10.02.2013

October 2, 2013

White Dog and The White Dog Army
Wonderful World Wednesday

White Dog and the WDA are fascinated by ocean life and the mysterious, alien deeps, and the amazingly unique landscapes of the sea. They appreciate that this aspect of Earth is as beautiful as the desert and mountains that they know so well and they understand that the waters of our planet sustain all life.

Stories of leaking radiation, declining coral and fish populations, and environmental damage caused by pollution in our oceans make us sad for uniqueness being destroyed beyond repair. In this degradation, our world becomes less wonderful.

We are not alone in our concern. Thankfully the ingenuity and passion of youth seems to rise to meet the challenge when we are about to throw up our hands in despair. Hope springs from the fertile imaginations of those who will have a hand in turning things around and who will be the leaders in restoring our planet to its resplendent glory. Share with us this potential that could make a huge difference…
 
Image Credit / boyanslat.com
Ingenious 19-year-old Develops Plan to Clean up Oceans in 5 Years
September 13, 2013 | Filed under: Environment,News | By: Amanda Froelich, True Activist.

With millions of tons of garbage dumped into the oceans annually and repeat incidence of oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, it’s the Ocean which has taken the brunt of unsustainable methods from man. In effect, it’s estimated almost 100,000 marine animals are killed due to debris entanglement and continually rising pollution.

To a degree, individual lessening of consumerism and utilizing sustainable methods to re-use and eliminate waste is very beneficial. However, reducing the already-toxic state of the Earth is the biggest concern of environmentalists and engineers, seeking to utilize the technological advances already available.

To this avail, it was 19-year-young Boyan Slat that ingeniously created the Ocean Array Plan, a project that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic from the world’s oceans in just five years.
With his concept called Marine Litter Extraction, Boyan Slat proposes a radical clean-up solution, for which he won the Best Technical Design award 2012 at the TU Delft University in the Netherlands, where he is a first-year Aerospace Engineering student. Slat’s idea consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world.

Working with the flow of nature, his solution to the problematic shifting of trash is to have the array span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel as the ocean moves through it. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from smaller forms, such as plankton, and be filtered and stored for recycling. The issue of by-catches, killing life forms in the procedure of cleaning trash, can be virtually eliminated by using booms instead of nets and it will result in a larger areas covered. Because of trash’s density compared to larger sea animals, the use of booms will allow creatures to swim under the booms unaffected, reducing wildlife death substantially.


Economically, the Ocean Array Project also rises to the top due to its sustainable construct; it’s completely self-supportive, by receiving energy from the sun, currents, and waves. It is estimated that through the selling of plastic retrieved over the five years, the project could be fully paid for. By also letting the platforms’ wings sway like an actual manta ray, contact with inlets in the roughest weather can be ensured. It’s a plan that merges environmental safety with thoroughly thought out processes.

Special Nuka Update: The anti-diarrhea medicine has done the trick to stem those issues and our girl has continued to eat small servings of soup mixtures (sometimes, needing a bit of encouragement with the syringe). She still is struggling with the pancreatitus attack; our hope is that it is the chronic rather than the harder-hitting and longer lasting acute version and that one does set off the other. Friday's visit to Dr. Julia where we will draw blood and look at enzyme levels will determine that. In the meantime the WDA looks after their sibling and we focusing on keeping her eating, drinking and comfortable. Another White Dog is so thin and when she whimpers softly in pain, my heart breaks that I cannot make it instantly go away.

3 comments:

haopee said...

POTP Nuka!

It's amazing how one person can start a successful project in helping the whole world. We are blessed to have been given knowledge to heal the wounds many have caused to the world.

Angel Ginger Jasper said...

That is quite amazing and from one so young. Quite remarkable. Hugs GJ x

STELLA and RORY from Down Under said...

Nuka, we have you in our thoughts and hearts sweetie. Gentle hugs to you. Wowza what an amazing invention and from soneone so young. Well done. No worries, and love, Stella and Rory