Growing up I have always felt an extremely strong connection with the natural world and have been fortunate enough to have a knowledgeable mentor. Throughout my childhood as well as his my dad took me fishing almost every single morning. His love of the natural world and the peacefulness that came along with it began to rub off and in turn I too became obsessed with the mechanisms of nature. Catching fish and spending as much time on the water as we did truly gave me a lust for figuring out how these processes are all pieced together.

As I got older my understanding of the intricate balance of nature grew. The ways in which the tide was flowing, the wind was blowing, light was showing, and endless amounts of factors more played a role in whether we would be fishing or catching that day. Free of technological distraction, the water forces you to be in the present. Sometimes it can be powerful and frightening sometimes it can be your friend but the feelings that the water can give you are continually humbling. I’ve personally had many of these experiences on the Chesapeake Bay with my dad as well as surfing all over the east coast. Situations when you get caught in the middle of a thunderstorm or thrown onto a rock are only tastes of the power of Mother Nature. This raw and untamed power is increasingly being trifled with by man whom of which typically has a lack of respect for or just simply a lack of understanding.
These intricate interconnected processes that surround us are subject to disruption by man as well as the natural processes that have the ability to greatly affect each other. These changes are rarely noticeable until it’s too late. Changes such as biodiversity loss in the Chesapeake have taken a noticeable toll on water quality. This is because of disease decimating oyster populations and their ability to filter the water on top of runoff, dumping, and pollution. These circumstances add up for a volatile situation for man as well as nature.

The extent of the quality of the water gets worse and worse as you go further inland where almost nothing can survive. The rockfish or striped bass which is the main target of our adventures was once of abundance and healthy but almost a quarter of the fish we catch now have bulging red sores and look skinny in appearance. This is a parasite called micobacteriosis which is found in 76% of sick bass. These are a couple of the reasons I cherish a strong connection with nature. Sometimes we would get lucky and sometimes we would get skunked but the love of nature is something that I will always hold close.

Earlier this week I was feeling bold and decided to write emails to South Carolina’s legislature concerning the debate on whether or not SC should allow off-shore drilling in the near future. After conducting research into voting trends of our state senators, I noticed that Senator Lindsey Graham was beginning to vote more in-favor of environmentally friendly bills… this was a very small trend, but a trend nonetheless. I wrote to Mr. Graham telling him how I appreciated his new found concern for the environment and I hope he would continue to consider the impacts that his votes have on the planet. I concluded stating that the off-shore drilling plan could detrimentally affect the state’s $2M tourism industry if something were to go wrong. This was his response:

Dear Ms. Barto:

Thank you for contacting me regarding offshore drilling.  I firmly believe the United States must break its dependence on energy from unstable areas of the world–particularly the Middle East–but that we must also be good stewards of South Carolina’s natural environment. Safe and environmentally conscious offshore drilling can create jobs and decrease our dependence on foreign oil and gas.  I believe the question of whether to permit drilling off the coast of South Carolina should be closely evaluated, and ultimately the people of South Carolina should make the decision.  As the Senate considers this issue, I will continue to seek a balance between energy independence and the protection of South Carolina’s coast. As your United States Senator, my primary job is to understand and represent the interests of all South Carolinians.  The opportunity to hear from you about the issues confronting our nation is not only essential to representative democracy, but allows me to better serve the people of South Carolina.  We will not see eye-to-eye on every issue; however, I promise to always give your concerns the consideration they deserve. I encourage you to visit my website — http://lgraham.senate.gov — as it will have information on the most recent activities before the U.S. Senate.  You can also sign up for our e-mail newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages which will provide the latest information and updates on the major issues facing our state and our nation. Thank you again for contacting me. I truly appreciate the opportunity to hear from you and am honored to have the opportunity to represent your interests in the U.S. Senate.

Oh well, I guess you can’t win all of them. If off-shore drilling creates jobs, then who cares about what an oil spill would do to our beautiful marshlands, coasts, and marine life? Not to mention, fishing jobs – jobs related to tourism – and overall quality of life in our waters? Graham takes an L for this one, for some reason I am not sure that he would actually take my concerns seriously when it came down to making more $$$. But that doesn’t mean we should give up!!

This is an ad campaign from the World Wild Fund for Nature. Their goal is to show the human impact on animals. The animals have graffiti on them and in today’s society that is viewed as vandalism. By showing this on the animals it is telling the audience that we are vandalizing the animals by taking their homes and messing up their environments. In society we see graffiti as something that immature, disrespectful people do.  As humans we are not treating the animals with the respect that we should be and as a result of that they are dying off. Their goal is to make humans see the negative impact that we are having on these animals and become conscious of it and hopefully inspire them to make a change in order to save and protect these animals. Also, showing the effect of humans on the actual animals appeals to the emotional side of humans. Most of the time these campaigns show the impact that we have on the environment for example instead of showing a whale with writing on it, there would usually be a picture of trash in the ocean. Most people would see the trash and not really care since its just water and something that doesn’t have life. But looking at the actual creature it promotes the compassionate side of humans. I think everyone would see this picture in the same way since it is geared towards all people. Seeing this makes me sad and makes me realize how much we do not respect these amazing creatures because as humans we only worry about ourselves. We only have one Earth and we are not the only living beings on it. There is enough space for humans and animals to live together and thrive in life. The only thing we have to do is be their voice and be more aware of the impact we’re having on other animals environments. Becoming aware of our effect is the most important step and this is what this ad is showing us. There shouldn’t be graffitti on and animal, so there shouldn’t be human impact on these animals. Another thing about this picture is that this is showing more than one environment. For example is shows the ocean, arctic and the sahara. This is a way of showing that our reach is affecting all kinds if environments and all types of animals are being affected. Even if we do not see it first hand, it is still happening all over the world and in every kind of environment. This picture does do its purpose in showing us the negative effect we have on all animals and it compels us to be compassionate towards these animals and hopefully promote the awareness of this. In the end, the ads purpose is to drive you to donate to the World Wild Fund for Nature in order to make a difference in these animals lives. In the end I think the ad is well made and is an effective ad that appeals to everyone.

Plastic Bag Ban in Mount Pleasant, SC

Mount Pleasant is considering placing a ban on plastic bags and foam containers!! Why one may ask? The single use plastic bags (used for grocery shopping, ect.) are polluting our oceans, the harbor, and our creeks. It not only affects our wildlife and ecosystems but it affects us as well. Everyone loves to eat locally and everyone loves seafood. You know the saying “you are what you eat” well that is literally true. Our local sea critters are eating this plastic and foam that are getting tossed or some how land in our waterways. When we eat our seafood locally we are not only getting a good source of protein, we are also, more likely than not, ingesting micro plastics. YUCK! The Charleston Water keeper, named Andrew Wunderley, believes that action needs to be taken and it needs to be taken NOW. He says that plastic grocery bags, polystyrene, and all plastic made food containers are all huge problems here in Charleston. In South Carolina, a few beach towns have ALREADY put a ban on single use grocery bags. Isle of Palms started this trend and Folly Beach followed them. The tri-county area is not the only place who has noticed this problem, Hilton Head Island AND Surfside Beach have already approved bans on plastic shopping bags in January. The Mount Pleasant city council has a meeting next week to talk about this ban we so badly need to place. There is talk about giving out fines starting at $250 if a business does not follow the ban. Awesome! A few exemptions would be made, I believe for health code reasons, and that includes “foam and plastic bags used for: meat trays, produce and bulk items, flowers or unwrapped bakery goods, dry cleaning, newspapers, fish and frozen foods”. Also, exempt would be life savers and life vests, obviously, we need those for safety purposes This ban was considered last year but state lawmakers shot it down after long consideration. Rumor has it that the house of representatives are going to take a vote soon to decide whether or not to allow this ban, glad they reconsidered! Councilman Owens has already taken into consideration a list of pros that has come out of this ban for barrier islands that have already adopted the ban. Mount Pleasant is the 4^th biggest city in the state, so I think that it is very important that we take care of our water and our 85,000 citizens. Councilman Bustos is not so sure about this ban, but I guess we will have to wait until February 13^th for the city to reveal the final outcome. Will they follow through with this ban or will they 86 the entire idea for the second time? Twenty sea turtles taken in for treatment at the local aquarium have been treated for consuming plastic products. Although we do not eat turtles, it is cruel and unfair to these helpless animals. Our single use plastic bags are hurting out sea creatures, edible and non-edible, and also hurting us! Keep an eye out for the results of this purposed ban as it will be announced soon!!

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kLtRi-w7AUE/maxresdefault.jpg

https://www.postandcourier.com/news/mount-pleasant-to-consider-banning-most-plastic-bags-and-foam/article_51c81ba2-0aca-11e8-896a-e3d6f29c9e65.html

For my first blog post I wanted to do a documentary review. Environmental science and nature in general has always been a true passion of mine throughout my whole life. The natural world never ceases to amaze me every day. BBC network has created a beautiful art piece called Planet Earth that I’m sure many of you have also seen. It takes them years to make these films due to the unpredictable actors in their films, which consist of animals and plants around the world. Their first documentary series was released in 2006 and took four years to create, traveling to over 64 different countries.

The most current series though, is the main topic for my blog entry. Planet Earth 2 was released in 2017 and took 2,089 days of shooting, about 5.7 years to make. They traveled to over 40 countries to capture the most epic and meaningful clips of the natural world that all eyes should see. Throughout the most recent series David Attenborough, the creator shined a light on how much the earth has been changing in the current years. This was different to the first series. It became apparent to the filmmakers that things have truly changed in the environments although they had seen them no longer than ten years ago. The documentary is split up into episodes due to its length. They categorize the episodes based on the ecosystems. For instance there are different episodes for forest, oceans, desserts, etc.  This is the same between both Planet Earth 1 and 2, but an additional ecosystem was added to this most current ecosystems. This was Cities. They show how certain animals have adapted to our man made ecosystems and how their environment was destroyed but monkeys for example, have been able to learn how to survive in a concrete jungle.

I love that Attenborough added these small changes in his filmmaking to make a huge impact and open the eyes to people who might not be able to see the actual effects of the human impact and climate change due to the anthropocene. I feel our society separates themselves from the natural world and every other creature that shares the planet with us. This makes it easy for humans to not care if their ecosystems are deteriorating because it won’t affect them directly. This is a very close-minded way of living life and this documentary has the ability to educate people of what isn’t right outside their front doors. Many people live in very urban communities with little nature or recourses to be able to immerse themselves in nature. This documentary is available on Netflix, which in this day and age, the mass of people have, this means they now have an opportunity to learn about all of the environments and ecosystems and all of the species within them. It may not be as rewarding as being in these areas, but the quality of this film is unbelievable and actually demonstrates certain thing that one would not be able to experience even if they were right in the forest. For example, one technique these filmmakers use is time-lapse film. This is where they leave a camera recording a plant or mushroom or what have you for a long period of time, months even, and then speed up the film. By doing this one can view the whole lifecycle of an organism in as little as thirty seconds. The creators of this film have an obvious and true passion for what they are doing and are sharing a true gift by letting the public experience this art piece of a documentary.

This documentary like previously mentioned is available on Netflix.com or for more information you can visit http://www.bbcearth.com/planetearth2/

http://www.bbcearth.com/planetearth2/gallery