They really need to ban plastic bags in the Philippines
I decided to download the new Google Earth and pass the time while watching the little one sleep. Have a look at the Census of Marine Life on Google Earth. I can only shake my head. The first thing I clicked on was around 15'43'24.56"N 122'43'35.94"E. Off the eastern side of Luzon Island. This is what it had to say when I clicked on the little icon about what it had discovered while there.
"In 2007, the Pacific seaboard of the Philippines afforded Census investigators the opportunity to conduct the first deep-sea work in the area Sampling to a depth of 2,300m, researchers collected about 300 fish and 400 mollusk species for barcoding. Some 320 decapod crustaceans posed for photographs not only to display their beauty, but to aid future identification of many unique and subtly distinct specimens. A year later, Census investigators returned to explore the Philippine margin of the South China Sea, between 100m and 2,200m depth. Among unexpected discoveries that repeatedly amazed researchers were the first Philippine record of the deepwater stony coral Lophelia pertusa, the first living specimen of Acharax bartschi , a large bivalve living in symbiosis with bacteria, rare deepwater snails living on a dog skull, and a likely new species of shrimp belonging to a group only known from hydrothermal vents. The trawl gathering these specimens also collected numerous plastic shopping bags."
Why does this not surprise me? I'm so thoroughly disgusted ....
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| A scavenger in a dugout canoe paddles through a sea of garbage along a Manila waterway Image by: JAY DIRECTO/AFP/Getty Image |
