Earth Blog

The traditional pairing of white wine with a fish dinner has another relationship aside from your plate and palate.

Biologists at the University of California, Berkeley have found that fish and viticulturists in wine country may be unknowingly competing for one of the state’s most limited resources: water. Take a guess as to who is losing the struggle? There is a fifty/fifty chance you guess correctly. If you guessed the fish and are clutching a bottle of wine you are correct and win that bottle you are holding.

Today the EPA released their “report card” for the Charles River in Boston. Since 1995 they have been grading the water quality and measuring the effectiveness of cleanup efforts against the basic goals of the Clean Water Act: making sure the waterways are clean for fishing and swimming.

The Tower of Pisa is not the only famous piece of Italy that is sinking and leaning. New research has found that the city of Venice is still slowly, but naturally, settling down and tilting east when it was previously thought that the city might have stabilized. This study is one of those “if ‘x’ continues at the rate it is currently being observed than the result will be whatever the worst case scenario is in this situation.” How bad is it?

"Venice appears to be continuing to subside, at a rate of about 2 millimeters (.07 inches) a year," said Yehuda Bock, a research geodesist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, "It's a small effect, but it's important," he added.

Stop for a minute and think of all the ways you used water today: cooking, cleaning and for hygiene. Now think of all the ways you use water at work. Depending on your place of employment those ways could vary, so think of how much water a farmer uses or a chef in a restaurant. Now go one step further and think of all the food and non-food products that contain water. Water is even used in the manufacturing of a car (not to mention maintenance) and estimates put a car’s waterfootprint at about 39,000 gallons.

Though water may sometimes fall from the sky in buckets, it doesn’t always and it is not a renewable resource unless we can control our usage.

A global research study conducted by an international team has found that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are functioning as intended- they are protecting marine life such as sea turtles.

An MPA is a designated no fishing zones which is excellent news for turtles. Fishing nets and lines, active or abandoned, are considered two of the most common ways turtles can die before their time. If a turtle gets caught in a net and can’t escape they will eventually drown because they are unable to surface for air. The fishing industry also inadvertently kills sea grass which is a turtle’s primary source of food.

In a perfect world there would be no need to manage or clean up after oil spills because there would never be any spills in the first place. We don’t live in a perfect world and the most recent disasters including the BP Oil Spill, also known as Deepwater Horizon, have heightened our awareness of the dangers of drilling related accidents and other environmental disasters. 

First responders not working on fixing the mechanics of the problem closely monitor the movement of oil or any fallout from a disaster to facilitate efficient clean-up or evacuation. Being able to predict the movement would be optimal and researchers are using mathematical methods to help them forecast just where disaster might be headed.

Would you like the good news or the bad news first? How would you like to hear news that is both depending on how you feel about snow? Amount of snowfall and snowmelt are important to California’s tourist and agricultural industries. You may hate living in snow but enjoy visiting it to ski or snowboard. California’s mountain streams enjoy snowmelt to boost fishing -it’s important even if you are only aware of it on a cursory level atop the state’s mountain ranges.

A curious climate scientist wondered about the snowfall on California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. Was it decreasing like everyone seemed to think? He found that over 130 years the state has seen neither an increase nor a decrease in snowfall. For once it’s true that the more things change the more they stay the same.

Space may be the final frontier and while NASA works on mapping the moon’s gravitational field by scanning it crust to core, and monitoring solar flares that most certainly will not reach Earth, Google has cameras hard at work in the ocean.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the debut of the Catlin Seaview Survey a prototype of a program that will eventually collect images of our oceans; or Google’s next logical step in their quest to image-capture every inch of our Earth. 

Just in time for Spring Break a new federal regulation will prevent certain boats from discharging sewage -whether or not it’s treated- into California’s marine waters.  The sewage ban will create the largest “No Discharge Zone” (NDZ) in the country stretching from Mexico to Oregon and includes waters around major islands. The ban will stop an estimated 22 million gallons or more of treated sewage from being dumped into the oceans, bays, and estuaries each year along 1,624 miles of coast. Under the Clean Water Act the state of California was able to ask the EPA to approve the NDZ to help restore water quality.

“This is an important step to protect California's coastline. I want to commend the shipping industry, environmental groups and U.S. EPA for working with California to craft a common sense approach to keeping our coastal waters clean," said California’s Governor Jerry Brown.

How would you like to buy a bottle of wine and know that a portion of the proceeds were going to a good a cause? A cause more fantastic than simply supporting your favorite winery so more wine could be made. Now by purchasing wine you can provide clean water for Ethiopian citizens or citizens of several other emerging countries faced with drought and little or no access to clean water through the non-profit organization Wine to Water (WTW).

Do you know how much water is used in the manufacturing of a single car? According to Ford Motor Company they used 9.5 cubic meters in 2000 and one cubic meter is equal to 264.2 gallons of water. That means Ford used approximately 2,509 gallons of water per vehicle in 2000. That same year the company began their Global Water Management Initiative and the program, over a ten year span, has reduced Ford’s total “global water use by 62 percent, or 10.5 billion gallons. That's the equivalent of how much water 105,000 average American residences use annually, based on figures from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.” 

Previously here on the Earth Blog we’ve talked about the importance of clean water to sustaining life and how the issue affects us all globally. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it will provide $1.8 to $3.8 million in grant money for projects to restore American waterways as part of the Urban Waters program. The ultimate goal of the grants is to fund research, studies, training, and projects that will help improve and restore water quality through activities that are also community oriented.

An oil spill off the Brazilian coast, that was thought to be natural seepage, has actually been caused by drilling at a Chevron site. On November 9th, a satellite image showed a 35 mile long slick in the Campos Basin.  Two days later the slick had expanded to 56 miles long. The good news is that since the discovery the slick has shrunk significantly and is moving away from the coastline. However, some of the oil will still rise to the ocean’s surface and might arrive uninvited to the tourist beaches of Brazil. An estimated 110,000 gallons of crude oil have already reached the ocean floor since November 7th when the leak began. The oil spill is weeks old, and Chevron Corp has accepted responsibility but early reports were conflicting as to whether or not the company has stopped drilling in delicate Frade field where the well is located. It has now been confirmed that Brazil has banned Chevron from drilling off its shores.

Water, one of the most important substances needed to sustain life, covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface. The average human body is made of 50-60% water and the human heart and brain are both made of 75% water. No wonder we constantly have water on the brain! We are obsessed with finding, conserving, and drinking water.  We’ve used it’s energy to grind flour in mills and to mine for gold. There is nothing better than water for washing, swimming, and making plants grow. Since there is nothing better than water we must find new ways to use it efficiently.

We have all seen the television commercials for organizations promising to provide clean water for individuals in need if we pledge monetary donations or support. They show images of forlorn children in far off places who do not have clean water for drinking or bathing. Often people in these areas are forced to bathe themselves, clean their clothes, clean their animals, and drink from the same water source. This leads to grossly contaminated water sources that create a number of health problems. While we all know this is a problem in third world countries, it is often easy to dismiss because it seems to effect populations far across the world rather than in our own neighborhoods. It is important for us to realize, however, that this is a global issue which affects everyone whether we live in the United States or Africa or somewhere in between.

As many people enjoy celebrating Oktoberfest, we here at the Sea Bird Adventure enjoy celebrating Raptoberfest.  RAPtoberfest is a project that was set up by the Surf Rider Foundation and stands for 'Rise Above Plastics'.  The overall goal of this project is to reduce our carbon footprint (and save the oceans).

The relationship between humans and the planet we call home is like a constantly changing dance. At times, Earth takes the lead and humans find themselves following its path and adapting to its conditions. At other times, it is us humans who lead the dance and the planet changes because of our progress and development. At times, however, this dance can be destructive and our progress leads to changes in our planet that are not for the better. That is the case with the situation with the earth’s water supply. We have not always treated the planet with the support and care that a partner should and now we find ourselves struggling to provide all humans with clean water.

China is the world's second fastest growing economy, but future growth could be brought to a halt by the lack of an adequate supply of safe drinking water and sufficient water to irrigate crops. China has budgeted 7 million yuan ($600 billion) to help solve the growing crisis. The money will be spent over the next decade.

A team of British researchers is scheduled to beat the Americans and Russians in attempts to gather water samples and floor sediment samples from an under-glacier lake in Antarctica. It will be the first time that humans get a glimpse into a world hidden in one of the estimated 387 lakes that lie underneath about 2 miles of ice in the western part of the continent. Researchers are looking for two things: what type of life forms, if any, exist there and what to expect when and if the ice does melt some day.

While it’s natural to favor the underdog underfish, we may have to switch which team we root for considering the cumulative effect of human activities on marine wildlife at the top of the food chain. Overfishing of forage fish depletes the food supply of large predatory fish and other marine animals, according to a study by an international group of researchers with CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans Flagship.