A whole 500ml plastic bottle was found inside the stomach of a monkfish by a fisherman in South Korea. The monkfish was caught in the coastal town of Buan-Gun near North Jeolla.
The discovery even shocked the fisherman whom. have seen plastic pollution overwhelming the once plastic-free sea. They are hoping the incident is a wake-up call for governments to actively fight to reduce plastic usage.
The monkfish is known for their wide mouths where they frequently swallow other species of large sea creatures such as squid and flatfish. When in water, plastic pollution is easily mistaken as a form of food creating a huge problem to the predators of the ocean.
Environmental activists call for a “systemic response” from the government to ensure safe disposal of plastic waste.
“Hwang opened the fish and found a plastic bottle, so he sent me a picture,” said Lee In-gyu, a member of the North Jeolla branch of the Korean Federation of Environmental Movement.
“It shows that the issue of marine waste in Korea is quite serious.”
Local fishermen consider the waters near Buan County a rich fishing area.
“We find more plastic and garbage in fish these days,” said Hwang.
“I found vinyl products, cans, and plastic pieces in some fish, and this is not limited to monkfish.
Earlier this week, a sperm whale off the Indonesian coast was washed ashore with nearly 6 kg of plastic material, including 115 plastic cups.
To reduce plastic pollution, it is up to us to push large companies and governments to monitor and reduce usage. You can help by writing, calling, tweeting, emailing and trying to communicate the need to end the growing problem. We can solve this problem but nothing will be done if we the people do not push for a change.
An Australian city is taking an innovative method to reducing trash flowing from mainland to the ocean by creating a sewer system that blocks and catches any plastic or trash.
The system was installed by the Australian city of Kwinana in the Henley reserve and uses a exceptionally simple system to help keep the oceans cleaner.
The system consists of a net that is placed on the outlet of a drainage pipe which catches trash and prevents it from flowing further.
Unfortunately, trash will always find its way on the side of highways, in residential areas and just about anywhere there is human activity. When heavy rains come through, the trash is picked up and washed to the nearest sewer system where it will eventually find its way to a river and the ocean. The system uses the power of the rain and water flow to collect the trash in a simplistic and effective manner.
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The city started by installing 2 nets and were shocked to find how effective it was. Within a couple of weeks, more than 800 pounds of garbage was collected within several weeks.
While the upfront cost of these can be expensive at a price tag of roughly $10,000 each, the system does save money in the long run as it prevents spending of restoration in rivers and the oceans due to garbage pollution and saves in labor as the nets now due the job that several people would have been doing before of collecting the litter.
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Once full, the nets are being collected where the city picks out the recyclable items, then moves to be further processed.
Ideas like this is what will drive humans to help make up for the pollution problem worldwide. While cleaning out the oceans is extremely important, we will only be chasing our tails if we do not solve the problem of reducing the trash entering in the first place. Well done Australia.
The Veterinary Department of Primorsky Region has issued permits for the company ‘Primorksy Dolphinarium’ to export 50 seals to Chinese Tianjin for the purpose of “maintenance.”
As first reported by the non-profit organization Friends of the Ocean whom received information that the vetenarian service has agreed to export permits. The exporter is LLC Primorsky Dolphinarium.
According to current legislation of the Russian Federation, the extraction of living marine mammals is possible for only research, education, and cultural and education purposes.
The extraction of aquatic biological resources for the purpose of “maintenance, in zoos, aquariums and other cultural organizations is carried out only for cultural and educational purposes. However, the use of aquatic biological resources, obtained for cultural and educational purposes, has the right only to a person who has been granted the right to extract or catch such aquatic biological resources, and only using property located in the territory of the Russian Federation. The right to use aquatic bioresources obtained for cultural and educational purposes is not provided by law to other persons.
Environmentalist are set to apply to the supervisory authorities with a request to verify the legitimacy of the issuance of permits.
China has become infamous for the poor conditions, quality and care to animals leading to even more concern for the future of the mammals.
PTSD can be a terrible and insidious health problem and a hard one to treat because of the many layers of trauma that can underpin the condition.
But animal companions, and recently birds, like parrots, have proved to be a powerful source of
joy and wellness for people dealing post traumatic stress. To understand why birds are particularly good companion animals for people with PTSD, it’s first worth learning a bit about the health problem.
What is PTSD?
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is usually caused by a significantly traumatic event or prolonged exposure to trauma that may span months to many years. PTSD usually occurs right after the event itself, but in some cases it may show up several months or even years after the catalyst event.
The way PTSD manifests can be different for every person dealing with this condition and can depend on the trauma that person endured. However, common symptoms can include flashbacks or nightmares of the traumatic event itself or stress responses such as pain, sweating, feeling sick and trembling, to name just a few. These may occur as a result of stimuli that “trigger” the memory or may come on without warning.
PTSD is perhaps most widely understood by the general public as a condition effecting combat veterans, whose prolonged exposure to scenes of war and combat have had an impact on their mental wellbeing. However, PTSD can occur among almost all demographics. Women—for example those who have been in an abusive relationship—or children who have undergone prolonged stress or suffered the loss of a parent can also suffer from PTSD
PTSD can manifest through persistent negative self-talk that reinforces the person’s feelings of anguish surrounding the event. It can also lead to a state known as “hyper arousal” which might best be explained in this context as someone always being on edge. This can lead to sufferers having short tempers or being quick to anger or upset. In some extreme cases, PTSD can cause angry or even violent outbursts, though the actual number of PTSD sufferers who are violent is much smaller than media portrayals lead us to believe, and there is surprisingly little evidence to specifically link PTSD with violence.
Other problems that can manifest because of PTSD include an inability to concentrate, a “mental fog” state and an avoidance problem where sufferers will attempt to minimize their negative feelings. This can lead to sufferers not seeking treatment, avoiding responsibilities or stressful situations like employment, or attempting to medicate themselves in a variety of ways. Self-medication can manifest as obsessive behaviors, like over-exercise, through to alcohol and drug use, casual sexual encounters and more.
How is PTSD treated?
It is possible to successfully treat PTSD, but it is among the more complex class of mental health disorders. PTSD is distinct from panic disorders and depression, but the conditions can overlap, meaning that treatment has to take in some or many of these factors.
Treatment often involves therapy of some kind, sometimes underpinned by various medications designed to give the emotional breathing room for that therapy to take effect. These can include:
CBT, where patients learn to challenge negative thought patterns and introduce new thoughts to replace those old systems
eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, where eye movements are used during the recounting of past traumas as a means of helping a patient walk through the trauma while distracted (though exactly why this works isn’t fully understood)
group therapy medications specifically used for PTSD, like paroxetine and sertraline.
However, PTSD sufferers can find it hard to undergo therapy precisely, because it’s difficult to relive or deal with the past trauma that they have struggled with. This is where support animals can be effective.
Support animals don’t magically make PTSD symptoms go away, but they do offer love and support that can anchor people dealing with PTSD. Dogs and other support animals are also good at picking up when their human companions are in distress and lend support without their human needing to specifically communicate their distress, something that PTSD sufferers can find very difficult.
In addition, the very act of having to care for an animal can help bring a focus to the lives of PTSD sufferers that is outside of their own distress, thus helping to break the negative thought patterns or at the very least offering distraction.
Why Birds are so Helpful for People Dealing with PTSD
Some birds, such as ravens and parrots are incredibly intelligent and can learn to understand or even mirror basic language skills. Birds also display some surprisingly “human-like” behaviors, but at the same time have particularized and often demanding needs to which a human companion will have to attend. This creates a new dimension of interactivity for PTSD sufferers.
While there is a lack of specific wide-scale research on birds as animal companions for PTSD sufferers, there is growing anecdotal support for their abilities to help. So much so, in fact, that a number of groups, including Parrots for Patriots, have launched with the specific aim of matching abandoned birds with veterans who may be in need of an animal friend to care for and from whom they can take support. These birds don’t just help PTSD sufferers, but they may be particularly well-served by this scheme.
Below is a video from Serenity Park Sanctuary that demonstrates what a difference various schemes like this can have for veterans and people dealing with PTSD:
It’s worth noting that service birds which help with diagnosed mental health conditions have a complex status under the Americans with Disabilities Act and may not be protected in all spheres like other service animals are. It is important to know your rights, if you are thinking about adopting a rescued bird as a service animal, and the facility from which you are receiving your animal will likely be able to give you all the information you will need.
Coral reefs around the world are dying off in masses as the seas temperatures continue to grow and the acidity of the oceans rise with it due to climate change. These changes cause the reefs to go through a process known as coral bleaching which happens when warmer water temperatures cause corals to expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white.
When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.
The worst bleaching event ever recorded happened in 2016 when half the northern Great Barrier Reef died due to mass bleaching due to rising ocean temperatures. In the years spanning 2014-2017, in some areas of the reef temperatures rose as much as 10.8°F (6°C), sometimes lasting as long as eight months.
Unfortunately for the reefs, while all this coral death happened quickly and suddenly, the growth of new coral is at an extremely slow rate as they take hundred and thousands of years to grow back to what they once where and this is not good.
The best solution to save reefs is to prevent future warming of the oceans but researchers are attempting to help regrow some of the reefs that are already dead and they are using some pretty cool technology to assist them.
Researchers at two Australian universities have developed and underwater robot named Larvalbot that is designed to move autonomously along dead or damaged sections of the reef with hundreds of thousands of microscopic baby corals.
“This year represents a big step up for our larval restoration research and the first time we’ve been able to capture coral spawn on a bigger scale using large floating spawn catchers then rearing them into tiny coral larvae in our specially constructed larval pools and settling them on damaged reef areas,” Professor Harrison said whom engineered the robot.
“With further research and refinement, this technique has enormous potential to operate across large areas of reef and multiple sites in a way that hasn’t previously been possible. We’ll be closely monitoring the progress of settled baby corals over coming months and working to refine both the technology and the technique to scale up further in 2019.”
The team recently tested the bot on the outer part of the GBR. along the northeastern coast. The trial run dispersed 100,000 baby specimens that were collected from coral that survived the bleaching event of 2016-2017. This coral was specifically chosen as research as revealed that the coral that survived the mass bleaching actually adapted to become more resilient to heatwaves and rising temperatures.
The hope is the that future versions of the robot will be able to disperse millions fo baby corals to speed up the regrowth process of reefs but the team is still waiting on research to show that the coral will take hold and grow.
“We can’t actually see the results of these experiments until we start to see juvenile corals grow — so, for at least six to nine months,” Harrison said. “What we’ll be doing now is monitoring the reef over the coming months.”
Harrison hopes to eventually develop a fleet of LarvalBots that would be used to repopulate reefs around the world, though he is unsure how much such a project would cost.
While this is a great idea to try and promote growth on reefs that have already been killed, the most important thing we do today is to do everything we can to reduce coral bleaching so the bots are never needed. Due to the size and scale of coral reefs across the planet, it is essentially impossible to regrow all shallow water reefs if bleaching is to continue.
To accomplish this, we must slow the rate of climate change and protect the oceans from warming up.
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