Food Chain

Incredible video clip from BBC One's "Nature's Great Events" Series. Watch it very carefully full screen. Then watch it again, and think about the steely resolve and steadiness of the cameraman filming the whole thing. He apparently was as surprised by what happened as you will be. Enjoy the weekend. 

Mangroves

Mangroves are pretty fantastic.  They have adaptations that allow them to live in saltwater. They exhibit vivipary, i.e. the seeds germinate while still on the plant and the propagules fall into the water as fully formed seedlings. They keep the coastline from eroding away. They provide a unique habitat for scores of animals. By trapping sediments in the roots, they actually make new land (a useful characteristic given rising sea levels). Unfortunately, mangrove ecosystems throughout the world are being decimated by coastal development. Go here or here for more about the currently dire situation with mangroves. 

Vieques still has some beautiful stands of red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle  L.), and slight trails have been cut through some of these so that you can skim through in a kayak. Which is how I got this video. [NOTE: The lovely bird hopping through the thicket of mangrove roots (starting at 0:34) is a green heron (Butorides virescens L.).]

Self-Policing Biosphere

I interrupt this blog for a public service announcement:

"Even reluctant observers find it obvious by now that in a finite and overexploited world, endlessly increasing material wealth for an endlessly increasing number of humans is a suicidal dream. That leaves us in the short term with two choices: to continue insisting that humans come first, though we know that only a few of those humans will ever enjoy the delusion, or to relinquish the ideal of a global ecology owned and controlled by human beings. In the long run, of course, the self-policing biosphere will edit any choice we make, and its list of alternatives is shorter".

-Robert Bringhurst
 The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind, and Ecology (2008)

[NOTES: Bringhurst is also the author of the classic, The Elements of Typographical Style, one of my favorites. Image is from China.]

Descontaminacíon, Rescate, Desarrollo

As is shown in this wonderful mural in one of the neighborhoods of Esperanza, there are still several issues to deal with now that the US Navy has stopped bombing the island.  In particular, the residents are re-organizing to push for the decontamination (descontaminacíon) of the soils and habitats on the eastern and western parts of the island, to rescue (rescate) the land tenure they lost in 1941, and to promote sustainable development (desarrollo) on Vieques, i.e. to not follow the uncontrolled development path of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. [NOTE: I love the creepy U.S. soldiers depicted in the background.]

Punta Arenas

Slow pan off the beach at Punta Arenas (Green Beach) on the western side of the island of Vieques. Couple of points of interest. Notice the beautiful Caribbean Blue color (Pantone®284) of the water. And the shadows of the numerous coral reefs close by. And the fact that there is absolutely no one else around. We found some beautiful shells on this beach. [NOTE: That's Puerto Rico off in the distance (starting at 0:40).]

Vieques

Have just returned from five days on Vieques, an island municipality of Puerto Rico in the northeastern Caribbean. Wonderful trip with the family.  Beautiful beaches and coral reefs, the world's largest and brightest bioluminescent bay,  super-friendly people, delicious food, and all of this crammed into the central third of the island. Lot of stories here.

U.S. Navy buys the entire eastern and western part of the island during World War II. Local sugar industry collapses. Navy continues to use the island as a weapons dump and a firing  range. People get killed and huge parts of the island get contaminated and littered with unexploded ordnance. After a series of peaceful protests, the Navy withdraws from the island in 2003 and the eastern and western parts are designated as National Wildlife Refuges. 

The beaches within the NWR are lovely, but you don't want to go any further inland. [NOTE: Go here for the official Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry (ATSDR) for Vieques.]

Dau Tram

Another forest product from Central Vietnam is eucalyptus oil, or "dau tram", which is used medicinally for a variety of different afflictions, e.g. bronchitis, bacterial infections, and asthma. It is also an effective insect repellent, which is probably why Mr. Thanh and Ms. Ngoc, student assistants who were helping with the rattan project and getting bit my mosquitos, stopped at the roadside stall in Quang Tri province shown below. 

The oil is extracted from several different species of Eucalyptus. Like Acacia (see Forests of Vietnam II) and Pinus (see Naval Stores), Eucalyptus has been extensively planted throughout the Central Truong Son Mountains to reforest denuded areas. Go here for an FAO report on the history of Eucalyptus in Vietnam. [NOTE: Ms. Ngoc doesn't seem so pleased with the smell of this Dau Tram.  They ended up not buying it].

Sweeping Up

Older monk sweeping up at the entrance to Wat Si Saket (see Wat Si Saket) in Vientiane. The monastery hadn't opened yet for the day, and it was just me taking pictures and him meticulously sweeping up little bits of paper, flower petals, and dirt. All very quiet and mindful.

Naval Stores

Naval stores is a collective term that refers to the resin-based components originally used to build and maintain wooden ships.  Today, resins are more commonly used to make soaps, varnishes, paints, roofing materials and for a variety of industrial applications. Harvesting this sticky resource, however, still requires tapping a pine tree and collecting the stuff that oozes out. The photo above shows a Pinus merkusii (Jungh. & de Vreise) tree being tapped for resin in Central Vietnam.  

Pinus merkusii is a light demander that grows very well in disturbed, eroded sites, and this species has been used to reforest thousands of hectares in Vietnam (see Forest of Vietnam II).  And when the trees in these plantations get big enough (15 years and older), many of them are tapped.  According to FAO, Vietnam produces over 4,500 tons of pine resin each year, most of it exported to Japan. Just so you know.

 

Strawberry Swing

I am not a huge fan of Coldplay's music, but the video for the song "Strawberry Swing" is really pretty fantastic. Don't see a squirrel being used as the bad guy much in music videos. [NOTE: I love the part when his cape is cut (starting at 1:16) and he starts to "fall" out of the sky to the city below. Impressive chalk work].