Sharks and Chinese Weddings

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As many as 40 sharks are killed for a Chinese Wedding - apparently this is a tradition.  I am shocked by this travesty and that it still goes on.

What is even more painful for me is that the people are surrounded by the bleeding carcasses and they are still smiling - don't even talk to me about shark fin soup!

See you on the water,

Ling Yai (Thai for 'Big Monkey')  AKA John Caveman Gray

John could not describe his anger at this abuse of an animal for it's fin simply to show that the family is wealthy and respectful!!! 

We have found a quote from a CBC news article: 

More than 38 million sharks are killed each year just for their fins, according to Nickolas Dulvy, an expert in marine biodiversity and conservation at Simon Fraser University. “They just cannot reproduce fast enough to replace the numbers that are being killed routinely, daily by fisheries around the world,” said Dulvy.

             

The ocean - man's garbage site - Part 2

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Phuket is not immune from this Mid-Pacific gyre we are the apex of plastic marine rubbish collections.  Just out of Phuket Harbor, where harbor-mouth currents intersect with the speedboat lane to Phi-Phi lays a giant mass gyre.  A Khun ying who went kayaking with me timed 20 minutes for our fast boat to traverse the mass of plasticized muck.

When I arrived from Hawai'i in 1989, I was so tuned in from Alohaland the junk jumped out of the water into my kayak.  To date, 8,531 large rubbish bags have jumped from Phang Nga Bay into my kayak.  

For all the PR and hoopla, I never saw one piece of rubbish pass before the CNN cameras.  When I emailed Plastiki and asked how much rubbish they collected, they never replied.

The only places I know of today without marine garbage are Hawai'i and Puerto Princesa. Somehow, residents just beam pelagic rubbish from their shores.  In the process, these two clean seas demonstrate that with the will and proper habits, we can make a difference.  

Permission requested - Earth Rights Instituite

We are advanced enough to develop the means to 

destroy our Mother Earth, 

but are we intelligent enough to save her? 

See you on the water (with a full bag of plastic rubbish),

Ling Yai (Thai for 'Big Monkey')  AKA John Caveman Gray 

             

The ocean - man's garbage site - Part 1

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David de Rothschild did wonders creating plastic awareness with Plastiki 

- the time has come.  

We should salute deRothschild, but he's just a guy from a big family with the money to hire somebody to build a ship from plastic bottles - that float anyway.  Just go to the Boat Lagoon in Phuket to find dozens of salty dogs who sailed the Pacific to reach Phuket - it's a common adventure in these days of weather satellites.  



A forgettable marine biologist is now taking credit for "discovering” the Mid-Pacific Rubbish Gyre when he sailed through it in 2000. Even National Geographic sucked it up  (the story NOT the rubbish).   I’ve been lobbying foundations for decades to hire the Japanese whaling fleet to clean up marine rubbish.  Steady work if they agree to stop the Genocide.

Dr. Gene. H. Balazs makes a lifetime study of the Hawaiian green sea turtles.  In the mid-70's Balazs was teaching Aloha land that a plastic bag looks just like the turtle's jellyfish prey. French Frigate Shoals became the battleground of the 80's after my friend Joe Adams delivered some boats to the NOAA station on what is basically an overgrown reef.  

Not only were sea turtles gobbling plastic bags, they were losing fins to nets and tightly wound plastic.  

When another friend Sharon Sutter volunteered to clean-up the shoals she discovered 40% of all albatross had Chinese cigarette lighters in their guts!!??  Follow-up research show the Chinese factory and market were just below the headwaters of the Yangtze River.  The primary market for the lighters were these rice farmers thousands of kilometers inland.  When the rice farmers threw away expended lighters, the river took them to the sea, where currents took them to the Shoals. 

Part 2 soon.

See you on the water (with a full bag of rubbish),

Ling Yai (Thai for 'Big Monkey')  AKA John Caveman Gray 

             

The World Population.........

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Cartoon from this site - http://www.overpopulation.org/artists.html - permission requested

I can only imagine the true impact of World Population growth - it parallels today's CNN coverage - floods in Pakistan, more nursery school killings in China, forest fires in Russia. bomb alerts in Bangkok - it's all part of the overpopulation puzzle - Global warming increases the frequency and severity of disasters and social aberrations, and more people get caught in the way. 

When I decided not to have kids in 1961 the 

World's population was 3 billion.

It took 1,000,000 years to get to the 1st billion

It took 2,000 years to get to the 2nd billion

It took 200 years to get to the 3rd billion.

In six months it's 50 years since my decision.

Today we are 7.35 billion.   

(World Population at this moment)

Imagine the headlines when we are 25 billion - on a shrinking land mass gobbled up by rising seas.  It isn't pretty.

Right about now, Global Warming becomes irreversible.  Headlines will happen we never imagined. 

I started hand-powered kayak tours in 1983 to demonstrate there are other ways than motors.  In 1985 "Moloka'i's Forgotten Frontier" won an Emmy Award, but more significantly, the "Teddy" for Best Environmental Education Production of the Year. 

Guess I was just chasing windmills!

Check out this world population site - the population clock uses "a logarithmic equation obtained through a statistical analysis of the data at this URL. . This figure does take into account both births and deaths".

"And, yes, while the count may not be exact, there really are, more or less, that many people on the planet at the moment you read the population clock.".

See you on the water,

Ling Yai (Thai for 'Big Monkey')  AKA John Caveman Gray