Underwater Marvels Propel My Art
Here’s a clever ‘tool’:
Drink Holder, Zelda’s Restaurant, Capitola, CA
Another CAT at the beach…
…sandscaping the river channel back to it’s summer location. We learned that it’s an annual move.
Your guess? Something to do with the channel move
Seagulls and summer homes
Freshening up for summer
Friend, fellow jeweler, and Out on a Whim store owner, Beki Haley, is looking for ideas on how to reduce plastic use at her store and at shows. If you have some ideas, head on over to her blog and share.
During a recent dive and snorkeling trip to Hawaii’s Gold Coast (the west side of the Island of Hawaii) we noticed fewer yellow tangs than we had in the past. Every time we go there seem to be less. One of the dive guides explained that the island is one of the few places that they can be found in sufficient numbers to ‘harvest’ for the aquarium trade.
The Gold Coast received it’s name because people flying in decades ago would see a shimmering gold coast. The huge schools of yellow tang seemed to cover the coastal reef. Now, it’s a lucky day if you see a few juvenile yellow tangs. You’ll see some adults but there are no more huge schools coloring the coast gold.
As you watch this video, notice that there is one yellow tang being cleaned by one Hawaiian cleaner wrasse. Fewer tangs mean less food for the cleaner wrasse, and thus fewer wrasse. Turtles and other fish also rely on the cleaner wrasse for their health care (see photo below). The whole reef is affected by the diminished numbers of these two species of fish.
For every one fish that makes it into an aquarium alive, many have had to die in the harvesting and shipping process. The reef continues to suffer and the balance of this coral reef is adversely affected. If you’re even thinking about putting a yellow tang in an aquarium, I ask that you think again and resist the temptation.
The picture of a humpback whale breaching was taken on a recent trip to a dive site. The underwater video from on one of our dives allows you hear the whale singing.
We were underwater when this underwater earthquake hit. The quake was very loud underwater and reverberated unlike anything we’d heard and felt before. Which makes sense, since it’s the first time we’ve been underwater near an underwater earthquake! We were confused, because we’d been listening to the whale the whole time and it suddenly sounded very different. 🙂 The sound made sense the next day when our dive master told us there had been an earthquake. One of her dive master friends had also been underwater to hear it and figured it out when the quake was mentioned on the evening news and the times matched.
What does all this underwater stuff have to do with my artwork? The article I wrote for a zine explains.
On Saturday I attended the Green Jewelry class at the Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts in SF. The day was full of interesting information that ranged from how metals, diamonds and gemstones are mined to what we can do to help with the environmental and social issues due to mining. We learned tips about rethinking our studio practices in order to help the environment. And, we were treated to three live demonstrations and were shown images of work created with found objects.
As I head out to hunt more sea glass glass today, I hope my glass to plastic/foam ratio is higher than on my last two trips.Â
Until last week, the longest I’d ever seen a whale shark is twelve seconds over eight years ago. I know this because that’s exactly how long the video of my first whale shark encounter is.
After the last dive of the trip last week, the boat captain starting yelling down to us as we were heading back to the beach. We looked over the side and saw a whale shark right below the boat. The 20 foot long creature hung out for a while about 15 feet below the surface as we snorkeled above it. Awesome!
You can now access the whale shark video from 2000, and other trip video and slide shows, over on the right hand side of this blog.
I headed over the the CNN website to find out about tonight’s “Planet in Peril” show highlighting the 100 million to 10 death toll in the man vs shark war, and saw this headline: “World’s corals reefs are vanishing, report says”.
While I’m glad our largest eco system (oceans cover 2/3rds of our world’s surface) is in the news, I wish the news was positive. Maybe the show tonight will discourage shark fin soup eaters once they know the devastation and cruelty that each bowl of soup has caused. I look forward to reading a news article about the lack of demand worldwide for shark fin soup.
I ran across the Too Precious to Wear website today http://www.tooprecioustowear.org/
I think the site does a nice job of providing an overview of the affect that coral collecting has; both scientifically and on the local economies. The site also provides a list of alternatives to using coral.
Those of you who know me already know that the sea environment is important to me. A trip to Cocos Island years ago highlighted the difference in fish and crustacean populations in a managed marine reserve vs. the open fishing which goes on in most of our oceans. The marine reserve around Cocos was lush relatively speaking, but our dive guide who’d been visiting for 20 years said that even the reserve was far less lush than it had been in the past. The creatures go in and out of the reserve, and many are fished and can’t come back.
On several trips to Belize over the years, I’ve noticed the dwindling coral populations and the decline in reef fish populations. Since the fish help the coral by cleaning off algae and the coral are often the nurseries for the fish, when one or both are affected, both populations decline.
Growing at rates of 0.6 cm – 3.9 cm / year, the colonies of tiny animals known collectively as coral are very vulnerable to man made disruptions. And, since they are animals (not just the calcified shells of these animals that people collect in their homes once they are dead), I prefer to leave them alone. My jewelry is designed to showcase their beauty and share the experience of seeing coral without using coral directly.
I travel with molding compound and sit on the beach with dead coral, shells and lava bits I gather from the beach. I mold these natural objects so I can take their textural beauty home with me. When I’m finished molding the coral, shells and lava bits, I put them back where I found them so that nature can continue on with it’s processes. The bits eventually decompose, but in the meantime they can be homes for tiny creatures.
Once I’m back home, I use the molded textures in my creations, and all these years later I’m still amazed by the variety of shapes I find. I’m also amazed by the similarities I can find in coral textures from different parts of the world.
I’ve include two pictures that show some of the coral diversity I’ve found and incorporated into my jewelry. The “Modern Cameo” line of jewelry as seen in “Craters” at the top of this post, ask the question “What’s more precious? The profile of a person you don’t know in a traditional cameo, or nature?”
If you’re interested in the science, you can read more about coral growth rates at these sites:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Coral_growth_and_climate_change
http://www.grisda.org/origins/06088.htm
If you’d like to see more coral textures in fine silver, check out my website: http://sherrycordova.com/