Green Options

“There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.”, Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told The Times.

The Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system comprising over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching more than 3,000 kilometres (1,600 miles) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 square miles).

While Ecologic Designs (one of my previous posts) is thriving by making practical products out of various waste streams – demonstrating green innovation and up-cycling – some artists around the world are working with a new medium: trash. These artists are coming together, actively gathering vast quantities of debris floating up on shorelines or collecting waste wherever it might be piling up and turning it into beautiful pieces of art.

On a trip to Santa Monica, California, a friend treated my family and I to an amazing – if not also disturbing and mind-opening – display of crocheted sculptures created from trash.  The exhibit, Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reefs by the Institute for Figuring, was displayed in several rooms of the Track 16 Gallery at Bergamot Station.  The Institute For Figuring (IFF) is an organization dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science, mathematics and the technical arts.

Created and curated by Christine and Margaret Wertheim, the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef exhibit was a stunning display of an ingenious use of waste materials, creativity and community, bringing together various reefs created by artists from around the world.  The exhibition also brought attention to the plight of our oceans and the depository for our trash that it’s become, accidental or otherwise. The Crochet Coral Reef Project of the Institute For Figuring is conceived as “a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world.”

Ocean acidification, and it’s happening at a much more alarming rate than originally thought, according to a new report.

A pronounced lack of growth rate among some corals in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef leads scientists to believe this is the first sign of ocean acidification, something scientists world wide are beginning to fear.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) dissolves in seawater, that increases acidity, making it more difficult for marine organisms to grow and maintain their shells.

Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences have studied porites, a common coral species growing along the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef, and discovered that calcification had slowed by 21% over the past 16 years. Calcification is the process used by corals to extract calcium carbonate from seawater to build their shells.