Ocean art ‘beautiful, little horrifying’

Sea-life sculptures made from ocean’s plastic waste

NEW ORLEANS, July 31, (AP): Huge sculptures of sea life are dotted about New Orleans’ aquarium and zoo, all of them made from plastic trash that washed ashore. There’s a great white shark made partly of bottle caps and beach toys and a jellyfish made mostly of cut-up water bottles.

The artwork, part of a project called Washed Ashore : Art to Save the Sea, is the creation of Angela Haseltine Pozzi, who started making the pieces after seeing plastic heaped by the waves onto Oregon’s southern coast. Pozzi was in the town of Bandon, where her grandparents had lived, mourning her first husband’s death.

“I’d known its beaches all my life,” she said. “I went to the ocean to heal and found that the ocean needed healing.”

She wants the scale of her creations to make people realize just how much plastic gets into the ocean — and to act on that knowledge. Signs next to each piece suggest simple ways to reduce the problem, such as not using plastic straws, re-using water bottles, and picking up other people’s litter.

“Every piece of trash picked up and properly disposed of is a piece that will not cause harm to local environments and animals,” states the sign for “Greta the Great White Shark.”

Pozzi’s aim is art that is “beautiful, and a little horrifying.”

An army of volunteers in Oregon — about 10,000 since Pozzi started in 2010 — help her collect, prepare and assemble the beach trash into art. One of their wash-basins for plastic is a bathtub also found on the beach.

She now has more than 70 pieces in

Hives help study pollution:

Italian beekeepers are spreading their wings into the study of pollution in Rome, working with the country’s carabinieri military police to learn more about the state of the air in the Eternal City.

On the roof of a building in the heart of the capital that houses the Italian Federation three exhibitions currently traveling the US, and has requests from overseas. Her work has been displayed at zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens, and she has permanent exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and a gallery in Bandon.

Showing

The Audubon Aquarium of the Americas is currently showing six sculptures, while one of a puffin is on display at the Audubon Zoo; more pieces will be added to both locations in October.

In addition to the shark and two jellyfish sculptures, there’s a walkthrough whale ribcage made with bucket lids, bottles, buoys and bait traps; a marlin with a beak made of fishing rods; and percussive “Musical Seaweed.” That statue’s long leaves include metal and plastic bottle caps strung on wires so they rattle when a leaf is hit lightly.

Robert and Lauryn Geosits of Mandeville, Louisiana, were visiting with their three children.

“This is such a great idea for people to visualize just how much trash is in the ocean,” said Lauryn Geosits.

Her husband read from a sign while their baby slept in a stroller and Chelsea, 7, and Preston, 8, searched the shark for the items he named: “There’s a toy car bumper, bottle caps, beach toys, a lighter ...”

Asked about the strangest piece she’s used, Pozzi said: “When you’ve processed more than 21 tons of debris into more than 70 pieces of art you’ve seen pretty much everything.”

A fish made entirely of fish-bitten

of Beekeepers (FAI), 15 beehives are abuzz with activity.

“This is an experimental urban hive that we are using to collect data of scientific interest, in order for example to devise a plant biodiversity map of Rome,” FAI president Raffaele Cirone told AFP.

“However we are also studying the adverse plastic is among the pieces to be added in October.

Most of the pieces coming to New Orleans this fall are on display at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, including a river otter, a seahorse and a clownfish in an anemone.

“We are very sad to see them go, because they’ve been very successful,” said Tynnetta Qaiyim (KY-im), vice president for planning and design at Shedd.

She said the response has been far beyond what she expected, both in the number of pictures patrons have posted on social media and in increased conservation awareness.

Also: BUTTE, Mont:

The Environmental Protection Agency says an agreement has been reached over the cleanup of a century’s worth of smelting waste in the southwestern Montana town of Anaconda.

The agreement among the EPA, the Atlantic Richfield Co, the state of Montana and Anaconda-Deer Lodge County came Saturday after negotiations last week. The EPA had given the parties until Tuesday to reach an agreement in principle or would have imposed a cleanup order.

The Montana Standard reports the details are not public because of a federal judge’s gag order.

Anaconda’s environmental damage was caused by copper smelting that sent arsenic, lead, copper and other metals into the air until 1980.

EPA regional administrator Doug Benevento has said he wants Anaconda to have a signed consent decree by the end of the year.

effects of being in the centre of a big city,” added Cirone, who is looking for the harmful residue of fine particles PM10 and PM2.5, heavy metals and micro-plastics.

Instruments measuring the number of fine particles in the air are placed a few steps away from the rooftop hives.

Data taken from the instruments will be compared with the honey produced in the hives, which is periodically removed and analysed by the scientists. (AFP)

Kangaroo stuns family:

A kangaroo has shocked a sleeping family by smashing through a bedroom window in suburban Australia and bleeding throughout their home during a distressed late night frenzy.

Melbourne resident Mafi Ahokavo was jolted awake last weekend by a loud noise and discovered the unlikely intruder in the house he shares with his partner and threeyear-old-son.

“We were just sleeping and out of nowhere we just hear a big bang,” he told Channel Nine television late Monday.

The frightened roo, which cut itself on the shattered glass, bounced through the house before collapsing from exhaustion in the home’s bathroom.

Ahokavo was able to lock it in before rescuers arrived and treated the wounded marsupial, which they nicknamed ‘Norman’.

“Poor Norman was not all that far from open fields but took a wrong turn ... and couldn’t find his way home,” rescuer Manfred Zabinskas posted on Facebook. (AFP)