Heaven is a state of mind . . .

Heather has been doing a terrific job regularly posting travelblogs, I've been a bit more inconsistent, I know that’s hard to imagine from me :) Anyways, I've caught a day off, on dry land all day today, so figured I'd try my hand at travelblogging.

We have another group of Earthwatch volunteers working at the Koh Ra Ecolodge - these are wonderfully kind-hearted folks, willing to spend their vacations working on conservation projects around the world. National Geographic rated Earthwatch as the number one volun-tourism organization, in part, because the majority of their donations are directly used in funding ecological field work. We’ve had 2 groups now, eclectic, well-traveled souls, from many places including the States, Canada, UK, Germany, Amsterdam, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore. One of my favorite aspects of the ecolodge, is our cultural exchange here on this little cosmopolitan island in the middle of the Andaman Sea. Peace is possible, I like to believe, when we value empathy.

Our main focus is collecting systematic data on the health of coral reef ecosystems. As you may, or may not be aware, coral reefs are perhaps the most imperiled habitat on the planet, and one of the most biologically diverse. Coral reefs face a multitude of threats resulting from human activity, namely rising sea temperatures from global warming (which causes corals to cast out their symbiotic single-celled algae, and starve to death), ocean acidification (again from our excessive release of CO2 into atmosphere which is absorbed by the sea, lowering pH, making corals unable to build hard skeletons), overfishing from burgeoning human population growth and consumption, influx of too many nutrients (from sewage, clear-cutting rain and mangrove forests, shrimp farms), collections for the western aquarium trade (fish are caught by spraying cyanide on reefs), overharvest of invertebrates for the souvenir shell market, loss of apex predators, i.e. sharks, for shark-fin soup, the list goes on and on. The outlook is bleak, we are likely to lose some 30-50% of the world’s corals within 2 decades. Reminds me of a quote by the father of wildlife management, Aldo Leopold, “the price of an ecological education, is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” The more I learn, the less I wish I knew.

Reef Check seeks to document trends on the health of coral reefs, and to use that data to provide managers with recommendations to slow or reverse these declines. Reef Check teams are operating in some 87 countries, a cooperation between volunteers and marine scientists, creating a global database accessible to all, so that we have hard data quantifying/supplementing scientifically-based assertions about changes in these ecosystems, ultimately, hopefully, to sway politicians and human perspectives and behavior. The third rock from the sun is not infinite. We collect data on the presence and size of “indicator” fish species like grouper, snapper, parrotfish, butterflyfish; “indicator” invertebrate species like giant clams, sea urchins, coral shrimp, and sea cucumbers, and lastly on the substrate of the system itself, measuring what is present every 50 cm along a 100 meter transect line (hard or soft coral, sponges, recently killed coral, nutrient indicator algae, etc). To tease out the relative influence of different effects, we survey a spectrum of reefs, from highly degraded systems that are close to human affluent and heavily fished, to pristine reefs that are far offshore where no-fishing regulations are actually enforced.

Many of you have asked what we need for Christmas. My wish this year is that each of us reflect upon the interconnectedness of all things, and how our individual behaviors, our patterns of consumption, collectively influence the persistence of biodiversity. Thailand may seem a world a way, but your everyday actions will determine whether future generations know the bliss of experiencing these reefs. So please this holiday, make a resolution (or 2) to: turn down the thermostat 5 degrees in winter, up 5 this summer; trade in the SUV and buy something fuel-efficient; enjoy meatless Mondays (a huge reduction in your carbon footprint); think about what you’re buying at the seafood case (no orange roughie, shark, checkout oceansalive.org for more details on sustainable fisheries); ride your bike to work; make a contribution to the Nature Conservancy; support politicians who are fighting to implement a carbon cap and trade system, who are pushing the new green economy; install a solar panel (so bleeping easy, and not as expensive as you think); recycle aluminum, steel, plastic, paper; use vinegar and lemon-juice to clean (cheaper and better at killing bacteria); compost your organic waste (super easy, email me if you’d like tips); buy organic produce, and from local farmers markets whenever possible; harvest a deer or elk. . . and lastly, most importantly, look at all those material possessions around you, do they bring you happiness? Try random acts of giving, it feels sooooo freakin good.

“As men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude ... that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honoured save justice and charity.”
~Benedictus de Spinoza (24 November 1632 - 21 February 1677) was a social and metaphysical philosopher who was excommunicated from the Jewish community of his native Amsterdam.

"The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another."
~Albert Einstein

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