Post Tagged with: "dolphins"

One more sleep

by Maya Weeks – Guest Crew – For the last three days, we have been making preparations for our passage from Key West. We have successfully managed to mend an anchor with a replacement part that came via FedEx, we’ve replaced immersion suits, tested a “Gumby” suit, checked lifejackets, rigged […]

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Mermaids unite for Caribbean 2017 on Sea Dragon

The arrival of the new crew on board Sea Dragon, sees eXXpedition Caribbean get underway, for their 8-day island hop through the Caribbean. 8 glorious days of science, sea, stories and sunshine. Excited conversations, inspiring stories, laughter, happiness, and anticipation filled the air as eleven strong, powerful and inspiring women came together […]

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eXXpedition: Art and our daily consumption

Discussions on board have also centered on making visual the problems we are facing with plastics. This was further emphasized in the evening presentation by Maria, our other on-board artist. Maria shared with us pictures of her many dramatic sculptures and installations that capture the impact of humans on the environment. She has no shortage of creative raw materials and easily collects several bags of plastic daily from a small patch of beach.

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Ocean Friendly Design

According to the UK Design Council, 80% of a product’s environmental impact is ‘locked in’ at the design stage. Take the humble toothbrush. Most of these apparently simple objects are made from three or four different kinds of plastics. For a toothbrush to be recycled, the different plastics would have to be separated, making toothbrush recycling, even were this technically feasible, an immediate non-starter financially. The toothbrush as a whole is a short-lived item, but actually, the only short-lived bit of it is the bristles in the head. The plastics in the handle will probably last upward of 450 years.

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Cruising

Highlights of the trip so far have involved dolphins; Steph giving an excellent talk about her research with laptop slides on deck and dolphins arching in the background; and bioluminescent dolphins lighting up a dark night like waterborne fireworks. From our perspective, in many ways so out of our element, that there are creatures so at home in the sea seems amazing. Amazing and, inevitably, bittersweet to watch them leaping and sparkling given what we know about how we are changing their world.

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