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Greetings!
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The Ocean Project provides this e-newsletter as a
free service to our Partner network -- now over 800
zoos, aquariums, museums, conservation organizations
and agencies, and more, in 60 countries. We hope you
find it
full of
inspirational and useful information that you can
use to enhance your effectiveness in helping protect
our ocean and create a more sustainable society.
In this issue...
- Feature
of the
Month : Custom Conservation Tools
- News from the
Seas :
Empire vs. Earth Community - Ocean
Acidity - Victory for Mammals - Beach Contamination
- Newsweek on the "Greening of America" -
Sonar Affects
Whales - Scary Stories
- Opportunities
for Action :
Stop Dolphin Drive - Funding for Ocean Literacy -
The Nation on the Environmental Movement Today
- World Ocean Conference - New Marine Degree
Program
- Now Available : Seas the Day
conservation action calendar for
2007
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Customizing Conservation Opportunities for Partners
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The Ocean Project is interested in working with our
partners to customize conservation opportunities, education
products and outreach tools. There are a variety of ways we
can help depending on your needs, from providing information
to you on specific issues if you're developing a new outreach
program or exhibit, providing conservation products
and tools at reduced wholesale rates, opportunity to co-brand
some of these, and other ways.
Beginning this month, for example, The Ocean Project is offering The Seven C's bookmark, which we are
encouraging Partners to co-brand. It's a simple but potentially powerful tool, if gotten into enough hands.
The bookmark makes a nice gift for members, could be provided for special events, sold at gift shops or handed
out in gift shop bags, etc. The image of the bookmark here provides a sense of what it looks like and can be
changed slightly, depending on your needs. There will be space provided for your logo, website, and/or short message.
By working with our large network of Partners we can get a very reasonable printing cost.
If you're interested, please contact us by
August 31st when we plan to do our next printing of the
bookmarks, just in time for International Coastal Cleanup in mid-September.
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Empire vs. Earth Community
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"We face a defining choice between two contrasting
models for organizing human affairs... Empire organizes by
domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family
members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to
misery and servitude, suppresses the creative
potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of
human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.
"Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and
shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community
comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology,
archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to
live by its principles..."
- David Korten, co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network.
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Important Victory for Marine Mammals
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Thanks to Oceana
and other Ocean Project Partners, on July 17, 2006
the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation
(H.R. 4075) amending the Marine Mammal Protection
Act that preserves the "Dolphin Deadline," a key
provision that sets the timeline to reduce the death
and injury of marine mammals by commercial fishing
operations to insignificant levels.
More than 30 years ago, the U.S. Congress enacted
the Marine Mammal Protection Act to stop the decline
of dolphins, whales, manatees, walruses, polar bears
and other ocean animals. And, a decade ago, Congress
recognized the need to minimize the harm caused to
these animals by commercial fishing operations, and
set April 2001 as the deadline for reaching this
goal. Instead of working hard to meet this
requirement, some members of Congress had tried to
do away with the "Dolphin Deadline" altogether.
Representative Richard Pombo from California had
supported bill language that would have eliminated
the Dolphin deadline but then changed his mind and
withdrew the bad provision in his bill
Read/download (6.5 MB) Oceana's report,
"Pointless
Peril: Deadlines and Death Counts," on the
Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Dolphin Deadline.
Seas the Day by taking conservation
personally. Our first
online overview,
Eat for the Earth, includes information on how
what you
choose to eat can help our ocean animals and ecoystems.
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Millions Becoming Sick Each Year from Water Pollution at the Beach
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A new study has found that 1.5 million people a year
suffer gastrointestinal illnesses contracted through
bacterial pollution in the water at Southern
California beaches. The cost of health care needed
to treat these cases adds up to millions of dollars.
Researchers at the University of California-Los
Angeles and Stanford University are not the first to
study the link between health problems and
individual beach contamination. They may, however,
be the first to study this health risk over a large
area of the nation's most popular beaches. The study
has found that an abnormally high number of "excess"
cases of stomach cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea
occur at these beaches every year. Linwood
Pendleton, an environmental economist at UCLA, has
said that this broader study allows them to identify
the beaches "where cleanup can yield the most benefit."
For full study, visit the journal of Environmental
Science and
Technology.
Read the full
article by Associated Press published
July 19th, 2006
Seas
the
Day!
Learn how you can take ocean conservation personally to
improve the situation by limiting use of fertilizers
and eliminating
the use of chemical pesticides at home, your place
of work, and in your
community.
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Navy, Environmentalists Reach Sonar-Use Agreement
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Whales, some of the most acoustically attuned and
sensitive
animals, are subjected to the high decibel and high
intensity
sounds emanating from some practices of the world's
navies.
Whales exposed to mid-frequency sonar have
repeatedly stranded and died on beaches throughout the
world. Recently, the U.S. Navy and conservationists
reached a settlement that will allow the use of
mid-frequency sonar during the training exercises in
Hawaiian waters. Thanks in large part to efforts of
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council, an Ocean
Project Partner) a federal judge issued a temporary
restraining order that halted planned
use of sonar in the multi-national exercises. As a
result the judge ordered the Navy to sit down with
NRDC and others to decide on a set of protective
measures to be put in place during the July-long
exercise. The event brought more than 40 ships, six
submarines, 160 aircraft and about 19,000 members of
the militaries of eight different nations to Hawai'i
for joint training operations. The Navy exercises
were scheduled to end July 28th.
The Navy was subsequently required to create a
sonar-free buffer zone around the newly established
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National
Monument, as well as significantly improve its
monitoring of marine mammals during sonar drills and
implement other important safeguards such as an
increased number of marine mammal observers onboard
ships equipped with sonar, as well as monitoring
from aircraft in the area and from passive acoustic
sonar operations.
Read the full
article.
Listen to National Public Radio's Morning Edition
story on this issue.
Learn more and help protect whales and other marine
life from high-intensity sonar in our seas by
visiting Ocean Project Partner, NRDC's BioGems
website.
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Petition Drive to Stop the Dolphin Drive
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The highly controversial practice of driving
dolphins to their deaths is sanctioned and
controlled by the Government of Japan, which claims
that these animals compete with the fishermen and
slaughtering them is a means of pest control even
though no evidence for this claim exists. The
dolphins are processed and used as pet food or
fertilizer, and the government is encouraging the
consumption of dolphin meat. In fact, the hunts
would be economically unviable without the sale of
live dolphins captured during the drives to
dolphinariums in Asia and elsewhere.
The hunts have been universally condemned on both
welfare and conservation grounds, but repeated
requests to end them, from the International Whaling
Commission and numerous other scientific and
conservation organizations, have been ignored. The
World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), the
professional organization that represents over 1,200
zoos and aquariums around the world, and the
Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) in the
United States, have also condemned these hunts. WAZA
explicitly prohibits member organizations from
procuring animals from drive hunts. Now, marine
scientists, WAZA, and AZA have joined with other
non-governmental organizations to bring an immediate
end to drive hunting.
Go to ActForDolphins.org
to learn more and help by signing the petition to
the Prime Minister of Japan.
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Help Improve Environmental Literacy
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Your help is needed to support funding of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) general education
initiative, which is largely comprised on the
Environmental
Literacy Grants program, NOAA's primary instrument for
executing a strategic plan to raise the public's
level of
environmental and scientific literacy.
Of all NOAA's education programs, this grants program offers the most valuable service to the field of ocean education, as it provides funding that simply is not available elsewhere for projects at the national level. The ocean education community depends on these national-level funds for strategic efforts to integrate environmentally-related components into both formal and informal education. Furthermore, the Environmental Literacy Grants program is one of the only two federal grant-making programs specifically identified for environmental education. Thus, in FY06, the federal government is spending a total of about $9 million ($5 million by EPA and $4 million by NOAA) -- or 3 cents per capita -- to specifically fund efforts to increase the nation's environmental literacy. Given the urgency and complexity of the environmental, scientific and competitiveness challenges to our Nation, we simply must find ways to do better and your help will be much appreciated.
Please join as a signatory to a letter reminding
congressional
staffers why it is important that this particular NOAA
education program be funded at as high a level as
possible.
By August 4th, please contact Jim Elder, Director of The Campaign for Environmental
Literacy, an Ocean Project Partner. You may
also contact The Ocean Project
for a
copy of this letter.
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Green Goes Grassroots : The Environmental Movement Today
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The July 31, 2006 issue of The Nation
discusses how
to return environmentalism to the American
mainstream. Here is the beginning of the article,
and click below to read the full story:
"The most interesting environmental leader in the
United States right now is a former petrochemical
worker from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" named Jerome
Ringo. As chairman of the board of the National
Wildlife Federation, Ringo heads what is by far the
nation's largest environmental organization, with 4
million members, not to mention one of its richest,
with an $80 million budget. It's unusual enough that
a former union and community organizer would rise to
the top of the NWF; traditionally, the group has
belonged to the polite, apolitical wing of the
movement -- more inclined to publish nature magazines
for kids than to challenge corporate power a la
Greenpeace or Rainforest Action Network. But what
really sets Ringo apart, both at NWF and throughout
the mainstream movement's leadership, is that he is
black..."
Read the
full
story by Mark Hertsgaard, July 13th, 2006
Seas the Day by thinking global, starting
local. Connect in your
community today!
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California and the World Ocean Conference
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Online Registration
is now open for the California and the World Ocean
'06 Conference (CWO '06), to take place September
17th-20th, in Long Beach, California. CWO '06 will be an
excellent opportunity to hear from leaders and
innovators working to address ocean and coastal
issues in California and around the world. The
conference will emphasize the need to move from
planning for future actions, to taking action to
protect our ocean and coast.
Online registration as well as extensive updates can
be found on the CWO '06
Website.
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International Coastal Cleanup
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Join us on September 16th, 2006 for the
International Coastal Cleanup, a global volunteer
program that sponsors annual clearing of trash from
coastlines, rivers, and lakes. The cleanup spans 90
countries and includes all 50 states. Visit the website
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Seas the Day Conservation Calendar
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2007 Seas the Day Conservation
Calendar now available! Strengthen your
connection with our ocean through inspiring
underwater imagery. Monthly tips help you keep in
mind simple ways to take action. Available at
wholesale rates for Ocean Project Partners.
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