Stumbled across a cool video by Art Vanchaam during a dive trip in Thailand.
The footage was shot in high definition with Sony HDR 550 in a Light and Motion Bluefin housing with two Sola 1200 video lights (for macro shots) and a Fathom 90 wide angle lens (the macro shots are tele macro’ed through the wide angle). The post production was done in Final Cut Pro X. 720p encoding for YouTube was done using Compressor 5.
Check out some stills of the trip and more of his work:
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One year ago, NG Explorers Kenny Broad and Enric Sala joined business leaders, artists, non-profit founders, and others working to educate and inspire the world’s up-and-coming generation, as they met at “Summit at Sea” and looked for ways to do more to help protect and rehabilitate the ocean. (Follow Enric Sala’s new expedition to the Pitcairn Islands.)
Now the fruits of some of these efforts are being seen in exciting ways.
While the attendees at Summit at Sea gathered in the Bahamas to discuss inspiration and ocean conservation, they discovered that nearby their destination was a Marine Protected Area that had been named a decade ago, but which could benefit from increased attention and resources. As this fact inspired conversations among friends and over dinners, it proved a perfect opportunity to put their money where their mouths were, so to speak.
Photograph by David Doubilet, National Geographic
The clownish grin of a bridled parrotfish reveals its power tools: grinding teeth used to scrape algae from rock. Though sometimes destructive to individual corals, the fish’s efforts are mostly beneficial. Without them, algal growth could smother the reef. Scarus frenatus
See more pictures from the May 2011 feature story “A Fragile Empire.”
1. Approach that complete stranger with the reusable bag, water bottle or cup, say, “Thank you,” and give them a blue marble.As winter chills much of North America, thoughts may turn to warm blue waters. Looking out on the sea is one of the best way to sooth a frayed attitude and reset one’s mind. Here are three of my favorite places to get enjoy the ocean while doing good.
#1. Cocos Islands
Join a SCUBA Research Expedition to Cocos Island to tag sea turtles and hammerhead sharks as a volunteer research assistant! Cocos Island National Park and United Nations World Heritage site is located 360 miles off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. As a result, access is extremely limited.
Sponsored by SeaTurtles.org and Pretoma.org, two of the world’s foremost sea turtle protection organizations, these unique expeditions spend 10-12 days on-station, operating from the 130-foot MV Argo, a fully-outfitted live-aboard vessel.
Jacques Cousteau called Cocos Island “the most beautiful island in the world”.
As a volunteer on this expedition, you’ll dive among huge schools of scalloped hammerhead and white-tip reef sharks, sea turtles and thousands of tropical fish, assisting conservation scientists as they study how to protect endangered and threatened marine species. Hammerheads are easily viewed at close range at “cleaning stations” and inquisitive green turtles commonly approach research divers, offering fantastic photographic opportunities and facilitating tagging studies.
Other regularly observed animals include Galapagos, black tip and silky sharks, marbled rays, eagle rays and bottlenose dolphins. The special treat of any diving expedition — whale sharks — are also occasionally observed. Endless schools of jacks also surround the island.
The dive expedition will be supported by the experienced and well-known dive company Undersea Hunter S.A, which has been running expeditions to Cocos Island since 1990.
#2. Baja, Mexico
Whale watching and sea turtle research in Baja is one of my favorite trips to recommend. You can join Baja Expeditions and RED Sustainable Travel on a unique whale watching and turtle research excursion to Magdalena Bay.
You’ll get up close and personal with gray whales (or let them get close to you) and learn about their annual migration all the way from Alaska. Your group will also have the unique opportunity to participate in hands-on green sea turtle research with local conservationists.
On this, as on all SEEtheWILD.org trips, a portion of the cost goes straight to wildlife conservation and a large percentage remains in the local community.
As I write this, I have just come from Magdalena Bay, scouting out a new campsite in the dunes and meeting with the guides. Their personal stories of their journey from hunting turtles to conservation will warm your heart. You’ll meet the people who are responsible for the return of the black turtle, once on the verge of extinction in this region.
Don Chuy Lucero on the water in Baja, saving sea turtles (photo by Neil Osborne)
#3. California’s Slowcoast
It may not be tropical or warm, but it has beautiful beaches, coastal trails, local organic food and plenty of blue. It’s the place I call home and there’s no better stretch of coast to recharge your batteries.
Specifically, the Slowcoast is that wild stretch of ocean and mountains down highway 1, south of San Francisco between Tunitas Creek and Bonny Doon. Dozens of pocket beaches and a handful of state parks are just part of the pull.
Costanoa Lodge offers rooms, cabins, tentalows or camp sites and the Davenport Roadhouse is a sweet B & B. Both have great restaurants, live music and are a short walk from wild coastal trails.
Grab some holiday food at Swanton Berry Farm and Pie Ranch and support local organic farms and education in the process.
Our family has walked this 45 mile stretch of coast several times and each time we discover something new.
And whether we are diving, whale watching, studying sea turtles or trekking the coast we always return home happy, relaxed and chilled out in a blue sort of way.
In June 2011 Light & Motion sponsored a special kind of conference called the BLUEMiND Summit at the California Academy of Sciences.
The goal was to explore the intersection of neuroscience and ocean exploration.
A new field called NeuroConservation was launched.
That work is now featured on the cover of the December 2011 issue of Outside Magazine.
Divers, and especially photographers and filmmakers know how captivating and transformative that special kind of light from the ocean can be.
Read the article and tell us what you think.
But more importantly, tell us how you FEEL!
Wallace J. Nichols and Sarah Kornfeld
Our brains have an amazing ability to do something: hide a world of truth from us. We’re able to tune out the blinking lights and honking horns, the stress of work, the underwater mortgage, and those inappropriate clothes and music our kids prefer. Meanwhile, people around the world survive war, abuse, hunger, chronic disease and floods. Our brains excel at rationalization and self-deception helping us handle the grit of living.
Billions of feelings, tactile senses, memories, sounds, smells and a barrage of voices are all around us. Most of the time our brain insulates and protects us from the rest of the abundant information in the universe that isn’t in our direct focus. But that thick padding comes with a cost. It means we really have no idea–most of the time–why and how we do what we do.
Who are we?
We are people who live on a very small, apparently unique, blue planet. Our planet came about within the context of an unfathomably ancient universe in constant change filled mostly with invisible dark matter. Our planet is apparently surrounded by an infinitely shifting cosmos, gasses and suns in every direction, which we know something about, but really almost nothing. Our lives are a minuscule, temporary flash by comparison to the vastness of the universe. Yet we often feel invincible. We see ourselves as masters of the whole shooting match.
Our small planet is blue because of water. From a million–or even a billion–miles away, Earth appears blue.
Our ancestors came out of the water, evolved from swimming to crawling to walking. They developed remarkably complex brains, as well, necessary to move successfully through nature encountering constant unexpected challenges.
We started small on this blue planet–and we are descendants from, relatives of and subsidiary to the ocean.
This is not a biology or an astronomy lesson, rather it might be an amazing clue to how we can alter how we treat the planet. We literally have “blue minds”.
And we’re literally seated here now, virtually connected, pondering our evolutionary state with our future on the line.
Over the past year an open source community called BLUEMiND has taken up the task of exploring the human mind-ocean connection. Some of the finest thinkers in cognitive neuroscience, ocean exploration, media and art have gathered at the California Academy of Sciences, the Bioneers conference, and with leaders at the Environmental Defense Fund.
Now the idea of exploring the intersection of conservation with how our brains process empathy, gratitude, fear and protection is starting to travel the world. It’s the beginning of a new field, and it all points to our brains’ critical need for the ocean: our planet’s largest, most-dominant system.
After a screening of his film “Transcendent Man”, famed futurist and author Ray Kurzweil was asked why he loves the ocean. The most poignant scene in the movie depicts Kurzweil quietly contemplating the sea and himself. He replied that: “It’s a metaphor for the way the brain is organized.”
The grand duchess of the environmental movement, Frances Moore Lappé (author of “Diet for a Small Planet” and the new book “EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want”) stated,”The first step is getting people to realize that the current metaphors aren’t working … we have to think about these issues differently.” She continues, “There’s nothing inexorable” about the environmental problems at hand. “It’s a matter of how we perceive them …” (Santa Cruz Weekly, 9/11/11)
It’s said that those who control the frame, control the contest. We must reclaim the framework with which we see the world: we must engage with our minds to help us achieve this goal.
Here’s what we’ve learned about our blue minds:
- Our brains sit in saline and craves a connection to the planet’s ocean on a deeply primal level tied to our evolution.
Demand that polluters don’t destroy the very thing our brains need to evolve.
Learn all you can about your brain, and teach it to the kids. Especially as it intersects with nature.
Or, as we like to say, LIVEBLUE and swim in the possibilities of your blue mind.
Frances Moore Lappé will speak about her new book, EcoMind, with special guests John Robins, Michael Levy and Wallace J Nichols on 11.11.11 at Cabrillo College. More information here.
This will sound like a stretch, but sea turtles owe much to the genius of Steve Jobs.
As a young student of conservation genetics, my first computer was an Apple. At that time, geneticists went with Apple mostly by default as the graphics-rich software for sequencing DNA ran best, if not only, on a Mac. Some scientists had their Mac and PC side by side on the desktop. Others chose just to deal with the compatibility hurdles, Eudora issues and general stigma attached to their minority “Apple cult” status. But they stayed true to Apple.
There, in the National Marine Fisheries Service lab, as in genetics labs around the world, we used our Apples to sequence the mitochondrial DNA of endangered black turtles, distinguishing them from the Hawaiian green turtles. We used that knowledge to promote protections that are leading to the recovery of black sea turtles today.
Later on, about the time Apple began to stage its epic comeback in the late 1990′s–when Apple stared down its own extinction–they asked to feature one of the sea turtles we had tracked in an ad campaign. The loggerhead turtle, named Adelita, was the first animal followed by satellite across an entire ocean. She swam seven thousand miles from Baja Mexico to Japan.
We accessed satellite data from a Mac. We built the tracking website on a Mac. We produced short QuickTime clips and shared the story with kids around the world on a Mac. Many of those kids were also on Macs in their classrooms.
Apple then told Adelita’s story–our story–in a media blitz that included fold out ads in Time, Newsweek, Life and a half-dozen major publications. They helped raise awareness of the plight of sea turtles and their amazing migrations.
Worldwide interest in and the success of that tracking, sharing and education experiment has since grown into seaturtle.org, the digital hub for all things related to sea turtles. Today, you can follow dozens of species online in real time in every ocean and on most continents. The images, a video library, several data sharing and network-building projects are hosted on an Apple server, and maintained via iPhone and MacBook Air almost entirely by one very smart biologist, Dr. Michael Coyne, BAF–bonafide Apple fanboy.
A grassroots sea turtle conservation network, called GrupoTortuguero.org, was also born from the Adelita tracking project. A team based in La Paz, Mexico manages the network. They rock their MacBooks for sea turtles. They create guerilla media with iPhones and iMovie. They project their stories on walls and white sheets in remote villages to communicate real solutions to the sea turtle crisis. With their Apple products, they help make conservation cool.
Just as Steve brought Apple back from the brink of extinction, Grupo Tortuguero has brought the black sea turtle back from the edge of extinction. They have saved thousands of sea turtles from death in soup pots as well as fishing nets meant for other species and on hooks set for sharks. Their model has spread around the world to Africa, South America and Asia.
On some level even the style and design of Steve Jobs’ famous keynote presentations has influenced our communication strategies. Simple. Clean. Bold. Always different. That was Steve’s way.
Our mantra is emotional connection. We mimic Steve’s economy of words and numbers. Like him, we use just enough information to support our messages, nothing more. My advice to the graduate students I advise: “Watch a Steve Jobs presentation before you create yours.” Don’t just show up, break through with your audience.
SImply put, the innately useful and elegant tools Apple creates make it easier for thousands of sea turtle conservationists around the world to work better at what we love.
At Apple and in the world, the legacy of Steve Jobs is vast, complex and–even though he is gone–still unfolding. May it unfold forever.
That legacy, of course, includes helping to save millions of sea turtles and inspiring the modern ocean revolution with Apple products, the tools we love so much, the tools that flowed from the mind and the heart of one man, to the sea. Thank you, Steve.
Last weekend was the 26th Annual International Coastal Cleanup day and I came across some awesome statistics I wanted to share showcasing the tremendous difference these cleanups have made in the past 25 years:
- Cigarettes/Cigarette Filters 52,907,756 – 32%
- Food Wrapper/Containers 14,766,533 – 9%
- Caps/Lids 13,585,425 – 8%
- Cups, Plates, Forks, Knives, Spoons 10,112,038 – 6%
- Beverage Bottles (plastic) 9,549,156 – 6%
- Bags (plastic) 7,825,319 – 5%
- Beverage Bottles (glass) 7,062,199 – 4%
- Beverage Cans 6,753,260 – 4%
- Straw/Stirrers 6,263,453 – 4%
- Rope 3,251,948 – 2%
Stop by the Ocean Conservancy Website to learn more about their work and how you can get involved. In the meantime, check out their list of the TOP TEN THINGS you can do to help out (and share it with a friend).
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