The World Listening Day workshop in Isla Mujeres, Mexico (postponed til the Thursday after, due to weather) was a great success! 82 children participated and learned about the importance of sound and its role in coastal environments. The event was held in Haciendo Mundaca.
Sound samples were played from the audio gallery of a site run by the University of Rhode Island, “Discovery of Sound in the Sea” www.dosits.org
Saturday, July 17 –
International conference and festival celebrating the Whale Shark, largest fish in the world
Talks will be given from 4:30pm to 8:00pm in Sala de cabildos of H. Ayuntamiento de Isla Mujeres.
Entrance is free.
World Listening Day is July 18!
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World Listening Day will be celebrated on the island of Isla Mujeres with a workshop for kids about the science of sound, bioacoustics, and the role of sound in the environment. Students will learn about sound and how it travels through air and water, and listen to and compare recorded sounds of marine mammals, invertebrates, fish and boats. This workshop is being run through the Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas (National Commission of Protected Areas).
In celebration of World Ocean Day, Dr. Jeremy Jackson (Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation and a Professor of Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography) spoke at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, DC about the future of the oceans and how we are interconnected with them. He discussed the major forces of destruction of the ocean balance very clearly and concisely – you can see the video of the talk on the new Ocean Portal website
It was not a light discussion. One of his points was about trends in ecosystems due to human impact – loss of big predators, loss of three dimensional structure (e.g. coral, complex habitats) and rise of slime. If you are slime, maybe this is what you want. But if you are humans – is this what you want?
(No.)
What to do?
I think we need to remember that humans are part of the ecosystems, not separate. We constantly make changes to the ecosystems, intentionally or unintentionally. We breathe, we construct things, we decompose – it’s all part of uncountable, interconnected cycles.
So if you are asking how we can get humans to not impact ecosystems – that is impossible. What we should be asking is HOW do we want to impact ecosystems, and find ways to move towards a vision of the future we can live with.
Congratulations to Jade (TecMilenio High School, Cancun) for her excellent video about ways we can help the environment. She received a Parque Nacional T-shirt and will go on a snorkeling trip to the coral reef.
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Watch her video here:
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Also -STAY TUNED for more Eco – Videos from Cancun students!
The Arlington Virginia Planetarium is in jeopardy. A vote tomorrow (Thursday, April 29 2010) will decide whether the Planetarium will continue or will be closed. Please join the facebook group and go to the meeting and show your support:
The April 29th meeting is a School Board Meeting, located at 1426 N. Quincy St. Arlington, VA 22207 @ 7:30 p.m. During this meeting, the School Board will vote on the fate of the David M. Brown Planetarium.
“Friends of the Planetarium” would love for you to join us in support of the planetarium during this meeting.
If you lend your voice, “Friends of the Planetarium” will make sure it is heard! Please E-mail schoolbd@arlington.k12.va.us | Call (703) 228-6015 | Sign http://bit.ly/save-the-planetarium
Washington Post “Help Children Reach For The Stars”
Birds alter their songs in response to noise – and the media is picking up on it:
Washington Post article “Song sparrows adjust their songs to fit in with urban noise”
ABC Science show “Birds raise their voice over noisy traffic”
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From Washington Post April 20 2010:
Another IWC Tackles Big Issues
Heather Spence
Earth Day is almost here – April 22. On this day, we may be interested to learn the details of a compromise being developed by our partner in acronym, the International Whaling Commission. One of the earliest slogans in the environmental movement was “Save the whales.” Whales have captured the public’s attention and interest, not just for their size or behavior, but also for their underwater communication. “The recordings worked because they have a very emotional impact on people who hear them – I’ve actually seen people weep while listening to them. People began realizing this is a terrible thing happening to the largest animals that have ever lived on Earth” says Roger Payne, famous researcher of humpback whale songs.
Whales are threatened globally by ocean noise, warmer more acidic seas, offshore energy development, and hunting. The peaks of whale hunting occurred in the late 1700s in the southern hemisphere for Right whales, in the mid 1800s off new england for Sperm whales, and in the mid 1900s with global industrial whaling. A moratorium on hunting was agreed to in 1986 by all IWC members except Japan, Iceland and Norway. 1800-2200 whales are killed every year. Japan claims the hunts are for science, Iceland and Norway conduct commercial hunts, and indigenous groups in US, Canada, Russia, Greenland, St. Vincent and Grenadines do ’subsistence’ hunting. This is all direct hunting – whale mortality as a side effect from other fishing efforts is another whole issue, and one in which Mexico has been very involved especially with Vaquita conservation.
“Whales face more threats today than at any time in history,” says Patrick Ramage, global whale program director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. US commissioner Monica Medina says “it’s a global problem and needs global solutions.” How will we proceed? What compromises can and should be made? We have the ability to obliterate life – we can do it if we don’t decide not to. On and around Earth Day, as we especially think about our individual and group roles interacting with our environment, how do we want to contribute to global solutions?
Questions? Comments? E-mail me: info@heatherspence.net
IWCC website (International Women’s Club of Cancun)
My neices and nephew and I were walking on the beach at sunrise in North Carolina when we found some fruit washed up that looked a lot like apples. We asked around about where they might have come from. It turns out, it is a closely guarded secret in Nags Head! Normally, locals go out in the morning to collect them and there aren’t any left by the time tourists go out on the beach. The information that we were able to get is that there is an apple tree just offshore that continues to produce apples even though it is now under water.
On March 11, Neil deGrasse Tyson of Nova Science Now, along with Marc Kaufman and Paula Apsell, brought a “Cosmic Conversation” to GWU’s Lisner Auditorium in Washington, DC. Dynamic discussions of the universe centered on the Pluto controversy, and differing opinions on how to categorize and name scientific concepts. As I addressed in my question to him, this is an ongoing challenge in Biology and science in general, and we agreed on the idea of using ranges (with numbers to quantify them) for developing useful and specific scientific terminology. Afterwards, I thought of the example of the electromagnetic spectrum and light waves – radio, visible, gamma… most people have seen the chart that is divided into the different types of light (see below) – yet this chart also has numerical ranges for each section. This seems like a great solution for many naming issues – quantitative ranges for the scientific terms, with categories based on those ranges to be used in general scientific use and for non-scientists.
WETA has posted a video of the conversation: Cosmic Conversation Video
Questions from the audience, including mine on nomenclature, were taken towards the end.
