But where is all this balloon rubbish going to go? Most likely into the ocean, to be consumed by fish. Which you will eat.

Channel Islands Group

December 7^th 2009

English V01A

Our Oceans and Our Health

A frigid salty breeze blew through little Sarah’s pigtails, fluttering about behind her with velvet hair ribbons. The sand was still cool, her small feet sinking into the soft pliable surface as she held tight to the pale she had found in the street. Left behind by some other family, the beaten plastic bucket now served as a shoe carrier. Spinning like a top and giggling all the way, little Sarah was quickly halted by a sharp pain.  Pulling her little foot up to examine it with tears in her eyes and a quivering lip, she discovers that a large shard of sharp plastic had sliced her soft heel.

Standing quickly to avoid the creeping roll of the tide she squinted with a frown at all of the litter that had been left behind. Instead of playing in the waves, she slowly picked up each piece of discarded trash placing it in the recycle container not five feet from where the rubbish lay. Arriving in a bit of disarray, the little girl’s mom had been stalled at the car gathering up her beach towels, sunglasses and radio. Watching her daughter she laughed softly, unaware of the harm that had befallen her. “Sarah you can’t clean the entire beach, so there is no use trying.”

Tossing the bottle into the can, Sarah turned to watch a small otter swirl about in the break attempting to remove a plastic bag that had been twisted over its head. Rushing over she pulled the bag loose, allowing the small wide eyed creature to dash back into the sea. Turning to her mother the little girl hugged her leg, “No mommy, I can’t clean it all but what I do clean helps.”

Humans are the only beings on this planet that create items that cannot be reclaimed by the environment. “Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere,” said Anthony Andrady, a chemist focusing on plastics in biological environments. We find plastic bags stuck to chain link fences, bottles in our beaches and forests and trash strewn about our neighborhoods.  Making the problem we had left for future generations a problem that our generation must help clean up. With our habits being quite lazy, humans have created a problem that seems as if it is too big to tackle. With a trash piled up in massive landfills and strewn out across the oceans, picking up fifty years worth of plastic seems impossible. Yet as we can see, threw the eyes of Sarah every little bit helps.

Less than one percent of plastics produced will end up being recycled. The word recycle when it comes to plastic products is not what it seems. Plastics become what is known as Nurdle. A broken down form of a larger plastic that is small and pellet in appearance. Much like glass shards in the ocean, the constant battering of the material reduces the size of these pieces. Unlike like natural materials, nurdle never fully go away. Taking samples from the ocean waters off the coast of California, scientists have found that nurdle is ever prevalent in not only our waters but the foods we eat from the ocean. We are in effect eating the plastic bottles we thought were recycled.  The US produces 60 billion pounds of this waste plastic a year.  With 90 percent of the trash found on beaches being nurdle, was can easily see the effect it is having on our ecosystems.

Ventura is a unique place because it contains within its borders the United States own micro ecosystem. This system is more commonly called the Channel Islands. In the Channel Island National Park group, five members visited Santa Cruz Island part of the island chain and camped overnight.  The group went on a five hour hike to explore and captured the scenic beauty of the Channel Islands.  Each of the five members brought their own gear, equipment, and cameras to Santa Cruz Island. Bring everything and making sure to leave nothing behind, the group members were able to experience the Burning Man and DIY chapters of Nowtopia by Chris Carlsson. Luz’s observations of the islands were quite different than that of the rest of the group. Having never been camping or outside of her house for that matter she took the experience as an eye opening event. “Camping for the first time wasn’t so bad. For a person who doesn’t go out much and her typical day is stay home and watch television, camping was really exciting. Teamwork was necessary, and thankfully Angel and Cristina came to the rescue to help me out. For my first time going camping, I had fun and discovered a new life that I had no idea existed. I learned how to do things I never tried before, like put up a tent and how to make a camp shower. I just hope that we can keep the Channel Islands and our beaches clean for future generations.”

The islands, since the Spanish first set foot on them have been an echo of ecological information in regards to human manipulation.  The effect of 5.4 million tons of waste dumped yearly into our oceans quickly effects this fragile environment. So it was very important that the Channel Islands group took care not to disturb this ecosystem. Sea animals have the hardest time with this heavy pollution, not only strangle themselves in waste, but swallow it as well. More and more fishermen are finding that fish have swallowed debris, making them ill and then transmitting sickness to other wildlife. This in turn affects humans who then consume these ill fish. Methyl mercury, being one of the most well known contaminates in our oceans. This chemical, builds up in fish usually predatory and then is consumed by humans. These unsafe levels can cause major health problems, and even death. A study by the Russian government noted that over sixty thousand premature deaths were related to ocean pollutions in what people were consuming per year. Chemical and plastic contamination has been affecting the Channel Islands over the years as well. DDT a widely used chemical in crop dusting was found to not only harm animal life but humans as well. On the Channel Islands, the effects of these crop dusting chemicals severely killed off the native bald eagle population.  The Chemical, known for thinning shells of avians, drastically reduced the number of hatchings compared to live adults.  Enrique made note of the harsh struggle endured by this hazardous cycle and in his journal entry.

“The endless ebb of the ocean as it ascends onto the shore of Santa Cruz, reminds me of the endless cycle of life. In and out as the tide moves, perfect in its cycle. Yet if you add in unforeseen variables into the equation, the waves that were once so pristine predictable and calm, becomes rapid and unpredictable. So what are these unforeseeable variables that I am talking about, well it could be anything. Perhaps a plastic bag that carried your cans of food home, only to end up slipping out of your recycle bin. Or that nice Styrofoam cup that held your vanilla café latte on that foggy Sunday morning that ended up falling out of your car.

Perhaps even a balloon, yes a simple red helium filled balloon that you see at countless birthday parties can cause destruction.  They can fly loose and float into the Ventura bay only to have some creature mistake it for lunch. How can a cup, a plastic bag and a single red balloon do so much harm to such a huge island? The Channel Islands seem so far away, isolated off in the waters of the Pacific and seemingly free of our effects here. The answer however is frightfully simple, numbers. Millions of pounds of trash are scattered between the southern coast of California and the coasts of the Channel Islands every year. Santa Cruz being the biggest and the one with the most miles of coast it is the one being most devastated by this haphazard pollution.

One plastic bag, one Styrofoam cup and a balloon may not seem like a lot but add that to that countless trash articles that people lose track of everyday and it is quite feasible to see them ending up in the ocean and waterways. Trash is everywhere but we don’t seem to mind it. We just look the other way, but animals out in the channel and even here on the mainland are suffering from our neglect. To some fish, plastic bags look like nice delectable fish and to dolphins Styrofoam bits look really good to eat.

So as you may see from these examples, that as more and more trash is dumped into the sea more and more sea animals are using it as a food source. The food they had once consumed now gone because of the plastics. Eating plastic bags does not give the nutrition that these animals need, so the populations dwindle. With predators of these decreasing populations, like swordfish and sharks soon find themselves in the same cycle, consuming food that is ill or plastics to try and stay alive.

The wildlife on and around Santa Cruz Island is directly tied to the ocean and the ocean. When I went to Santa Cruz I saw this horrid cycle first hand. Pelicans could be seen diving for their food off of the cost of the island, but rarely did I see any of the pelicans eat any fish. Pelicans are built for scooping as much fish as possible, to feed not only themselves but their chicks as well. The reason the pelicans were coming away from the dives into the sea without anything was because there are less fish in the ocean to be caught. The trash killed off the vast groups of fish making it so that the pelicans can’t find any fish to eat. Without food they die needlessly, and those that hunt the birds for food like sharks and the island foxes are without another food source thus disrupting the food chain of Santa Cruz Island.”

Yet it is not just the Channel Islands that are affected by this disruption in the oceans. The harbors of the world are cluttered with debris, and the largest known dump is not on land. It is situated in the ocean between Hawaii and California, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Ocean currents bring garbage from all over the world swirl it in this location to gather. Unable to break down, the debris is a hazard to the ocean populations that live right below it. The Channel Islands group decided to try and take action in providing information and ideas how we can all help stop this destruction. Without intervention, the amount of contaminated sea life will rise and affect us as we eat them. It is however somewhat difficult to teach people to change habits, those use to having their Starbucks in a trendy plastic cup seem almost resilient against a change.

Taking the stance that education on how individuals can help reduce their plastic consumption seemed to be the best way to help explain how even a little girl can help save not only the oceans but herself as well. Placing information on our booth at Eco-fest, we had many people coming up asking questions about the images of animals we had displayed. A pelican, with a stomach full of plastic and two tons of garbage pulled from a whale’s stomach seemed to get the message across. People seem to respond to what they think might affect them. Explaining that the practice of using plastics was in effect poisoning humans as a whole, the Channel Islands group shocked a lot of the college students into awareness. Two individuals said they would stop buying plastic bottles out of the vending machines, and another vowed to halt using plastic bags. Both small changes, but as consumers we can change how things are done. We can always help reverse some of the damage if we stop adding to it.

Buying glass bottles instead of plastic can help reduce the amount of debris that ends up in landfills or water ways. Glass unlike plastic can break down and go back into the ecosystem. Glass, made of superheated sand is in a way made of beaches. Some people even go so far as to buy a metal drinking bottle. These can be reused over and over without having to be thrown away. With the average being 4 pounds of garbage per day per person, just reducing your plastic bottles can greatly lower the average. Changing out your plastic bags for a reusable canvas bag is another way to help reduce plastic intake. Most of the debris in the Pacific is plastic shopping bags. Recently a movement to help change this has started; many stores now offer reusable bags and even to educate people in the use of low plastic products.

Christina reflected how education and observation can help others understand, “Maybe it’s because we live quite literally, right next to the beach that Venturians tend to take the ocean for granted. We see the Channel Islands from a distance, but never really bother to learn about them or visit them. We don’t realize what a beautiful, diverse and unique ecosystem lives just a few miles from our shore. Or how that our over use of plastics has been hurting it and us. I’ve lived in Ventura my whole life and had never once thought twice about the islands I saw at a distance. It had never occurred to me that those islands might have something special about them. Warning us that what we do to the Earth can affect not only the Oceans but us as well. It’s like an early warning system to alert is to our bad behavior. I want more Venturian’s to go out the islands and experience the way it feels to stand over the cliffs of Santa Cruz and look at how blue the ocean is. I want them to know that their trash can end up in the ocean and ruin what is now a lovely and recovering ecosystem. They need to see for themselves the balloons and garbage that the crew on boat out to the Islands had to pick up. They were doing their part to help save the playful dolphins that visit the boats to tease and play with the passengers. With garbage in the way, they don’t want to come close.”

We as a society take for granted what we do not fully understand or see every day. Walking with our eyes in blinders, concerned about only what is affecting us as individuals. Rachel Carson, a marine biologist who helped start the global environmental movement stated, “The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery – not over nature but of ourselves.” If we as a society just changed some of our daily habits we could help reduce this corruption.  Chris Carlson said it best in his book Nowtopia, “The active sharing of information and expertise has stimulated invention and innovation.” (167) Anyone can literally help save the world; all it takes is a little change and effort on everyone’s part. Be it working individually, or working together we can help change the mindset of our society.  Our collective minds can help “stimulate” different ways we can help replace plastic with substances that are more eco friendly.

Tim Connan, a National Park ranger stated,“ Really, the best that we can do is try and clean up our act. Taking care to only use things we know we can recycle and try and cut down on plastic waste would really help the oceans. We pulls tons of garbage out of the bay and do stops when we see it floating on our runs, and I still see other people ( rangers) drnking out of plastic bottles. If people are wanting to change they will. Our collective health, and oceans I’m sure would thank us.”

DECEMBER 3RD, 2009 ECOFEST 

On behalf of the Channel Islands group, we say Thank You to all the people that came and supported our Eco Fest Presentation. 

For those who couldn’t make it, here are some pictures of the event. 

Rochelle, Luz, Cristina

 

Here we are in our booth, with our tangled dolphin (willie). 

Thank You For taking the time to see our booth. Oh and hope you enjoyed our chiklets!

This nice young man asked us some questions and seemed very concerned about our waste! Of course, there we were to answer his questions!

Hey guys this is the paper so far. Check it over and make changes in a color and then repost here so we can keep a live rework of this going. <3 Rochelle

A frigid salty breeze blew through little Sarah’s pigtails, fluttering about behind her with velvet hair ribbons. The sand was still cool, her small feet sinking into the soft pliable surface as she held tight to the pale she had found in the street. Left behind by some other family, the beaten plastic bucket now served as a shoe carrier. Spinning like a top and giggling all the way, little Sarah was quickly halted by a sharp pain. Pulling her little foot up to examine it with tears in her eyes and a quivering lip, she discovers that a large shard of sharp plastic had sliced her soft heel. Standing quickly to avoid the creeping roll of the tide she squinted with a frown at all of the litter that had been left behind. Instead of playing in the waves, she slowly picked up each piece of discarded trash placing it in the recycle container not five feet from where the rubbish lay. Arriving in a bit of disarray, the little girl’s mom had been stalled at the car gathering up her beach towels, sunglasses and radio. Watching her daughter she laughed softly, unaware of the harm that had befallen her. “Sarah you can’t clean the entire beach, so there is no use trying.” Tossing the bottle into the can, Sarah turned to watch a small otter swirl about in the break attempting to remove a plastic bag that had been twisted over its head. Rushing over she pulled the bag loose, allowing the small wide eyed creature to dash back into the sea. Turning to her mother the little girl hugged her leg, “No mommy, I can’t clean it all but what I do clean helps.” Humans are the only beings on this planet that create items that cannot be reclaimed by the environment. Having processed plastics for over fifty years, humans have filled the Earth with a material that will never erode. We find plastic bags stick to chain link fences, bottles in our beaches and forests and trash strewn about our neighborhoods. Making the problem we had left for future generations a problem that our generation must help clean up. With our habits being quite lazy, humans have created a problem that seems as if it is too big to tackle. With a trash piled up in massive landfills and strewn out across the oceans, picking up fifty years worth of plastic seems impossible. Yet as we can see, (the word threw.. needs to be through.Luz)threw the eyes of Sarah every little bit helps. Less than one percent of plastics produced will end up being recycled. The word recycle when it comes to plastic products is not what it seems. Plastics become what is known as Nurdle. A broken down form of a larger plastic that is small and pellet in appearance. Much like glass shards in the ocean, the constant battering of the material reduces the size of these pieces. Unlike like natural materials, nurdle never fully (goes. Luz)go away. Taking samples from the ocean waters off the coast of California, scientists have found that nurdle is ever prevalent in not only our waters but the foods we eat from the ocean. We are in effect eating the plastic bottles we thought were recycled. The US produces 60 billion pounds of this waste plastic a year. With 90 percent of the trash found on beaches being nurdle, (we instead of was. Luz)was can easily see the effect it is having on our ecosystems. Ventura is a unique place because it contains within its borders the United States own micro ecosystem. This system is more commonly called the Channel Islands. The islands, since the Spanish first set foot on them(i think u need a.. THEY. Luz) have been an echo of ecological information in regards to human manipulation. The effect of 5.4 million tons of waste dumped yearly into our oceans quickly effects this fragile environment. Sea animals not only strangle themselves in waste, but swallow it as well. More and more fishermen are finding that fish have swallowed debris, making them ill and then transmitting sickness to other wildlife. This in turn affects humans who then consume these ill fish. Methyl mercury, being one of the most well known contaminates in our oceans. This chemical, builds up in fish usually predatory and then is consumed by humans. These unsafe levels can cause major health problems, and even death. Chemical and plastic contamination has been affecting the Channel Islands over the years. DDT a widely used chemical in crop dusting was found to not only harm animal life but humans as well. On the Channel Islands, the effects of these crop dusting chemicals severely killed off the native bald eagle population. The Chemical, known for thinning shells of avians, drastically reduced the number of hatchings compared to live adults. Thus causing a human effect on the micro environment.

This fish, was found dead on the beaches of California. Under observation it becomes apparent that it died because of a plastic bottle in its stomach.

Interview Questions

In the Channel Island National Park group, five members visited Santa Cruz Island and camped overnight.  The group went on a five hour hike to explore and captured the scenic beauty of the Channel Islands.  Each of the five members brought their own gear, equipment, and cameras to Santa Cruz Island.  And it was our way to experience the “Burning Man” chapter of Nowtopia by Chris Carlsson.  I interviewed Juan Quezada, a campground coordinator with the National Parks Services at Channel Islands, on the November 8, 2009.

My first question for Mr. Quezada was about the best time to find or locate the island’s small foxes and skunks.  He explained to me the best time to find the island’s small foxes was in the campground at nights or mornings.  The island’s small foxes like to go to the campground to look for food.  During the afternoons, the small foxes rest and are rarely seen.  As for the island’s skunks, the best time is to find them is at night along the hiking trails; however, they are rarely seen and hikers mostly smell them rather than see them.

My second question was about the eradication of the feral pigs and transportation of the golden eagle.  Mr. Quezada said he was not too sure the whole history, but he explained to the best of his knowledge how the eradication came about.  When the first Europeans farmers settled they brought pigs and sheep to the farms.  In the later years, large number of pigs escaped and found homes throughout the Santa Cruz Island area.  The feral pigs began to destroy the grasslands, including the unique plant life, and Chumash historical sites.  In addition to the destruction of the land, the feral pigs attracted the golden eagles to the island.  The golden eagles, a non-native species, began to hunt piglets and island’s small foxes.  The National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy brought a specialty team to eliminate the feral pig population.  Once the pigs were eradicated, the golden eagle began to hunt primarily the island’s small foxes.  The golden eagle brought the fox population severely down and close to extinction; the United States Fish and Wildlife put the island small fox in the endangered species list.  The National Park Service hired another special team to capture the golden eagles and to transport them to the northeast of California.  The foxes were being kept in special care by the National Park Services and later release them to the wild.  The island fox population is steadily increasing thanks to the National Park Services.

My third question was about the plant life.  He mentioned that cherries trees, which are found throughout the two upper loop of the campground, and are native plant.  “Good Morning” plants are found along the river banks going to the campground.  The eucalyptus trees found in the campground were brought by the early farmers to be use as fire wood and wind breakers.  He would later point out to the group a chert rock that was use by the Chumash as a trading ornament.

According to Mr. Quezada, Chumash literally means “money makers.”  The chert rock is found abundantly throughout the island.  The Chumash use the rock to trade for beams and supplies that were not found in the island with the mainland tribes.  The chert rock was use by the Chumash like we use money today.

I was nervous as I boarded the boat taking us to Scorpion Cove on the Santa Cruz Island. I had never been on a boat for more than twenty minutes, I had never been camping in a place where a Vons wasn’t a short drive away, and I had never been camping with people I barely knew. It was the way the boat moved through the ocean that calmed me, the way the ocean rocked the boat softly that made me feel relaxed.  They had said it would take an hour to get to the island and once I knew I wouldn’t get seasick I knew it would be a fun hour.

 We got to Scorpion cove with no problems and even got to see some dolphins swimming with the boat. At once I was in awe of the towering cliffs that surrounded the beach, and how blue and clear the ocean was there. It wasn’t at all what I’m used to seeing in the Ventura beaches, and I was filled with the urge to go exploring and discover more breathtaking views. As soon as we had all settled down and set up their tents, we went out on a ling hike to potato cove. It took us about two hours to get to potato cove because we kept stopping to take pictures and take in the views on the way there. It was a truly awe inspiring view. And even the trail leading back to the campsite was picture worthy even if it didn’t overlook the ocean.

 Because there are not very many artificial lights on the islands the stars at night looked much brighter than they do in Ventura. The starts were so pretty we even took the tarp off of our tent so we could see them while we lay in our sleeping bags. Unfortunately our only sighting of the island foxes happened at night when the lighting obviously wasn’t good, and we didn’t have a camera on us. We didn’t see a whole lot of wildlife but we did see a scorpion. The following morning while waiting for our boat we decided to do some research and looked into the visitors center. I learned so many things about the islands history and the things the ecosystem had gone through. I learned about the near extinction of the island fox and the complete elimination of the bald eagle on the islands due to DDT. I saw how settlers introducing non native livestock to a new environment can kill the environment.

Maybe it’s because we live, quite literally, right next to the beach that venturians tend to take the ocean for granted. We see the Channel Islands from a distance but never really bother to learn about them or visit them. We don’t realize what a beautiful, diverse and unique ecosystem lives just a few miles from our shore. I’ve lived in Ventura my whole life and had never once thought twice about the islands I saw at a distance. It had never occurred to me that those islands might have a long and colorful history.

            One of the things I would like to accomplish with this project is to bring awareness to Ventura’s citizens and make them interested in what goes on in the islands. I want them all to know what’s out there and what they can do to help it stay as beautiful as it is now. I want more Venturian’s to go out the islands and experience the way it feels to stand over the cliffs of Santa Cruz and look at how blue the ocean is. I want them to know that their trash can end up in the ocean and ruin what is now a lovely and recovering ecosystem. They need to see for themselves the balloons that the crew on the boat pick up to save the playful dolphins that visit the boats passengers.

The endless ebb of the ocean as it ascends onto the shore of Santa Cruz, reminds me of the endless cycle of life, the life of the Santa Cruz like the waves on that shore life peaks and than recedes in an endless natural cycle. But if you add in unforeseen variables into the equation, the waves that were once so pristine predictable and calm, becomes rapid and unpredictable. So what are these unforeseeable variables that I am talking about, well it could be anything from a plastic bag that carried your cans of soup and just slipped out of your blue recycle bin, or that nice Styrofoam cup that held your vanilla frappacino that foggy sunday morning, or even a balloon, yes a simple red helium filled balloon that you see at countless birthday parties, but you may ask how can those little cup and little plastic bags do so much harm to such a huge island with such a large and diverse population so isolated off the coast California, and the answer is simple, the answer is numbers, loads of pounds of trash are scattered between the southern coast of California and the coasts of the channel Islands, Santa Cruz being the biggest and the one with the most miles of coast it is the one being most devastated by this phenomena called pollution. One plastic bag, one styrofoam cup and a balloon may not seem like a lot but add to that countless people that loose plastic bags each day or countless styrofoam cups that don’t end up in their respectable trash cans, and what about those balloons you see flying in the sky sure they may be nice to look at but sooner or later they will come down and considering that the ocean is just right around the corner its safe to assume that the balloon will touch down on the channel between the coast and the channel Islands. Trash yes its everywhere but we don’t seem to mind it we just look the other way, but animals out in the channel and on the islands don’t know any better, to some fish plastic bags look like nice delectable fish and to some other fish Styrofoam bits look really good, so as you may see from these examples, that as more and more trash is dump into the sea more and more sea bearing animals eat this trash thus causing them to die from the lack of nutrition they can gather from eating trash, so if one pod of fish dies from the eating of trash, that is one less pod of fish that is swimming in the ocean one less pod of fish that is able to be eaten so less food more predators looking for less food less predators being feed means less predators staying alive, thus those predators are someone’s prey and thus since there is less of them less survive more die. The lives of the wildlife on Santa Cruz island is directly tied to the ocean and the wildlife in the ocean, When I went to Santa Cruz I saw pelicans diving for there food, but rarely did I see any of the pelicans eat any fish so  that got me wondering why aren’t those pelicans eating any of the fish they dive down for?, isn’t that what they are built for diving down and catching fish?, but a reason for those pelicans not getting any fish is that there are less fish in the ocean to be caught because there is trash that kills the multitude of fish thus pelicans can’t find any fish to eat thus they die causing more animals that hunt pelicans looking for others things to eat, thus disrupting the food chain of Santa Cruz island. This is what I saw when I went to Santa Cruz.=