La Mode Verte
Environmental Awareness Through Media ProductionsArchive for NOAA
Plastic Shores to be Shown on Capitol Hill, Washington DC
We have been fortunate enough here at LMV to have screened Plastic Shores at numerous high-profile organisations including the United Nations, the OECD, and the European Economic and Social Committee. We can now confirm that we can add Capitol Hill in Washington DC to this list. Hosted by Congressman Sam Farr (pictured above), who appears in the film, the event, in the House of Congress’ Visitor Centre on the 18th July, will also include Congressman Don Young; Nancy Wallace, the director of NOAA’s Marine Debris Program; Nicholas Mallos, a conservation biologist with the Ocean Conservancy; and Judith Kildow, the director of the National Ocean Economics Program and the Center for the Blue Economy. We are very privileged to be able to screen the film at such a prestigious place and think that it is a sign that the problems with marine debris are becoming more main stream. Sam Farr was one of the key-note speakers at the 5th International Marine Debris Conference in Hawaii, which we filmed last year. He has been working tirelessly for much of his political career to secure the protection of our world’s oceans.
Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Set to be Largest on Record
e360.yale.edu 15th June 2011
Quoted from source:
‘The Gulf of Mexico’s hypoxic zone, an oxygen-depleted area created by excessive nutrient pollution, isexpected to reach record proportions this year as a result of the extreme flooding in the Mississippi River basin, according to a forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Using nutrient load data compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey, scientists calculate that the hypoxic zone, also known as the “dead zone,” could cover 8,500 to 9,421 square miles, an area about the size of New Hampshire. The dead zone — which is created when algal blooms remove oxygen from the water and suffocate marine life — has reached an average 6,000 square miles during the last five years. But with the flow rate of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers nearly double the normal rate this spring, the quantity of nutrients entering the Gulf is about 35 percent higher than usual, according to NOAA. The dead zone, located along the coast, forces Gulf fishermen farther offshore.’
LMV Set to Film UN Marine Debris Conference in Hawaii
Filming for LMV’s documentary on the effects of plastics on the marine environment and human health begins in March with the LMV team flying to the USA. As well as numerous interviews (e.g.: Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Professor Frederick vom Saal, Captain Charles Moore), the team will be attending the 5th International Marine Debris Conference in Honolulu, hosted by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The conference aims to establish the Honolulu Commitment, an agreement on how to tackle the problems of human waste in the world’s oceans. While in the Pacific, the crew will also document that state of Hawaii’s beaches (and the scale of plastic pollution found on them) as well as the effects of the Great Pacific Garbage Dump on the islands’ wildlife (see here and below for camera footage of a very sad phenomenon affecting local bird populations by Chris Jordan).
Why Gulf Oil Just Isn’t Going Away
www.nationalgeographic.co.uk 15th September 2010
Scientists have reacted angrily to a US government statement in August that up to three quarters of the 4.9 million barrels of spilt oil in the Gulf, created by the explosion on board the Deep Water Horizon oil rig in April, has ‘gone’. The statement was based on research by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) but has been called a ‘joke’ and a ‘fairy tale scenario’ by Samantha Joye, a marine biochemist from the University of Georgia. So far Ms. Joye has discovered oil in ten sediment cores taken from a mile deep and up to 80 miles North of the rig. Although tests have not proven if the oil belongs to the BP spill or are a result of natural seepage, the nature of the oil layer indicates the former due to the presence of dead sea-life beneath it. The deep water oil plumes are mobile and their composition has changed since they erupted from the Earth’s core. The oil now has active micobial communities attached to it. The microbes need oxygen to break down the fossil fuel though which will cause oxygen sinks.
Another bone of contention in the debate is the little amount of attention paid to methane gas given off in the explosion. Ian MacDonald, a microbiologist from Florida State University, has said that if methane was included in the official figures of the spill then the total amount lost should be around 6 million barrels (or around 950 million litres).
