World Oceans Day: Tomorrow June 8th
Our planet’s biggest celebration of the ocean is held every June 8th. The UN official designation of World Oceans Day is an opportunity to raise global awareness of the current challenges faced by the international community in connection with the oceans.The aim is to challenge participants to view ocean protection as a way of life. The 2011 Theme is: “Our oceans: greening our future”
Exploring The Hidden Coastal World of The Maritime Maya
Explorers are searching a wild, largely unexplored and forgotten coastline for evidence and artifacts of one of the greatest seafaring traditions of the ancient New World, where Maya traders once paddled massive dugout canoes filled with trade goods from across Mexico and Central America. A goal of the exploration is to enable Mexico to better protect and preserve its coastal and submerged cultural resources.
The Birth of an Ecomovement: Namibia’s Coastal Parks
In 1990 newly independent Namibia became one of the world’s first nations to write environmental protection into its constitution. A narrative and photo gallery, from National Geographic Magazine.
The Art of Jim Denevan
Jim Denevan’s large-scale beach drawings emerge from a simple driftwood stick found on-site. Then, Denevan pushes outward from a central point on the beach, improvising with the stick and a selection of rakes, resulting in huge spirals, circles and geometric forms. His art is transient, ephemeral, meant to be trodden over and traced by the feet of passing admirers and surfers.
A Spanish Island’s Quest to Be the Greenest Place on Earth
When an innovative wind-power system goes online at the end of 2011, El Hierro, the easternmost of Spain’s Canary Islands, will turn into the first inhabited landmass in the world to become completely energy self-sufficient, using nature’s gifts: wind and sea water. And that’s just the first step in a plan that may make the island the most sustainable place on Earth.
Druridge Bay Interactive Panorama: A Visual Art Project, UK
Landscape photographer Mike McFarlane has created a 360-degree virtual tour of Druridge Bay in Northumberland, UK. The amazing panorama is part of a visual arts project commissioned by The Wildlife Trusts that aims to raise awareness of its landscape-scale conservation schemes.
Sea of Expansion, a Subtly Ironic Reminder of Our Environmental Impact
Julie Brookman‘s work uses photography and glass to explore the dichotomous nature of plastic bags: their unsuspected malleable beauty and staying imperfection, the ease in which they are acquired, and the difficulty in which they are discarded.
The Last Of the Shells Dyers, Oaxaca Coast, Mexico
Discovering one of the last ancestral Purpura (murex) dyers on the planet, on remote beach on the coast of Oaxaca.
Nile Delta Desert Islands: An Artist And A Scientist Symbiotic Point of View
Although remote and undeveloped, the Nile Delta desert islands reveal the critical state of the Nile River and its people. The Delta is sinking and the barrier islands are receding. World-renowned coastal geologist Orrin H. Pilkey and artist Mary Edna Fraser, an internationally recognized master of the textile art of batik, bring an understanding of coastal geology and global change to the public in a way that is scientifically astute and visually intriguing.