Midway - a must see!

[ashling]

[ReRe]

1. It's a wonder..

.. we have any wildlife left on this earth. And after they are all gone, we're next.

[defacto7]

3. Honestly, I think

we'll be gone by our own doing long before they will be gone. But we will do great damage before we're out of the picture and many species will parish.

[ReRe]

12. Yikes..

You're more pessimistic than me.

[defacto7]

14. Yeah, on some subjects

my realism is pretty pessimistic. But if you think about it, on a grand scale we are a blip in the scheme of things and genetically we are a digressing breed. Even if we overcome the obstacles we make for ourselves on this planet, out time will not be that long before we evolve away from our present form or we just disappear. I hope we are talking thousands of years and we don't snuff ourselves out sooner. But most life on this planet is much more resilient and will easily outlive us either way.

[catchnrelease]

2. Devastating

And nothing will be done about cleaning that mess up. There's no money in solving the problem.

[defacto7]

4. Money.....

Think about it. Money. What's it worth? It's not even a thing; it's a delusion a deception. Life... that's real.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

6. What is worth more than money?

That's the question our society and our political machinery needs to answer. If it's nothing, then that's what we'll be left with: nothing.

[defacto7]

11. Understood.

I think what I am saying is it's already nothing and that's what we have. Ultimately my angle is that life is a thing, it's real like the earth. Money is only a concept that's gotten out of control and all our standards are based on money. Money is a device we use, it's a means to an end but it's not a thing in itself and it only represents things because we have made it so. The powers that be have made it into a god or even beyond a god; in the minds of most people it's become everything.

Life, relationships, the earth... those are real. When we forget this and make money the measure of all things, we open up the pathway for government, politics and life itself to become a pawn of those who have money.

The policies of government have to be measured by what's real... life, people... or we REALLY have nothing and never will.

[nikto]

13. What a great line, defacto7...

"Money is only a concept that's gotten out of control"

[defacto7]

15. It seems right to me.

Thanks.

Money has become a true meme in the proper definition of the word, "meme" being an idea that evolves like an organism and regenerates itself in the mind or society becoming so common place that people forget it's origins or what it really is.

note: (not in the modern Internet definition which is not a meme at all)

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. DU Rec

[ffr]

7. Human overpopulation

We need to max out at 2.5 - 3.5 billion in population. Oh wait, we're already racing past 7 billion and talking about 10 and 12 billion.

Like in the Matrix, 'we spread and multiply until all the natural resources are consumed.' Just like a virus.

Sickens me.

[defacto7]

16. It does seem we are more closely are defined

as a virus than an animal. I have for the most part agreed with that idea.

[CrispyQ]

8. Praise for Chris Jordan.

Heart wrenching what we are thoughtlessly doing to our habitat.

[NoMoreWarNow]

9. I hope everyone knows about the great Pacific ocean garbage patch

in the middle of nowhere, tons of floating plastic. I wonder how much of the plastic in the birds came from there. Or whether they picked it up randomly.

You can imagine how the poor birds see something brightly colored floating in the water and think it is a nice fish and instead choke on a piece of plastic.

On the other hand, it's not entirely clear whether the plastic killed the birds. Some of them had so much in their stomachs, it must have been there for a while. Possibly the plastic wasn't really a problem until it built up to very high levels and blocked stomach function.

[catchnrelease]

10. Essentially they starve to death

All that junk, plastic etc fills up their crops (stomach) and even if they get real food, they cannot get enough to sustain them, because the trash is taking up space. Plus the real food cannot be properly digested. So, while they fill up with trash, they frantically eat more because they are hungry, and eventually starve to death. Or their guts are impacted because they cannot pass the trash.

The same problem is happening with the California Condor recovery program. The birds that have been released have nested, and raised their own chicks successfully. But more and more, the adults have been bringing home bits of trash and feeding them to the chicks. Historically, they brought 'home' bits of bone for the chicks to eat, and digest as a source of Calcium. But since there are no longer enough naturally occurring carcasses and bone piles, the adults are picking up pieces of trash instead. I have seen mason jars full of crap--pop tops, plastic lids, bits of metal etc--that were removed from chicks brought in from the wild. Such a stupid thing to cause so much needless death.

Seeing that video makes me ill.

[defacto7]

17. ... and after the bird dies, the foreign material remains and

is eaten by other creatures again... a cycle of life and death not intended by nature.

So sad.

[NoMoreWarNow]

18. thanks for the explanation

is there any solution?

[catchnrelease]

19. I can't see anything being done

The only way to solve it is to remove the trash, and that would mean cleaning up the floating debris. It seem so huge, and as I said above, no one would do it unless it paid off in some way, I don't believe it will happen.

And you know other sea creatures are eating this stuff as well.....sea turtles, fish. But when they die I guess they just sink out of sight, so this film is good in that it can show what is happening on a large scale. When the camera does a long shot and you see hundreds of chicks across the landscape in that one shot, I just thought 'They are all going to die'. There is no way you can get the adults to stop feeding this stuff if is out there. You can't tell them 'Don't do it, you are killing your babies and your species if you pick that up and feed it to your chick'.

I don't see a solution, but I hope somewhere someone is coming up with one that would actually be implemented.

[NoMoreWarNow]

20. wow... depressing. So many problems to deal with and so this is way down on

most people's lists... but still incredibly important. Just like global warming, that we can't seem to get our act together on, we and so many other species are doomed.

I wonder if there is any way these birds can learn or adapt to not eat this junk? Or is it too ingrained?

[catchnrelease]

21. Yes, on the face of it this is not a pressing problem to most people

But I think it's one of those 'canary in the coal mine' kind of things. At some point it has to impact humans too.

I don't think these birds would learn to not eat the trash, because they don't realize that it is the cause of the chicks' dying. They don't get the connection. If eating the trash made the adults immediately sick, they might start looking for other food sources, but even for them, the eating the trash is too delayed from the resulting effects. (And, because the adults eat the trash, come back and regurgitate it for the chicks, so I'm sure they will also end up dying from injesting some of it themselves.)

I remember that years ago, there was research being done to see if an aversion therapy type of training could teach ravens to not eat hatchling Desert Tortoises. And Turkey Vultures to see if vultures/condors could be taught to not eat from gut piles with lead shot left by hunters. Both Ravens and vultures are very smart as birds go. That was probably 20 years ago, and I don't remember what the outcome was. I know that is still a problem for the Condors, so I guess it wasn't feasible.

The only thing I can think of would be something that would scare the adult Albatrosses away from the garbage patch, and since it's so big I don't think that's even remotely possible. A fleet of boats shooting off something noisy during the chick rearing season? That has to be at least a couple of months or more. The cost would be prohibitive I'm sure. Even if you kept the adults away for one season, and they returned to finding proper food, would they just come back to the garbage the next season? Maybe provide a supply of normal food for them to use, closer to the nesting islands, so the adults wouldn't have to go to the garbage. Still too costly. I just don't see a workable solution, that's why I find this so heartbreaking.

[NoMoreWarNow]

22. yes, I see-- no really feasible solutions

thanks for the thoughtful post. It is indeed heartbreaking.