii!

Here's an excerpt from their victorious post:

"2,600 miles of open ocean crossed in 87 days. From our first week of sinking hopes on a sinking raft, through four hurricanes that swept under us, to the unbelievable chance meeting with Roz Savage in the middle of nowhere, we have had quite an adventure. We’ve collected 10 ocean surface samples using our marine debris trawl, managed to snatch a few large pieces of plastic debris that floated under us, and caught fish with stomachs filled with particles of plastic. Plastic is forever, and it’s everywhere.

Owing to the combined effects of climate change, overfishing and pollution, the future of marine ecosystems may appear bleak if these destructive forces continue unchecked. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Jeremy Jackson analyzes the threats to marine ecosystems and categorizes them according to their overall environmental impacts.

As noted by our friend over at Shifting Baselines, apparently Aussie cats are consuming more seafood than their humans.

Excuse me?

That's correct. The country's cats consume on average 13.7 kg of fish and seafood, which is 2.7 kg more than the average human Aussie. And the worst part? They are eating cat food made of wild forage fish -- think sardines, herrings and anchovies -- which are important in the diet of larger fish like tuna and swordfish.

I know you have an old computer monitor lying around, or an Ikea coffee table you're sick of, or an old VHS collection that's gathering dust and making you feel old. Instead of turning to your friend Craig and his fabulous list, try out the recently launched http://Remarkd.com -- It's like craigslist or e-bay... with warm fuzzies.

On Remarkd you post things for sale, and then you donate a portion to the cause of your choice -- more specifically, US! (See how we're being highlighted at http://remarkd.com/oceana.)

What a bright idea!

When we told you that the Vermont Country Store was selling a cosmetic product known as "squalane" obtained from shark liver oil, thousands of you contacted the store. Thanks to you, they stopped selling the product. But Wavemakers didn't just flood the inbox of the Vermont Country Store, many of you also wrote to us -- furious about beauty care supplier Dr. Susan Lark and her enthusiastic promotion of products containing squalane from sharks. Well, you spoke up and we listened! We asked her nicely and made little progress. Now it's time to get Dr. Lark to change her ways.

Now here's an eye-opener for you. Two sushi-loving high school girls in New York took on a freelance science project to check 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting (or "barcoding") technique to see whether their fish was correctly labeled.

The result? Two of the 4 restaurants and 6 of the 10 grocery stores sold mislabeled fish. Yes, it's a small sample size, but still, yikes!

...it sounds like the start of a bad joke. Unfortunately, it's real.

Reuters reports that about 60 newly hatched sea turtles in southern Italy lost their way during their ritual passage to the sea and wound up under the tables at a beachfront restaurant.

The babies were most likely attracted to the establishment's bright lights, say conservation workers.

But maybe they were just craving gnocchi...

A wild dolphin in south Australia has been teaching members of her group to walk on their tails, a behavior usually seen only after training in captivity.

Scientists are scratching their heads -- why would the dolphins do this?

Well, one of the female dolphins, Billie, could have learned the behavior by observation during her brief stint in a dolphinarium.

Or they might be watching too much Olympic gymnastics. Plus, it just looks like fun.

I'm always talking about the problem of plastics in the ocean. Well, today I found a related humorous-slash-puzzling video brought to you by Pierre Terre Productions, an "independent media company producing webcast and broadcast video stories of wisdom, value, intelligence and good intent."

This particular piece is about a place on the Big island of Hawaii known as Trash Beach because of the garbage, mostly plastic, that washes ashore due to ocean currents in the Pacific.

Pierre and friend Krista explore the absurdly littered beach, and while the short piece lacks scientific detail or a suggested solution to the problem, you might be charmed by Pierre's French accent -- but don't be fooled, Pierre is merely a character played by Kevin Hansen...