To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.
- Wendell Berry
"...our country is not being destroyed by
bad politics, it is being destroyed by a bad way
of life. Bad politics is merely another result."
-- Wendell Berry (
http://www.brtom.org/wb/berry.html)
Divers In Gulf Report `Zero Things' Alive
Published: Aug 11, 2005
CLEARWATER - Diver Mike Miller struggles to convey the horror he has seen on the ocean floor. He struggles because there are only so many ways you can say dead.
``I'm talking zero things are alive out there,'' Miller said. ``The only way to describe it is a nuclear bomb.''
Miller and other alarmed divers say they have documented a dead zone 20 miles offshore in the Gulf waters from Johns Pass to Clearwater. This information, combined with an unprecedented number of dead turtles washing up on Pinellas County beaches this week, has divers, fishermen and scientists worried that red tide is killing more efficiently.
``Normally when we get a red tide, you can go a little north or a little west or south or someplace else and dive,'' said Ben Dautermen, who takes divers out of Clearwater on his charter boat. ``Usually it doesn't kill every single thing.''
Red tide, an algae toxic to fish and an irritant to humans who breathe its choking vapors, has hung stubbornly to Florida's west coast for close to three months. Miller and other longtime locals who make their living in the Gulf say it's the worst outbreak in their experience.
Though it's not certain that red tide killed the turtles, scientists at the Fish & Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg think the toxic algae wiped out sea life, creating the dead zone Miller and other divers discovered.
The scientists' theory goes like this: Red tide cells don't like to pass through water temperature differences of more than 2 degrees. Scientists think a thermocline, or zone of cold water, formed above the warmer water at the bottom, holding the algae bloom there longer than it naturally would stay.
``So the things that would not normally be affected were exposed for longer periods,'' said Jeremy Lake, spokesman for the institute.
The toxic atmosphere worsened as dead organisms such as crabs and shellfish decomposed, consuming dissolved oxygen in the water.
Lake said the institute sent 10 biologists Wednesday for a three-day cruise to gather information on the dead zone and the status of the red tide.
Since Sunday, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium has picked up 20 dead sea turtles. Four sick turtles are being given around-the-clock care at the aquarium. The turtles, too weak to swim, are being kept on wet mats and covered with wet towels, said Dana Zucker, the aquarium's director of community relations. They are hosed down every 30 minutes.
Most of the turtles are loggerheads, but there also have been a few Kemp's ridleys, one of the most endangered types of turtles, said Janine Cianciolo, veterinarian and director of animal care at the aquarium. Cianciolo said the turtles were showing signs of red tide intoxication, but the cause of death won't be known until tissue samples are analyzed.
----------------
Avid sportsman Stoney Burk of Friends of the Rocky Mountain Front -- a coalition of hunters, anglers, ranchers, and business owners trying to control the gas rush across wild country in northwest Montana -- told me this: "God knows how many deer and antelope drink from these toxic water pits and run off and die. Look at the network of roads that disturb habitat and break migratory patterns, and put that together with the potential to destroy the whole fish population; I consider the administration's behavior criminal.
"I'm angry about this," Burk continued. "The public is being cut out. I voted for Bush. Now I'm ashamed I did. They have betrayed the confidence of millions of people.... We're talking about an invasion of our last remaining wildlands, destruction of our last remaining fish and wildlife habitat. For what? At the very most a week's worth of gas."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/09/09_401-2.html-----------------------
It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that
governs least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best
citizen is the one who least needs governing. The answer to big
government is not private freedom, but private responsibility.
-Wendell Berry, "The Loss of the Future" in The Long-Legged House
"a people who are entirely lacking in economic self-determination,
either personal or local, and who are therefore entirely passive in
dealing with the suppliers of all their goods and services, including
political goods and services, cannot be governed democratically--or
not for long."
Wendell Berry
"A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another
pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life."
-- Wendell Berry in "The Idea of a Local Economy"
It is, in every way, in the best interest of urban consumers to be
surrounded by productive land, well farmed and well maintained by
thriving farm families in thriving farm communities.
Wendell Berry
We are now pretty obviously facing the possibility of a world that the
supranational corporations, and the governments and educational
systems that serve them, will control entirely for their own
enrichment--and, incidentally and inescapably, for the impoverishment
of all the rest of us.
Wendell Berry
What we have before us, if we want our communities to survive, is the
building of an adversary economy, a system of local or community
economies within, and to protect against, the would-be global economy.
Wendell Berry
To put the bounty and the health of our land,
our only commonwealth, into the hands of people
who do not live on it and share its fate
will always be an error.
For whatever determines the fortune of the land
determines also the fortune of the people.
If history teaches anything, it teaches that.
--Wendell Berry
"WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY -- I mean our country itself, our land.
This is a
terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we
decide to continue
the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will
not be because we
have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not
inevitable, except
that by our submissiveness we make it so."
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