Blue Planet Journey

What resources are used on a cruise ship?  Fuel readily comes to mind, since these huge ships and their cargo need to be moved across oceans (interestingly, propulsion and maneuvering use only about 60% of the fuel).  But those 3000+ guests and the 1200+ staff need to be fed as well.  On the Celebrity Solstice , there are numerous dining areas, with 167 chefs and 71 cleaners working every day (and night) to provide the guests with enough food to maintain the gluttonous army that descends, every week or two, onto the ship. Executive Chef Muthukkumar Balakrishnan distributed a flier outlining what they serve on the "average 7 day cruise."  I assume these figures are for both guests and crew. Flesh abounds on a cruise ship, with no effort to tell consumers where it came from, how it was raised, or whether its production and processing abide by any conventional standard. Beef:   Clearly, steers are the animals of choice in the meals here.  The sh...

A 7-11 coffee cup tossed aside. Why don't you pick up trash?   You are walking down the sidewalk, and there is a used 7-11 coffee cup on the ground, finished with its life as a one-time use receptacle.  It seems to have been stepped on, or driven over, and it has been there for awhile. Or you see a yellow sandwich wrapper in the gutter as you cross the street, sans sandwich or with a bit of that sandwich still inside.  It's been crumbled into a ball, the color striking against the gray of the concrete. Perhaps you notice the  ubiquitous soda bottle on the grass, either forgotten, lost, or intentionally deposited for somebody else to deal with, ants scavenging for the remaining sugar molecules and oblivious to the PETE-1 recycling impression on the bottle. Or you look down, and there is just a mix of something... undefinable, but it is clearly garbage. Look, trash happens.  There is "unintentional" trash, when you lose something, or when ...

Caroline observing 2 Hawaiian monk seals at Poipu Beach, Kauai. I am not a Hawaiian monk seal biologist.  I am interested in monk seals , I discuss monk seals in my wildlife course, and I may have even sent in a written comment on a draft monk seal management plan.  Daughter Katelin probably knows more about monk seals than I do, as evidenced by her publication : In 2016, the Hawaiian monk seal population was estimated to be 1427 individuals.  That is not a large population, although over the past 5 years, the growth rate of the population seems to be increasing at 3% per year, with the highest growth rates on the Main Hawaiian Islands.  That’s good news.  The bad news is that the the population is still small, and threats to the population continue. What are those threats ?  NOAA lists them as follows, although they are not listed in any order of priority or importance: •. Adult male aggression :  Some males cause injury or death t...