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Friday 22 July 2011

Plastic Habitat


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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Starr_080606-6960_Lobularia_maritima.jpg

Lobularia maritima (habitat with marine debris and Black footed and Laysan Albatrosses), Midway Atoll, Northwest coast Eastern Island Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 6 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Starr_080606-6944_Lobularia_maritima.jpg

Lobularia maritima (habitat with marine debris and Black footed and Laysan Albatrosses), Midway Atoll, Northwest coast Eastern Island Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 6 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Starr_080606-6955_Sesuvium_portulacastrum.jpg

Sesuvium portulacastrum (habitat with marine debris and view of Spit Island), Midway Atoll, Northwest coast Eastern Island Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 6 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Starr_080606-6774_Lepturus_repens.jpg

Lepturus repens (growing among marine debris), Midway Atoll, Eastern Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 6 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Starr_080605-6576_Tournefortia_argentea.jpg

Tournefortia argentea (habitat with Laysan Albatross chick and marine debris), Midway Atoll, Spit Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 3 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Starr_080603-5640_Tournefortia_argentea.jpg

Tournefortia argentea (habitat with Laysan Albatross chicks and marine debris), Midway Atoll, Spit Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 3 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Starr_080603-5639_Boerhavia_repens.jpg

Boerhavia repens (habitat with Laysan Albatross chick and marine debris), Midway Atoll, Spit Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 3 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Starr_080603-5738_Casuarina_equisetifolia.jpg

Marine debris and Laysan Albatross chick, Midway Atoll, Spit Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 3 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Starr_080603-5618_Tournefortia_argentea.jpg

Tournefortia argentea (habitat with marine debris and Laysan Albatross chick), Midway Atoll, Spit Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 3 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Starr_080603-5755_Tournefortia_argentea.jpg

Tournefortia argentea (habitat with marine debris), Midway Atoll, Spit Island
: photo by Forest & Kim Starr, 3 June 2008, from Plants of Hawaii

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Albatross_chick_plastic.jpg

This Laysan Albatross chick has been accidentally fed plastic by its parents and died as a result
: photo by Duncan Wright, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2006

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Phoebastria_immutabilis_dead_chick.png

Dead Laysan Albatross chick with ingested plastic in its stomach
: image by Innotata, 30 June 2010, from Lindsay C. Young, Cynthia Vanderlip, David C. Duffy, Vsevolod Afanasyev, Scott A. Shaffer: Bringing Home the Trash: Do Colony-Based Differences in Foraging Distribution Lead to Increased Plastic Ingestion in Laysan Albatrosses? (Public Library of Science, 2009)

9 comments:

Julia said...

These last plastic / evil green posts are heartbreaking, Tom. Necessary but so hardly digestible... What can we do? The right answer and the right way of living seams so very difficult.

TC said...

Julia,

Of course it's always easier to know better later.

But the scientific genius that released these chemical compounds upon the world, advertised as instruments to a better life, turned out to be the genie that could not be put back into the bottle. And the bottle was plastic, the bottle cap was plastic, and the original of Pandora's Box was probably a prophecy of Synthetics.

What could be done? Recycle that old plastic trash. But then you just have... more plastic.

Better still: reduce the use of plastic. Stop buying it. The less plastic is used, the less plastic will be manufactured and sold. It was always about business anyway.

The local ecology center here offers some Strategies to Reduce the Environmental Impact of Plastics.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Trouble in paradise -- good thing we don't do that around here. . . .

7.22

grey whiteness of fog against invisible
ridge, song sparrow calling sweet sweet
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

after would appear, picture
therefore “necessary”

sensual aspect of sound, as
resonance, of what is

grey white of fog against top of ridge,
shadowed green pine on tip of sandspit

TC said...

No, not us, never, we're innocent, we were merely ingenues... when seventy years ago the chemical corporations were boasting about having created a new continent.

It's one of those "before and after" graphics...

Eventually however in the endless recycling of history (time moving backward even as it moves forward)

after would appear, picture [becoming]
therefore “necessary”

-- ?

TC said...

In their caption to the gruesome bottom photo here, Forest and Kim Starr cite the speculation that the Laysan Albatross are attracted to plastic trash because it comes with a thin slimy layer of marine life as coating, giving it the appearance of something delicious.

(That works on us too.)

L'Enfant de la Haute Mer said...

dismaying, embarrassing ...

difficult to accept destroying paradise at every step

Anonymous said...

To feel one's own life, interdependent, whole, open in the moment is to feel the life around us, with us. Money seems a kind of acceptable expression of killing rage for not being a god after all. What other reason could there be for it to be our god, our stand in? Make any sense?

Painful and necessary to look at what one does and its consequences. Thank you.

TC said...

And talking of lost paradises...

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

thanks for the link to "a new continent" --- "unreal city" --- (all too real). . .