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OCEAN Magazine Summer 2009, Issue 23
A Sea of Plastic
by Diane Buccheri
Brute Immersion at Reflection
by Tom Sheehan
Diving with Sharks
by Steve Hutchings for Shark Diver
Dolphins Wild and Tame
by James Michael Dorsey
Dolphin Song
by Marlene Moon
David Sutton Phelps
by Diane Buccheri
Growing Up Wild Part II
by Ruth Hill
Osprey
by Thomas J. Vetter
Stones
by Carolyn Blake
Beach Glass and other Things
by Angie Ledbetter
When I Get the Blues
by Melba Milak
The Light Within the Darkness
by Tom Watson
Rapa Nui
by MariJo Moore
Secret of the Sea
by Kathy Parra
A glimpse into this issue . . .
We produce 60 billion tons of plastic every year
by adding chemicals to petroleum, creating a
synthetic polymer. Tough, resilient, flexible,
inexpensive, and durable, plastic is used in more
and more materials and products of daily life,
making each day more convenient and efficient.
Most of our plastic products –– bottles, food
containers and wrappers, cups,llighters, razors,
contact lenses, syringes, bags, six pack rings ––
are used one time and discarded. We dispose
of them in landfills and recycling facilities. Only
PET plastic, recycling number 1, and HDPE,
number 2, are recycled. Of all plastics, only
3 to 5 percent are actually recycled. And to be
used again, a layer of new plastic must be
added to recycled plastic. Numbers 3, 4, 5, and
6 cannot be recycled. If burned, they emit the
most deadly gases we know of. Instead, they
leak toxins from land and water into the earth,
the air we breathe, and the ocean, coming
back to us through our food, our breath, and
skin absorption.
Little by little, plastic objects break down and fall apart into
pieces –– chips, pellets, nurdles, flakes, dust –– becoming smaller and
smaller and more and more brittle. These pieces accumulate
contaminants they encounter on their journey throughout the earth an
our atmosphere, carried by wind and water. Following the natural flow
of all water downward to sea level and out to sea,
80 percent enters the ocean and becomes part of the ocean. The ocean
covers 70 percent of the earth’s surface and is evaporated into our air
and falls back to earth as rainwater. Carrying dust
particles of plastic? Although plastic continually breaks down into
smaller fragments, it never biodegrades to basic natural materials. It
never completely breaks down to carbon and hydrogen
elements. Having existed for nearly 150 years, all that we ever
produced remains with us as we produce more, and more collects,
forever.
by Diane BuccherI
Read more in this issue.
I saw Jaws when I was eleven, after which I was so petrified of the water I wouldn’t go in
the bathtub for a year. This is one of many thoughts swimming through my head as I step
off the stern of the MV Islander and onto the top of a cage suspended three meters below
the surface of shark infested waters. Our dive master, Luke Tipple, hands my mouthpiece
to me, from which I’ll be breathing surface-supplied air. I insert the mouthpiece and grab
my underwater camera. With a deep breath, I slide into the cage below.
I share the cage with Jim, an American scuba instructor, and Leigh and Lisa, an English
couple on a working holiday. Although I swam with reef sharks in Thailand three years
previous, we’re all rookie shark divers in these waters, having endured several months of
comments like “Shark bait!” from our peers, united by our desire –– and each of us having
plopped down three thousand U.S. dollars with San Diego based Shark Diver –– to
experience the oft-vilified, yet enigmatic great white shark.
We move around the cage for the first five minutes, searching for any signs of a great white.
Scores of mackerel cloud our view, attracted to the two tunas that the crew set out to
attract the sharks. Then, amidst the fish below our cage, I see a shark. He’s smaller than I
anticipated. About two meters long, he propels himself with slow, side-to-side movements
of his tail. I watch, mesmerized as he disappears from sight.
by Steve Hutchings for Shark Diver, www.sharkdiver.com
Photograph by Derek Heasley, www.scubabreaks.com
Read more in this issue.
DOLPHINS WILD and TAME
On any day while paddling off the coast of Southern California, I feel that life can get no better. Then
small gray dorsals break the surface all around me and it suddenly does.
Dolphins are universally found in every ocean, and currently there are 36 recognized salt water species
around the world, and another 5 in fresh water, plus 6 known as toothed whales, depending on who
you are talking to. The most common of them all is the bottlenose, so called because of the extended
rostrum that actually resembles a bottle.
Delphinidae is the family within the Cetacea order of species that includes whales, dolphins, and
porpoises, and the sub order is odontoceti which means they have teeth.
Just like man, they are mammals who give live birth, nurse their young, breathe air, and, have hair.
Many biologists consider toothed whales to be the largest of dolphins. Others say dolphins are the
smallest of the toothed whales. Dolphins and porpoises are often confused.
Dolphins are much larger and have an extended rostrum, while porpoises are more snub-faced and
compact in design. Dolphins have cone-shaped teeth made for biting; porpoise teeth are spade-
shaped. Dolphins range across the open seas whereas porpoises tend to hug the local harbors, all
except for the Dalls porpoise which is ocean going. Of course in nature, there are always exceptions
to every rule.
However, they both echolocate. Echolocation is a form of biological sonar named by Donald Griffin,
a scientist who was the first to conclusively confirm its usage in bats.
Dolphins have a large gelatinous area in the frontal lobe of their brain known as the melon. They
produce a clicking sound in the nasal cavity, located directly behind the melon, a click that is higher
in pitch than a normal communication sound. The melon focuses this click into a narrow beam and
sends it out into the water at a target. If that target is a fish, it will bounce back off the swim bladder of
that fish, where it is picked up by nerve endings in the dolphin’s lower jaw and translated into a mental
image. Though they have excellent eyesight in and out of the water, this is how they “see” while
swimming. It is an almost infallible organic GPS system.
written and photographed by James Michael Dorsey
www.jamesdorsey.com
Read more in this issue.
The soul of a journey is in the summer, when everything is hot and beautiful. With the cabin built, clothes sewn, and
food preserved, we had time to invent our own entertainment.
White-sided dolphins lived in these waters. We dragged salmon flashers whenever we wanted to play with them.
Killer whale songs sounded like silver flutes. Playing a flute attracted killer whales. They just splashed around and
showed their fins, and rolled over lazily.
Silence can be an adversary around grizzlies, or an asset near deer. We learned to stand quietly, as the black-tailed
Sitka deer came close. One time, three tiny deer went right into our tent, curious about the baby.
Kelp bugles attracted wandering boaters, rare this far north. One boater had his own entertainment, homemade
candles and kites.
Smoke attracts all people in all places. Sometimes we snuffed it out.
Homemade bread attracted many winged friends. A raven adopted us. When he smelled something baking on the
fire, he hopped on the roof sniffing the smoke until the muffins were just right. Then he banged on the chimney and
squawked until he received his handouts. Raven provided much entertainment, since he could also imitate a baby
crying, an alarm clock, a ringing phone, an outboard motor, radio static, a gurgling fuel hose, an angry wife yelling,
and a man coughing or sneezing. So every time I heard a noise, I had to check first to see if it was Raven.
written by and photographs courtesy of Ruth Hill
Read more in this issue.
RAPA NUI
I want to travel to that silence,
that insular silence Neruda knew so well.
Place my soft body against the hard stones:
heads with eyes glancing into eternity,
immovable yet moving all the while.
I want my divided soul to erupt,
dance naked around these stones.
Then come to settle in that vacant place
somewhere in my madness
floating near the ocean floor.
I want to visit with the strange birds.
The strange, beautiful, uncelebrated birds.
Tell them I have felt their flights inside.
I have seen into their dreams.
Always.
I want to experience a part of me long thought forgotten.
A part that became lost as I drowned,
pulled into an oceanic deception,
somewhere in the darkest of nights as I fell into this life.
Lost, as I constructed (unknowingly) stone faces of my own,
setting them atop invisible fires singing in a helpless soul.
Fires that have become necessary to rekindle
now that my longing surfaces and exceeds my desires.
I want to travel to that silence, that insular silence
resting on the edge of a dangling
yet firmly planted precipice.
Where inner lives are standing, floating, soaring and becoming.
I want to travel to that silence,
that insular silence moral with the possibilities
of sanctioning a part of my soul long thought forgotten.
My creativity craves completion.
by MariJo Moore
From Confessions of a Madwoman
www.marijomoore.com
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