Key Largo, Florida

Deb at Aquarius Habitat (c)KipEvans/Mission Blue

As Mission Aquarius, a celebration of 50 years under the sea, winds to a close, the Mission Blue team in Florida is filled with hope for the future of Aquarius. Dr. Sylvia Earle, her team of Aquanauts and everyone working to support and highlight the mission pulled together into a cohesive team that has made a clear statement to the world – Aquarius must be saved.

With One World One Ocean in the lead, a winning group of talented ocean media professionals converged on Key Largo, Florida this week to call attention to the imminent loss of funding for the world’s last remaining undersea laboratory. Utilizing IMAX film, live webcasts from both inside the habitat and from the seabed, social media and mainstream news networks, teams worked 24/7 to highlight both the past achievements of Aquarius, and it’s possibilities for the future. The live U Stream feed typically had 200-400 viewers at any given time.

Fabien Cousteau visited Aquarius for his first time early in the week. The grandson of Jacques and son of Jean-Michel Cousteau, Fabien has known Sylvia Earle since he was 3 years old.  And growing up on the decks of Calypso & Halcyon, saving the ocean is in his blood. His cozy one-on-one chat with Sylvia was touchingly personal, yet far reaching as they discussed both the degradation of the world ocean and the possibilities for improving it’s health in the future.

Fabien Cousteau with Handcuffs (c) Deb Castellana

Topside, with his typical irreverent sense of humor, Cousteau jokingly plotted to handcuff himself to Aquarius in protest of it’s closing.  He could see the headlines, “Cousteau handcuffs himself to Aquarius underwater habitat to protest closing!”

His intimate visit inside Aquarius with Sylvia was filled with nostalgia. “I follow in your fin steps and my grandfather’s,” he said, “in being more comfortable in the sea than on land.” How to bring that type of ocean consciousness to the general public is a dilemma. How can those who have never gone beneath the waves, truly care for something they’ve never seen? We hope that through the efforts of this talented group of filmmakers, journalists, and photographers, enough attention will be focused on the ocean to begin to bridge that gap.

Embedded ocean journalist and former Gizmodo Editorial Director, Brian Lam contributed his young, hip take to the mission. Earlier this year, when he Interviewed Sylvia for a New York Times article on home made subs, Brian’s epiphany about the state of the world’s oceans was evident. His touching follow-up piece, “A Heartbreaking Interview with Dr. Sylvia Earle,” went viral. Brian’s deep commitment to using his considerable talents towards saving the ocean continues to grow, and his contribution to the Aquarius mission has been outstanding.

With digital media being shared on every platform from cell phones to IMAX screens, we hope that the public, and our leaders in Washington will hear the message to save Aquarius loud and clear. The photographic talents of the crew from One World One Ocean, Liquid Pictures’ Aquanaut DJ Roller, and our own Kip Evans have created a bank of rich content that is being shared worldwide.

Kip Evans & Brian Lam (c) Deb Castellana

Like an ocean wave closing in on the shore, news of Mission Aquarius grew as the week progressed.  When the AP story hit the wires on Thursday, news of Aquarius’ plight hit newspapers coast to coast. NPR had two pieces during the week, including Science Friday with Ira Flatow. Nightline anchor Bob Weir dove to Aquarius to interview the aquanauts both inside and outside of the habitat. Sylvia’s TED wish to spread the news by all means possible that our ocean is in trouble has never been better served.

Culminating with a gala fundraising event at the Museum of Diving History in Islamorada, we have increasing hope that Aquarius will be saved. Certainly millions of people have now heard about the imminent closure due to budget cuts. Even with today’s difficult economy, the $3 million that it takes to operate Aquarius annually seems like a goal that should be easy to reach. Given the return on investment that Aquarius will provide, it seems a tiny amount.

No article about Aquarius would be complete without a shout-out to the team at Aquarius Reef Base. It has been a pleasure to spend this week working alongside the NURC team – each member bringing a consummate professionalism and a great deal of heart to the table, keeping the aquanauts and those of us working around the lab safe and comfortable. Mission Aquarius has been a resounding success due to the hard work of this incredibly dedicated and skilled team. We hope that we’ve been able to focus the necessary attention on Aquarius to bring in the funds needed to keep her and this amazing group of submariners up and running for a very long time into the future.

Aquarius Team (c) Deb Castellana

Originally posted at: MISSION BLUE

Followers of Planet Ocean News may have noticed that the page has gone dark these past few months as I have come up to speed in my new position as Director of Communications for Dr. Sylvia Earle’s ‘Mission Blue.’  Now I am looking forward to posting more often with some exciting, and always thought provoking content.  First up, Mission Aquarius!

(c) Brian Skerry

Training begins tomorrow off the coast of Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, for Mission Aquarius, ‘Celebrating 50 years of Living Beneath the Sea.’  The mission seeks to highlight not only the achievements of Aquarius, but also its tenuous future in today’s uncertain economic and political climate.

A question for you. Have you ever heard of Aquarius Reef Base? Don’t feel badly if you haven’t. Somehow this incredible feat of underwater engineering has largely escaped the public eye for the all the years that it has been in operation.

Since 1993, the Aquarius undersea lab has supported 114 missions, with over 550 peer-reviewed scientific publications produced, numerous educational programs, and television pieces. NASA has participated in a number of programs to research everything from the psychological effects of living in close quarters to mining asteroids (see NASA/NEEMO Website here). The Aquarius Reef Base is also supporting one of the longest running and thorough coral reef monitoring programs in the world, critical given current ocean stressors such as climate change and ocean acidification.

Aquarius has provided the world’s leading marine scientists with the opportunity to live aboard and engage in complicated research projects that could only have been carried out from saturation diving. By living and working on the seafloor for an extended period of time (up to 10 days,) scientists are able to comprehensively and intimately study and document the coral reef ecosystem.

Says Dr. Sylvia Earle, who now embarks on her third saturation dive with Aquarius, “Being able to study the animals and plants in their home using an underwater habitat gives me the gift of time,” Earle said in a mission summary. “Time to see what these magnificent life forms are actually doing on the reef.”

A cohesive partnership has formed between Mission Blue, One World One Ocean,  Google, The Aquarius Foundation, NOAA, UNCW (The University of North Carolina at Wilmington,) National Geographic, and Reef Base Aquarius and the collaboration promises to be a powerful force bringing public attention to the achievements of Aquarius as well as to what may be lost if this should be the last mission.

The media teams will be transmitting across multiple platforms from Mission Aquarius through live feeds, social networks, feature articles, as well as mainstream media.  Dr. Earle and Principal Investigator Mark Patterson will speak live with students from Williams and Mary College, there will be a live feed with Chautauqua Institution, a Google + Hangout, and possibly even a call-in with Ira Flatow’s always entertaining and fascinating NPR show, ‘Science Friday.’ We’ll keep you posted.

One World One Ocean will be on site with IMAX cameras, and DJ Roller of Liquid Pictures 3D will be shooting in 3D. Yours truly will be there with my trusty Go Pro.

We hope that you will help us to maximize this educational and outreach effort, and to use this rare opportunity to increase ocean literacy. So tweet it, facebook it, and e-mail our news if you can. The ocean would thank you if she could!

Much more content on Mission Aquarius is on it’s way, so stay tuned!

Sir Peter Blake, formerly partners in the then called “Seamaster,” was murdered onboard on the Amazon River in 2001 by would-be thieves. Blake had been engaged as Director of Expeditions for the Cousteau Society, and was also named special envoy for the UN Environment Programme. While on an environmental exploration trip in South America, monitoring global warming and pollution for the United Nations, this sailing legend and ocean hero met his tragic end. It was unthinkable. In New Zealand, his grave is a place of pilgrimage. With Sir Peter’s tragic death, it looked like his legendary 119-foot schooner Seamaster might never be used to her full potential. But baby, look at her now. Sir Peter would be proud!

Since leaving Lorient on September 5, 2009, the schooner Tara has taken samples at 150 scientific stations around the world, collecting material for laboratory analysis, and has also studied specific coral reef sites. (938 expedition days, including 630 days at sea and 58 days studying corals.) After two-and-a-half years circling the globe, Tara returned to her home port in Lorient on Saturday, March 31, 2012.

With this unprecedented expedition, scientists hope to better understand the functioning and diversity of marine life and provide answers about their role in the face of climate change. Preliminary analyses from 30 stations show that 60-80% of genes characterizing plankton were unknown up to the present.

Tara Oceans is also an outreach expedition; meeting the people of the countries they passed through. During the 50 stopovers, nearly 5,000 children from all continents visited Tara and interacted with the scientists. The mission has been a great human adventure involving hundreds of people onboard and ashore.

In the coming months, the first scientific results will be published. Three papers are in preparation: on the genomics of stations in the Mediterranean Sea, the impact of environment on the complexity of biodiversity, and the effects of ocean circulation on ecosystems. In addition, analyses of their samples will continue for many years in partner laboratories. Possible applications of these results are numerous, especially in the biomedical field and for climate models.

2012 is the year for sharing the Tara Expeditions project – first, this June at the Earth Summit in Rio. The schooner will remain in Brittany throughout the summer. During the French leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, she’ll be in Lorient, then in Camaret-sur-Mer and at the “Tonnerres de Brest”. The schooner will then sail to Paris in September, and dock there for several months.

At the US NRC Regulatory Information Conference in Washington, DC March 13 to March 15, the NRC’s Chairman, Dr. Gregory Jaczko emphasized his concern that the NRC and the nuclear industry presently do not consider the costs of mass evacuations and radioactive contamination in their cost benefit analysis used to license nuclear power plants. Furthermore, Fairewinds believes that evacuation costs near a US nuclear plant could easily exceed one trillion dollars and contaminated land would be uninhabitable for generations.

Tokyo Soil Samples Would Be Considered Nuclear Waste In The US from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

In August of 2010, just after the wellhead was capped, I joined The Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s Dr. Chris Pincetich, Captains Al Walker and Terry Palmisano, and Scott Porter of Ecorigs to see how much oil was still in Barataria Bay, in the Mississippi Delta.  We found much more than we expected, with crude oil and sheen seemingly everywhere we checked.

In one area we found a pod of dolphins poking their noses in the mud looking for morsels of food, only to kick up a nasty rainbow sheen of oil. And when they’d surface to breathe, their blowholes would open, sucking in that same oily sheen.  It was the stuff of nightmares. When my respiratory problems became too hard to manage, I went to Florida to recuperate. The dolphins and other creatures of the Gulf were not so lucky.

The situation was reported to the authorities, with whom I exchanged a number of frustrating emails. Finally a few months later, they went to the GPS Position I had provided and reported back that the dolphins’ health appeared to be normal. Frustrating for all sides involved I’m sure, and with the government’s gag order on NOAA staff due to pending lawsuits against BP, it’s been a long time with no news.

My friends know how long I raged about the dolphins in Barataria Bay – and elsewhere in the Gulf where the mortality rates have been no less than astounding. Today that anger is back again, the memories of those dolphins are as vivid as if it were yesterday.

In this video, you’ll see the dolphins around 1:13 forward.

New York Times/Environmental Blog

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

Dolphins in Barataria Bay off Louisiana, which was hit hard by the BP oil spill in 2010, are seriously ill, and their ailments are probably related to toxic substances in the petroleum, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggested on Friday.

As part of an ongoing assessment of damages caused by the three-month spill, which began with an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, NOAA scientists performed comprehensive physicals last summer on 32 dolphins from the bay. They found problems like drastically low weight, low blood sugar and, in some cases, cancer of the liver and lungs.

Yet the most common symptom among the dolphins, found in about half the group, was an abnormally low level of stress hormones like cortisol. Such hormones regulate many functions in the animal, including the immune system and responses to threats. Scientists said the dearth of hormones suggested that the animals were suffering from adrenal insufficiency.

Lori Schwacke, the lead scientist for the health assessment, said the findings were preliminary and could not be conclusively linked to the oil spill at this point. But she said the exams were also conducted on control groups of dolphins that live along the Atlantic coast and in other areas that were not affected by the 2010 spill and that those dolphins did not manifest those symptoms.

“The findings we have are also consistent with other studies that have looked at the effects of oil exposure in other mammals,” Dr. Schwacke added, citing experimental studies of mink that were dosed with oil. Some of those minks developed adrenal insufficiency.

Strandings of dolphins began rising in states along the Gulf of Mexico in February 2010, or about two months before the oil spill.

But NOAA says that the strandings have returned to normal rates along the Florida coast, which was the farthest from the spill, while remaining abnormally high along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In Barataria Bay alone, with a population of about 1,000 dolphins, 180 strandings have been reported since February 2010. In a normal year, about 20 dolphin standings would be reported in all of Louisiana, the agency said.

Ben Sherman, a NOAA spokesman, cautioned against drawing too broad a conclusion about dolphin deaths across the gulf from the findings. He said the results could provide “possible clues” to the effects of the oil spill on other dolphins in the northern Gulf of Mexico. “However, it is too soon to tell how the Barataria Bay findings apply,” he said.

A retired career physicist with NASA, Bonny Schumaker, now the owner and pilot of On Wings of Care, has logged more than 500 hours surveying the area of the seep in question [Erika Blumenfeld/Al JazeeraNew Orleans, LAAs BP settles out of court for the first phase of thousands of lawsuits that could cost the company tens of billions of dollars, Al Jazeera has spotted a large oil sheen near the infamous Macondo 252 well.

In September 2011, Al Jazeera spotted a large swath of silvery oil sheen located roughly 19km northeast of the now-capped well.

But now, on February 29, Al Jazeera conducted another over-flight of the area and found a larger area of sea covered in oil sheen in the same location.

Oil trackers with the organisation On Wings of Care, who have been monitoring the new oil since mid-August 2011, have for months found rainbow-tinted slicks and thick silvery globs of oil consistently visible in the area.

“This is the same crescent shaped area of oil and sheen I’ve been seeing here since the middle of last August,” Bonny Schumaker, president and pilot of On Wings of Care, told Al Jazeera while flying over the oil.

Schumaker has logged approximately 500 hours of flight time monitoring the area around the Macondo well, and has flown scientists from NASA, the US Geological Survey (USGS), and oil chemistry scientists to observe conditions resulting from BP’s oil disaster that began in April 2010.

When Al Jazeera flew to the area on September 11, 2011, the oil sheen was approximately 25km long and 10 to 50 metres wide, at a location roughly 19km northeast of the Macondo 252 well.

On the recent over flight, the area covered in oil sheen was approximately 35km long, and ranged from 20 to 100 metres wide in approximately the same location. At times, fumes from the oil filled the aircraft, even at an altitude of 350 metres.

Schumaker, a career physicist with NASA who retired in 2011, is deeply concerned because she has spotted oil in the same location now at least 15 times since last August.

Edward Overton, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University’s environmental sciences department, examined data from oil samples taken from this area last September and confirmed that the oil is from the Macondo reservoir.

Experts believe the oil is likely to be from a seep in the seabed, but there is debate about what caused the seep, as many believe it may well have been caused by BP’s blowout well and the failed attempts to cap it during spring 2010.

‘Dead ringer’

Overton, who is also a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) contractor, told Al Jazeera in September, “After examining the data, I think it’s a dead ringer for the MC252 [Macondo Well] oil, as good a match as I’ve seen.”

He explained that the samples were analysed and compared to “the known Macondo oil fingerprint, and it was a very, very close match”.

While not ruling out the possibility that oil could be seeping out of the giant reservoir, which would be the worst-case scenario, Overton believed the oil currently reaching the surface was probably from oil that was trapped in the damaged rigging on the seafloor.

However, given the fact that the oil sheen has existed in this area since at least as early as August 2010 and is continuing, the likelihood of it being residual oil from the Deepwater Horizon or damaged rigging is now slim.

The oil seep is up to 35 km long, and has been present since at least August 2011 [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

Other scientists remain concerned that the new oil could be coming from a seep from the same reservoir the Macondo well was drilled into. The oilfield, located 64km off the coast of Louisiana, is believed to hold as much 50 million barrels of producible oil reserves.

Natural oil seepage in the Gulf of Mexico is a common phenomenon and can cause sheens, but the current oil and sheen is suspect due to its size and location near the Macondo well.

“From what I’ve seen, this new oil and sheen definitely seemed larger than typical natural seepages found in the Gulf of Mexico,” Dr Ira Leifer, a University of California scientist who is an expert on natural hydrocarbon oil and gas emissions from the seabed told Al Jazeera. “Because of the size and its location, there is a greater concern that should require a larger public investigation.”

Fishermen and residents of the four states most heavily affected by BP’s disaster continue to struggle to regain a sense of normalcy in their lives. Many still experience health problems they attribute to chemicals in BP’s oil and the toxic dispersants used to sink it.

Shrimpers and oyster fishermen have seen their catches drop dramatically, and in some areas entire oyster populations have been annihilated.

BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster is, to date, the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. BP has used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic dispersants to sink the oil, in an effort the oil giant claimed was aimed at keeping the oil from reaching shore.

Meanwhile, fresh oil, either from natural seeps, oil platform wreckage, the Macondo 252 reservoir itself, or all three, continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

New Orleans attorney Stuart Smith, who litigates against major oil companies, believes the burden of proof about where the oil is coming from lies on BP.

“Our worst fears have proven true,” Smith said of the seep. “We have a chronic leak scenario caused by the Macondo well, and it is time for the feds and BP to come clean and tell the American public the truth. Unless/until the government and BP explain in a verifiable manner what the source of this oil is, in my opinion any thoughts of settlement are way premature.”

Natural seep

BP has denied that the oil is coming from their well.

When reports surfaced last August that a large swath of oil sheen was reported near the site of the oil disaster, BP officials, in coordination with the US Coast Guard, deployed two submersibles to investigate the site.

BP said their visual inspection confirmed there wasn’t any oil released from the Macondo well.

The Coast Guard also deployed a boat to the area and conducted an aerial survey of the site by helicopter.

“Both observed nothing,” Coast Guard Captain Jonathan Burton, who is based in Morgan City, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera in at interview at his office.

US Coast Guard Captain Jonathan Burton believes the oil seep spotted nearby the Macondo well is from the Macondo reservoir, but not from BP’s capped well [Dahr Jamail/Al Jazeera]

Captain Burton said after seeing footage from the submersible of BP’s cap, he does not believe the Macondo well, or the relief wells BP drilled to stop it, are leaking, and he feels the oil is from natural seepage.

“Research shows the Macondo area is ripe for seeps, and I think that’s what we’re looking at here, and it’s coming from the same reservoir,” Burton said.

Burton is also the Federal On-Scene Coordinator for this region of the Gulf of Mexico that includes the Macondo area.

Burton, who was somewhat defensive for BP, added that he thinks that “the seep was there all along”, and “doesn’t know why BP has been silent on it.”

Coast Guard Lieutenant Eric Brooks, also present in Al Jazeera’s meeting with Captain Burton, later provided a link to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)) website that he said “has commercially available pictures of areas of known natural seeps in the GOM [Gulf of Mexico] including around the Macondo Well”.

However, the figures shown on the website itself are for areas quite far west and south of the area in question. “To see figures for the sections that include the area we are looking at, one has to download other files from their website that aren’t easily accessible,” Schumaker, who is communicating with the Coast Guard in order to obtain accurate seep maps said. “We are in the process of trying to see the full files and figures from the BOEMRE website and to determine the dates when such anomalies (which might suggest hydrocarbon seepage) were noted.”

Specifically, the coordinates of a National Response Center report Schumaker submitted online after the flight on February 29, taken from the flight log she posted are N28 39.835 W88 09.475, in which she described “many lines of fresh-looking oil and sheen, this point marked a line of ‘globules’ like what we had seen frequently throughout this area between last August and December (2011)”.

Al Jazeera is attempting to obtain clarification from the Coast Guard about the information they provided.

Lt Brooks suggested Al Jazeera contact officials with the Department of Interior for more information on the matter. Calls to said officials had not been returned at the time of this writing.

During the September over flight of the oil, Al Jazeera spotted two BP research vessels in the area in question.

“These vessels are conducting research on natural oil seeps as part of the Natural Resources Damage Assessment [NRDA] process,” Tom Mueller, a press officer with BP America, told Al Jazeera. “They were parked over a known natural seep on the bottom of the Gulf, collecting samples and documenting the natural seep activity in that area using a remote operated submarine and acoustic sensing equipment.”

According to Mueller, the intent of the NRDA study is to learn more about the locations of natural seeps and test samples taken from them.

Research vessels in the oil seep in September 2011 confirmed the oil was not from BP’s capped well [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

“We can tell you that we recently sent a remote operated submarine down to inspect the Macondo well cap and the relief well cap,” Mueller, added, “Both are intact and show no evidence of any oil leak. So no oil is leaking from the Macondo well.”

But experts believe that is exactly the problem, since the work BP conducted to cap the gushing well could have caused oil to begin seeping from the reservoir in an area away from the capped well.

Anthropogenic seeps

Leifer remains concerned that the seep, given its proximity to the Macondo well, could be oil in the reservoir that entered a layer of mud and has migrated into a natural pathway that leads to the seabed.

“I see these new observations [of the seep] as the canary in the coal mine that indicates something could be changing at the seabed and should not be ignored and hope it goes away,” he said.

Given Overton’s findings that the oil does appear to be from Macondo, Leifer added, “It’s not necessary to be alarmist, but this is something that deserves setting an alarm off to investigate”.

Of Captain Burton’s comments about the oil coming from the Macondo reservoir, Smith had this to say:

“What is significant in my mind, as an attorney, is that a US government official admitted this is Macondo oil, and to me, absent BP producing evidence this seep existed prior to their drilling, they therefore must have caused it.”

Leifer’s concerns are that if the seep increases in volume, “It could be a persistent, significant, continuous oil spill again, and that would require BP to go back and re-drill, and block off the pipeline even deeper than they already did, or else they would be liable for whatever the emissions are, forever, because it’s not going to stop for a very long time”.

Dr Ian MacDonald, a professor of biological oceanography at Florida State University who uses satellite remote sensing to locate natural oil releases on the ocean surface, confirmed that there are natural seeps in this region of the Gulf of Mexico, but believes more investigation is necessary in order to determine the cause and source of this particular site.

“The question for science is: Are the rates of seepage consistent with what they were prior to the blowout?” MacDonald told Al Jazeera. “Is the amount of oil we’re seeing now unusual with respect to historic levels? Can this oil be traced back to these formations?”

Leifer, like MacDonald, pointed to the natural seeps in the area.

“There is natural migration in the area around Macondo, and one of the sites we’ve studied is MC118, about 18km away,” but added, “The concern is not that human activities caused a fault, but by creating pathways outside the [well] casing, they are allowing oil to travel along the well pipe then migrate horizontally until it intersects an existing vertical fault migration pathway, then reach the sea bed.”

His concern, shared by other scientists, is the possibility that the volume of oil flowing from the seep, if it is related to the Macondo area, could increase with time.

“We should be having sonar works done of that area, and the public needs to be informed of the findings,” Leifer said. “That survey should be repeated every three or six months to confirm that the seepage is not becoming larger and more widespread.”

Meanwhile, Schumaker will continue her over-flights of the area and concern over ongoing oil seeps, whether they be natural or anthropogenic, persists, and scientists are calling for further investigations.

Pilot Bonny Schumaker, a retired NASA physicist, has been surveying the Macondo-area seep since last August, and intends to continue her over flights of the area [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

Leifer, as aforementioned, has called for a broad investigation into the matter, as has MacDonald.

“I don’t understand why we’re seeing so much more oil out there right now than we’ve seen in the past,” MacDonald said. “We need to dig in and investigate and see what is going on.”

Smith agreed, and took it a step further.

“We demand a National Academy of Science investigation into this seep,” and added, “BP has had six months to come up with evidence to prove they did not cause this seep. Considering that Al Jazeera and Associated Press have reported this [seep], you’d think BP would produce evidence they did not cause it.”

The possibility that brings the greatest concern is that oil is leaking from the reservoir straight out of the ground. This situation could be impossible to stop, because the vent would increase in size over time due to the highly pressurised reservoir.

Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

I was honored when the folks at the Sea Turtle Restoration Project decided to pass their ‘Turtle of Change’ to me for her next adventure.  After a refreshing bath in a tub of blue marbles, she joined us for a dog walk and marine debris cleanup at the beach at Ferry Point.

The great news, as has often been the case, the beach had already been cleaned! Even in urban areas around San Francisco Bay, awareness is spreading that plastic pollution is a serious problem, and also one that we can do something about! So kudos to the eco-warriors who got there before me today!

We didn’t find much today – but we do continue to find shotgun wadding from the duck hunters up in San Pablo Bay. They don’t seem to think twice when shooting from their boats and duck blinds out over the water. It’s a major problem, and one that many groups around the Bay have been working on for years.

Even in our small pile of garbage, The Turtle of Change found a way to entangle herself in plastic… just like so many of her buddies offshore.  This time her foster Mom was there to remove it. But what about some other time, when she’s off at sea alone? Who will free her then?

At the end of the day, our STRP turtle asked if she could have some screentime, and exhibited incredible dexterity with her flippers while surfing the internet. She read news of her home, Montenegro, crippled by a historic snow storm.  “I’m glad to be in sunny California,” she quipped!

Laura Dekker, who was born on a boat  in a New Zealand port and says she spent the first four years of her life at sea, celebrated her 16^th birthday on her 38-foot yacht “Guppy” during her voyage. She sailed into port on the island of St. Maarten after travelling 27,000 nautical miles around the world.

Dekker claims to be the youngest person to have completed the trip, but the Guinness Book of World Records and the World Sailing Speed Council refuse to certify her claim because they say they don’t want to encourage any future, dangerous attempts by younger and younger sailors.

“Since (I left) a lifetime of experiences have gone by. It feels like it was just yesterday, but at the same time, it seems like it was an eternity ago,” Dekker wrote on her blog on Friday.

Dekker was greeted today by her mother, father, and grandparents, as well as dozens of others who cheered her on as she stepped foot on the dock. She started her journey from the same port in St. Maarten on Jan. 20, 2011.

Dutch officials tried to prevent the trip when a court blocked her original departure at age 14 in 2009. Child welfare authorities asked that Dekker be removed from the care of her father, Dick Dekker, and be placed under state supervision to prevent risks to her safety, but on July 29, 2010, Dekker wrote, according to a translation from the Dutch, “After a one year ‘battle,’ I am allowed to go!! This is so great!”

The round-the-world trip was highlighted with multiple stops in ports around the world. As her trip came to an end, Dekker reflected on her experience.

“I am looking forward to my arrival and to officially end my journey even though I feel like I already accomplished what I set out to do a long time ago,” Dekker wrote. “I have already learned very much about myself along the way and I also have learned very much from all the different places and the many different people that I came in contact with in so many different countries.”

Other teens to have completed the trip include Jessica Watson of Australia at age 16, Michael Perham of England at age 17, and Zac Sunderland of America at age 17.

Abby Sunderland, Zac’s sister, attempted to complete the trip in 2010 at the age of 16, when her boat capsized and was dismasted in the Indian ocean, and she had to be rescued.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Happy Holidays to all!

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