Mermaid's Tears

I've been dumping little plastic bits also known as nurdles or "mermaid's tears" into the sea for the past probably 10 years or more. How? Through the daily use of exfoliating facial scrub. First read about it in "Bottomfeeder" and have to admit the fact didn't stick somehow but now that I came across the issue again in "The World Without Us", I'm determined to find a substitute for my Biore.

"Browne pulls open the top drawer of a laboratory cabinet. Inside is a cornucopia of feminine beauty aids: shower massage creams, body scrubs, and hand cleaners. Several are by boutique labels: Neova Body Smoother, SkinCeuticals Body Polish, and DDF Strawberry Almond Body Polish. Others are international name brands: Neutrogena, Clearasil, Pond’s Fresh Start, even a tube of Colgate Icy Blast toothpaste.... all have one thing in common.

“Exfoliants: little granules that massage you as you bathe.” He selects a peach-colored tube of St. Ives Apricot Scrub; its label reads: 100% natural exfoliants. “This stuff is okay. The granules are actually chunks of ground-up jojoba seeds and walnut shells.” Other natural brands use grape seeds, apricot hulls, coarse sugar, or sea salt. “The rest of them,” he says, with a sweep of his hand, “have all gone to plastic.”

- "Polymers are forever" in The World Without Us

These micro-scrubbers are tiny spheres of polyethylene which are sold to be washed directly down the drain, into the sea. From there, they go up the food chain and will most probably land on our plates. Karma. In the North Pacific Subtropical gyre (a 10-million-square mile ocean dump), plastic particles outnumber plankton by a factor of more than six times! Oh but some good news.. the great pacific garbage patch is finally due for cleanup sometime in June 2009. Great stuff. Read more about Project Kaisei here.

The things we don't know as consumers.. appalling. Just like how I just came to know about the harmful effects of aluminium in deodorant. And I've been using that for years too. Anyone who knows of a good brand of facial exfoliant and deodorant to use, do share.

Malthusian Catastrophe

Hilarious poster. and No, I do not agree with this mode of environmentalism.

After reading that Sir David Attenborough has (in Otterman's words) "come out and said it: too many people on earth", decided to do a quick search on the topic and came up with a bunch of interesting results:

• Malthus was a political economist who blamed the decline of living conditions in 19th century England on three elements: The overproduction of young; the inability of resources to keep up with the rising human population; and the irresponsibility of the lower classes. To combat this, Malthus suggested the family size of the lower class ought to be regulated such that poor families do not produce more children than they can support. -UCMP
• Both Darwin and Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection after reading Malthus. - UCMP
• World population is projected to rise from today's 6.8 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050. - optimumpopulation.org
• Assuming the global biocapacity and average footprint remain stable at the 2003 level, then, to become sustainable, the world population needs to contract to a maximum of 5.1 billion. - optimumpopulation.org
• The world's 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. - Spiegel Online

Pretty scary facts huh. and I do know two Singaporeans who've told me they'd rather adopt than have kids for similar reasons: don't wanna contribute to depleting the planet; 2) don't wanna let another human grow up in this 'sad world'.

it's not all that bad right.. just enjoy life when you've been given it.

Other blogs on the same topic:

• Liliane.wordpress.com
• Strangeherring.wordpress.com

Things We Forget

"Post-it notes left to their fate in public places."

-Thingsweforget.blogspot.com

Cradle to Cradle

"Cradle to Cradle Design takes its inspiration from nature, in which there is no place for the concept of waste, but in which waste = food.

'Cradle to Cradle' is the antidote to the 'Cradle to Grave' paradigm, where product cycles are not really cycles but mostly half cycles in which products, after their useful life, are put out of sight in landfills. The purpose of the Cradle to Cradle Design is to restore continuous cycles of biological as well as technical nutrients with long terms positive effects on profitability, the environment and human health. Cradle to Cradle Design is highly operational: It aims for perfection, it can prove when it has achieved it or how far it has succeeded in its task."

- EPEA.com

Watch the video here.

Manado VS Singapore

Manado trip was great, with tonnes of exotic critters.. including mimic octopus! *BIG FAT GRIN*. THEN when I showed my pix to colleague M, she commented that many of these critters can be seen in Singapore. !!! I knew we had an amazing variety of nudibranchs but, Singaporean dragonets and Singaporean bobtail squid? COOLIO! and I thought the only similarity between Lembeh and Singapore was the muck.

Gorgeous dragonet from Koksheng's blog. 

Cyrene 2008

and other dragonets found in Changi, Cyrene and Semakau here.

-

Boxcrab (from Lembeh). Was so  excited to see it. 

and we have it on mainland Singapore!

-

Longspine scorpionfish (from Lembeh)

for the Singaporean longspine.. click here

-

Seamoth!!! (from Lembeh)

seasonally abundant on Chek Jawa!

-

Bobtail squid at Pulau Hantu!!!

from Hantu blog 2004

-

Pipefish from the Tide Chaser Blog

Semakau 2008

Was looking for the new species found by Blue Tempeh in 2006, 

but sadly, the photo is no longer online. 

-

Other of my Manado sightings found locally include Solefish, Frogfish, Crocodile fish /flathead. Of course, there's also the commonly sighted pufferfish, filefish, butterflyfish, octopii, and the list goes on...

Who gets the trash?

Look at where Singapore is on the map and where our arrows are pointing. 

Oh look.. a star all to ourselves. the gahmen will be so proud.

"E-waste is routinely exported by developed countries to developing ones, often in violation of the international law. Inspections of 18 European seaports in 2005 found as much as 47 percent of waste destined for export, including e-waste, was illegal. In the UK alone, at least 23,000 metric tonnes of undeclared or 'grey' market electronic waste was illegally shipped in 2003 to the Far East, India, Africa and China. In the US, it is estimated that 50-80 percent of the waste collected for recycling is being exported in this way. This practice is legal because the US has not ratified the Basel Convention. - Greenpeace International"

Read more about what you can do with your old electronic ware from the new ZerowasteSG website. Come to think of it... that old printer has been sitting in my living room collecting dust for quite a few years...

Corallimorphs and shipwrecks

Invasion of the corallimorphs! Wonder if this is happening in our local reefs.

Work TM, Aeby GS, Maragos JE 2008 "Phase Shift from a Coral to a Corallimorph-Dominated Reef Associated with a Shipwreck on Palmyra Atoll" PLoS ONE 3(8): e2989 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002989

Ok.. this isn't the particular species of corallimorph in the paper but i love this.. so bubbly..

Giant cup mushroom coral (Amplexidiscus fenestrafer)

"Corallimorpharians have several life history traits which allow them to rapidly monopolize patches of shallow substrate in tropical habitats. They are competitively superior to some coral species and possess anatomic structures such as elongated marginal tentacles that allow them to kill competing scleractinian corals... Additionally, corallimorpharians have three different modes of clonal replication (fission, pedal laceration and budding) that allow comparatively rapid monopolization of space on the reef...

The subsequent extent of the area dominated by corallimorphs in this study was much greater than other studies where corallimorphs rapidly invaded damaged areas but to a much more localized extent. This may be due to some substance leaching from the ship such as dissolved iron. Iron makes up the major component of steel and other ferrous metals in mooring buoys and ships, and is known to be a limiting resource for many marine organisms. Iron is an essential trace element for algal growth and nitrogen fixation, and equatorial and south Pacific oceanic waters are extremely low in available iron...

The extensive R. howesii invasion and subsequent loss of coral reef habitat at Palmyra Atoll and the potential association of corallimorph invasions with metal objects should serve as a clarion call to managers dealing with large metal objects such as wrecks on reefs. This will be especially relevant at remote low reef islands and atolls such as Palmyra where dissolved iron concentrations may be extremely limiting. The major sources of iron for the oceans are from wind-blown terrestrially derived dust or in coastal regions, from rivers and terrestrial run-off. Islands closer to continental landmasses or reefs at high islands where iron may be available from chemical erosion of volcanic soils may be less vulnerable to impacts of iron enrichment associated with metal objects. If removal of the shipwreck is not possible, regular systematic monitoring of the benthos for invasive organisms, including cnidarians, should be done to verify the rate of spread to support management actions such as removal of the shipwreck."