#marine cleaning

[discovery-at-sea]

(May 12, 2023) We are raising money for a crowd funded research project investigating the cause of blueberry hermit crabs in Okinawa, Japan using trash found on the beach as “homes” instead of natural shells. These hermit crabs are endemic to the southern islands of Japan, and they act as coastal environmental engineers. They are endangered on several islands, and we want to try and understand why they are resorting to beach trash for shells. Please consider sharing this post and donating to the project. The fundraising will be active for the next 45 days (until June 26). 

You can find all project details here: https://experiment.com/projects/blueberry-hermit-crabs-with-beach-trash-homes

We suspect that areas with high rates of tourism lead to beach combers collecting natural shells leaving nothing for the hermit crabs to use. It’s possible that overfishing of turbo snails which would naturally provide shells for the crabs may also be a factor. We will survey many sites across several islands in Okinawa to try and determine a cause of this behavior. 

We will be working closely with national geographic photographer Shawn Miller (photo credits above) and several researchers in Japan. Additionally, we will complete extensive beach clean ups in the areas we study. Thank you so much for reading! 

[magistralucis]

Bourbon biscuits and tea, guv'nor

(The teacup space marine is finished! 💖)

[reasonsforhope]

"Discarded shells from restaurants and hotels are being used to restore damaged oyster ecosystems, promote biodiversity and lower pollution in the city’s bays...

Nestled in between the South China Sea and the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong has been seen historically as an oyster hotspot. “They have been supporting our livelihood since ancient times,” says Anniqa Law Chung-kiu, a project manager at the Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Hong Kong. “Both oysters and their shells are treasures to humans.”

Over the past five decades, however, the city’s sprawling urban development, water pollution, as well as the over-harvesting and frequent seafloor dredging by the lime industry – which uses the crushed shells to make construction material – have destroyed Hong Kong’s oyster habitats and made the waters less hospitable for biodiversity.

The more oyster colonies falter, the worse the problem gets: oysters are filter feeders and purify water by gobbling up impurities. Just one Hong Kong oyster can filter up to 200 litres of water a day, more than any other known oyster species. But decades of rapid industrialisation have largely halted their water-purifying services.

The depletion of Hong Kong’s natural oyster reefs also affects the ability of local farmers to sustainably cultivate their oysters in a healthy environment, denting the reputation of the city’s 700-year oyster farming tradition, designated by Unesco as an “intangible cultural heritage”.

Inhabitants of the coast feel abandoned, says Ken Cheng Wai-kwan, the community leader of Ha Pak Nai on Hong Kong’s Deep Bay, facing the commercial city of Shenzhen in China. “This place is forgotten,” Cheng says. “Oysters have been rooted here for over 400 years. I ask the question: do we want to lose it, or not?”

A group of activists and scientists are taking up the challenge by collecting discarded oyster shells and recycling them to rebuild some of the reefs that have been destroyed and forgotten in the hope the oysters may make a comeback. They’ve selected locations around the island where data they’ve collected suggests ecosystems still have the potential to be rebooted, and there are still enough oyster larvae to recolonise and repopulate reefs. Ideally, this will have a positive effect on local biodiversity as a whole, and farming communities.

Farmers from Ha Pak Nai were among the first to hand over their discarded shells to the TNC team for recycling. Law’s team works with eight oyster farmers from Deep Bay to recycle up to 10 tonnes of shells every year [over 22,000 pounds]. They collect an average of 870kg every week [over 1,900 pounds] from 12 hotels, supermarkets, clubhouses and seafood restaurants in the city, including some of its most fashionable establishments. About 80 tonnes of shells [over 176,000 pounds] have been recycled since the project began in 2020.

Restaurants will soon be further incentivised to recycle the shells when Hong Kong introduces a new fee for waste removal – something that is routine in many countries, but only became law in Hong Kong in July and remains controversial...

Preliminary data shows some of the restored reefs have started to increase the levels of biodiversity, but more research is needed to determine to what extent they are contributing to the filtering of the water, says Law.

Scientists from the City University of Hong Kong are also looking to use oyster shells to increase biodiversity on the city’s concrete seawalls. They hope to provide tiny, wet shelter spots around the seawall in which organisms can find refuge during low tide.

“It’s a form of soft engineering, like a nature-based solution,” says Charlene Lai, a research assistant on the team."

-via The Guardian, December 22, 2023

[assiraphales]

luffy n zoro r honestly such peas in a pod. ex demon pirate hunter n son of the devil raising hell together. they both take naps anywhere at anytime (including the middle of the street). big big dreams. one always asks for food the other always asks for drinks. if u gave them five minutes to collectively decide which way was south was they'd somehow end up in a hole in the ground. immovable object who would rather die than admit defeat in battle zoro and unstoppable force who hurls himself into everything headfirst luffy. the matching wicked grins when they're about to beat somebody's ass. both actively searching for danger / adventure. one hides his intelligence with silliness the other hides his silliness with toughness. & most importantly dumbasses who wuv each other <3

[lemon-russ]

If space wolves are being based off actually nordic viking era culture, they are very clean!!!!

THEY WERE SO CLEAN SAXONS COMPLAINED IT WAS TO SEDUCE THEIR WOMEN!

They wore wool and linen, wool being naturally dirt and water resistant due to lanolin and linen being easy to bleach regularly!

They had weekly baths! With soap! Some people hadn't even invented soap! They washed their faces every morning!

LEMAN NOT STIMKY! SPACE WOLVES CLEAN! THEY SMELL LIKE PINE TAR LYE SOAP AND LANOLIN AND HEARTH FIRE! 😭

(Source: https://thewarriorlodge.com/blogs/news/norse-hygiene?srsltid=AfmBOorQaM-s_ZXkN_RMNJ67l1Otu5JDthN4FETdwCcdsGmXOCnbimmy)

[kenmeoow]

🪷 ##_ _ CUT3 M00DB04RD ! <3

ᰔᩚ . ݁ 🌷 ' ◟♡ ˒ ⊹ ݁ 🪸 ͘ ࣭⸰

[deerspherestudios]

[kacievvbbbb]

Shanks, because he is infinitely more politically minded than Mihawk (a man actually in the government) will ever have the patience to be, is more than likely aware that the marines will be extremely rattled and that the blow back would be intense if a Warlord of the sea was seen around an Emperor.

And sinces he’s not trying to cause a WG incident everytime he tried to go on a date with his pretty bird and also because he’s just a troll at heart. Shanks has collection of increasingly ridiculous giant sunglasses that he insists (read pouts) that Mihawk wear to hide his gorgeous eyes, before they go anywhere they could be seen.

What started out as a “necessity” had quickly grown into Shanks’ pet project of finding out just how absurd a pair of sunglasses could be and how much would he have to beg before Mihawk put them on?

[lucky-luffy]

#Law never witnessed rosinante just the mask he wore named cora Interesting some people see it this way when I read it the opposite. It's true "Corazon" was a mask. The Marine spy, the sheep hiding amongst wolves, the seemingly loyal officer for whom Doflamingo let his guard down. Corazon's body language around the other DQ pirates was always closed off. Arms crossed, head ducked low, sunglasses shielding his eyes at all times. He didn't even speak out loud. He adhered to Doflamingo's commands and (secretly) Sengoku's orders until he just couldn't anymore, because of Law. Helping that boy was his choice alone, the single most personal action we see him do. He opens up so much on their journey, showing Law a side of himself so unlike the reserved, silent officer working under a crime lord, or the government soldier just following orders. He's playful, he's spontaneous, he smiles. He also cries, a display of genuine empathy that heals Law's soul. He fully intended to betray everything for Law. Doffy. The Marines. The whole world, if he had to.

His Vivre card states that he bid Law farewell with a "genuine" smile from "deep in his heart". I've always took this to mean that, in that moment, Cora was indeed his real, authentic self. What Law remembers of him, as biased and limited as it may be, might also be the truest, most human part of Rosinante that anyone ever knew. "Corazon" was a mask, but the "Cora" Law knew was anything but.

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

FINALLY IT'S OUT! Please welcome Lorrainosaurus keileni, a new pliosaur from France and a replacement for Simolestes keileni.

Besides the press release artwork I also did the skeletal drawing for this one. Based on the phylogeny I mixed here Simolestes characters with animals like Kronosaurus, to reflect it's new position.

My personal story with this specimen starts in 2016, when me and Sven Sachs spontaneously visited the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg. The biggest preserved piece of the lower jaw was already on display back then but with the fragments in the collection we were able to piece it together to be nearly complete. What was a box of scraps turned into the 1,4 m tool of a monster. I was very happy to be able to bring this project to a close by contributing the artwork that would accompany the paper eventually.

I wanted to show the animal with open mouth, to show the impressive teeth and jaw shape, but without the animal attacking something, so a cleaning scenario came to mind.

Oh, btw. here the paper, it's open access

[pinacoladamatata]

replaying fallout 8 years later? yeagh...

[kapitankondoriano]

saw this really adorable dad and daughter tweet and thought I'd do a quick doodle of these two ❤️

Salin and Borsalino (they are daughter and father)

[clnclm]

[laurelnose]

one of my team members picked up a glass bottle butt only to discover the other side was covered in slipper snails and she was like, oh, I guess I can’t throw this away, and I was like, yeah but at least glass isn’t a big deal ecologically, it’s just habitat surface now. she said, true but I was thinking of kids walking on the beach. to which I said, this is a rocky reef, who the hell is walking around barefoot?? nobody should be barefoot here. the encrusting ecosystem hungers for blood. glass bottles or no glass bottles. foregoing shoes is just ASKING to get shanked by a barnacle and contract a mycobacteria infection. in other news, today i made an unwise choice in pants, leaned against a rock for five seconds, and shredded the inside of my calf

[serenavdwsblog]

i love girls who are “high maintenance” like yes please continue to have standards for how you treat urself and and expect to be treated

[yzafre]

it could've been so good - a possible interpretation and extrapolation of 2012 April O'Neil

So, 2012 makes me want to take every character apart and put them back together like a jigsaw puzzle.  The characterization drives me crazy because like.  It’s messy but not entirely incoherent.  It’s like... someone was making a bracelet and picked out a bunch of matching or complementary beads, but then just left them scattered on the table instead of finishing stringing them up.

Similarly, 2012 puts a lot of fascinating character moments on the table but then doesn’t really... do anything with them, or thread them together with any kind of intent, and it makes me insane. 

So this is me, frantically putting my own strings between them like a conspiracy board.  I’ll probably end up meandering through most of the main cast but we are STARTING with April because I’ve already alluded to my thoughts on her in a couple posts. 

And I know, I know, it’s always easy to talk shit and say “they should have done this” in hindsight - and it very much seems like the writers just.  Didn’t know what to do with her for a long time? 

But if you look at the scenes/episodes she’s given, you have the skeleton of an interesting character arc focusing on the desire for agency and control over your life, chasing strength/power, and the difference between the two.

Starting point

Okay, we’re going to start with two key themes I’ve found and go from there: April’s desire to become a ninja, and her whole family-kraang situation.

When it comes to April and fighting, one of the first things I noticed was this exchange between April and Splinter, when he offers to train her:

“If I do this… does that mean I can kick everybody’s butt?”

And then, when Splinter is against it: “Oh yeah, me neither… but I could, right?”

That is the attitude of someone who wants to fight – and not only fight, but to win.  To beat others.  That was… interesting.

We also see, as time goes by, that – when the writers remember to include her – she wants to be involved.  To a reckless degree.

Metalhead: she set up her own research avenue, gathering information on Krang sightings.  Then she immediately goes to sneak in, even though the turtles can’t go out yet – and has her own mini-adventure!

Panic in the Sewers: she approaches the Purple Dragons with the pizza plan of her own accord.  She volunteers to spy on the meeting with the Shredder the moment the turtles look to be giving up – even when they are very against it – and keeps going when her first plan doesn’t work.

In the next season, after she’s been training for a while, you have the Kraang Conspiracy (incidentally, where she gets a big lore dump about her family’s connection to the kraang): she’s trying to get involved in their training/missions, upset about not being able to keep up -  she refused to be left behind to wait “like some stupid sidekick”.

“I want in on the action, too.”

She’s not theatrically bombastic about it as Casey is, but… She wants to be in the game so bad.  She is consistently frustrated when left behind, when reminded of ways she can’t keep up.  She volunteers herself to get involved, even against the turtle’s recommendations at times.  Insists on it.

This continues even as she improves, as she’s more often on the team – look at City at War in season 4.  April is so thrilled to finally be a “full fledged ninja”, but frustrated when Raph points out how much further she has to go, and does not deal well with being defeated by Shinigami so easily.  First it’s simply self-doubt, yes, but when she sees Shinigami again there is impulsiveness and anger. (yes there is some influence by the Aeon crystal here, BUT).

((Also sidenote, it was also Raph who specifically brought up time spent training with Splinter, and what it takes, back in the Kraang Conspiracy.))

((Also also, don’t love the cattiness/pitting girls against each other way this episode is written.  But for the observation section we use what we’ve got.  Sigh.))

All of this put together: they are giving April a very active, driven personality, who is interested in being able to fight, being involved with taking on the bad guys, and being a main player in confronting the world around her.

HOWEVER – she's often only middling-levels of successful, when she’s not side-lined.  It’s a show about the turtles, so they have to save the day, right? ....right? no

Now, the other half of her we’ve got to talk about is her, the kraang, and all the effects that has on her family.

When we start the show, her mom’s already gone, and it’s just her and her dad – thus why she ends up staying with an Aunt.  We don’t know it yet, but that’s important.

So, she loses her father in the pilot – it's how she meets the turtles, why she continues to interact with them (and at this point from the writing it’s not entirely convincing she would stay in touch otherwise – to me Mikey's “You have to like us” comment feels very real, early on).

She gets her dad back, but he’s compromised, leading to events in the Season 1 finale.

((Not her family, but the one “normal” friend we see her with turns out to be a Kraang in disguise, so like.  That’s also interference in her life.))

Season 2 opener, she loses him again – this time to mutation.  Her hallucination in the fear mushrooms episode was about bats/her father, remember, so the state of her father is front and center for her – and with only one parent, why wouldn’t it be?

When they cure that, it’s not long until the invasion.  And he gets mutated again, left behind with the rest of New York.

We found out her family line – her mother specifically – was part of a project by the Kraang.  April is the end result of this genetic manipulation, a tool to finish their goals.

These are all things that are done to her, which she has no control over.

So, we get an (ostensibly, when April isn’t being put on the shelf by the narrative) active personality, contrasted against plot developments in which things keep happening to her.

These are the two rocks I’m banging together to create the lens I’ll be interpreting her character through.

What do you do when your fate is never in your hands?

So, let’s go back to the beginning, and let me show you the context I’m looking at:

You are a smart, promising, self-motivated girl, who despite the loss of a parent has a generally good life.

And then you get attacked, and though you are rescued your father is not, and despite your best efforts, there’s nothing you can do about it.  You’re helpless, largely having to depend on these strangers to save your future.

But then you get the offer for martial arts training – you can learn to fight back.  Where you have been made powerless, you can reclaim power.

As you go deeper in the rabbit hole, you learn more truths – you have a strange power, the enemy is somehow connected to your lost mother, your very DNA has bene tampered with, your fate altered for someone else’s benefit before you could even walk.

You get your father back – he's mutated again.  You cure him – he's lost to an invasion.

You can’t do anything about it.

You find out the real truth of how the Kraang stole your mother from you.  More ways you never had control of your life, your fate – how everything about you was manufactured, out of your control.

You keep trying to get stronger.

And yet, despite your best efforts, you keep getting left behind.  This entire situation has to deal with you: your life, your father, your history – but they keep saying: you can’t keep up.  Your best is not enough

Even when you finally graduate, you’re met with reminders of how much further there’s left to go.  You’re met with enemies who are better than you, who you can’t defeat.

You keep trying to get stronger but it’s never enough.

…hey, The Power Inside Her is making more sense now, isn’t it?

((Aren’t you tired of being nice?  Don’t you want to go ape shit?))

Even the trope that she occasionally touches on – which generally annoys me – of “character who is clearly unqualified tries to force their way into the mission” gets a different view to it, because it’s not about a generic “want to be included” or “but I am good” (you are not).  It’s... it’s this tension of “my agency keeps getting stolen from me, so I’m resisting when people tell me no to something that will let me get it back”.

Now, to be clear, I don’t think this connection was well executed – and I’m extremely skeptical whether it was even intentional, but you can make the connections if you want to, and isn’t it interesting?

Where could we go with this?

This is the extrapolating section, and is admittedly just a fun thought experiment for me to indulge myself with – but if the story were to take this direction more explicitly, what could you do with it?

First off, to make anything work, you need to let the POV sit with April and her grief occasionally.  Show her away from the turtles, how she’s handling the change in her living situation, and also how losing her Mom young affected her/is currently impacting her.

To adapt the story we already have, I think you could lean into her not being personally invested in the turtles early on – her focus is on getting her father and her life back.  It’s not that she dislikes them, it’s just her headspace isn’t in the “make friends” mindset – they're co-workers or team-mates, not real friends.

(Of course, that’s not going to hold up, long-term.  Genuine affection for them starts slipping in when she’s not looking – but it’s always competing with her focus on her dad, and will frequently lose to it.)

I think you could – probably mostly in season 1 – make some interesting tension between her acting with a sort of professional distance, versus the turtles (maybe minus Raph?  He was always the most skeptical of humans) wanting to make a friend for the first time.  You’d have to actually dedicate time in the episodes for relationship writing rather than just the plot, but it could be done!

Then, the period where she splits from the turtles at the beginning of season two could be a really make-or-break moment of clarity.  Her (mostly subconscious!) view of “turtles as tool to regain what she cares about” vs the honest affection for them that snuck up on her.  Grappling with the way her anger is complex and misplaced – she's angry this keeps happening, that she’s involved with this at all – angry because – even if she can’t put this into words – the turtles were supposed to be the thing that makes this better and now they made it worse.

Again, you need the camera to be on April more for this to pan out in any kind of sympathetic way!  Show the empty spaces where her Dad should be once more, show her thinking about/instinctively reaching out for the turtles for little social things, but then stumbling over it.  You gotta show how she’s feeling about the separation and not make it all about Donnie.

So when she comes back it’s a firm choice on her part to move past (a part of) her issues – and yes, you can still have Casey Jones be the one to hit her over the head with this emotional revelation, I liked their interactions in that episode.

Jumping tracks, this interpretation is also a big part of why I think she should have been positioned as closer to Leo, rather than Donnie (apart from just giving her some space from the love triangle).

Of the turtles, Leo is the most invested in The Plot – and April is obviously personally invested in the Kraang side of it.

Beyond that, April shows investment in getting better as a fighter.  Who else values improving their martial arts?  That’s right, Leo.  And April’s quitter than Casey, enough that I think she’d be interested in discussing some of the more philosophical parts of it that Leo likes, you know?  What it means to be a ninja, or whatever.

Under this paradigm, I think they both would exhibit a.... a demeanor of responsibility?  Feeling the weight of importance of dedicating yourself to getting better?  But their underlying reasons are a bit different.

Leo has the burden of being a leader – and the tension he feels with the weight of it, wanting to be able to let loose, to do something just for him. ((Not to mention living up to Splinter’s expectations.))

April is desperate to get her agency her father back.  In this circumstance it would have this feeling of... if she’s just strong enough, she can fix it all.  She can prevent it from happening again.  She can control her life.  Even when she moves past the subconscious “the turtles are supposed to fix it”, it instead could move on to an equally subconscious, “if I’m strong enough it will fix this”.

And – okay go with me here – I think this has April showing vaguely Leo-esque behavior, with a vaguely Raph-esque reason.  And that tension/dynamic could be fascinating.

I haven’t really seen a lot of talk about April being angry – other than I think I’ve seen some bashing takes of her being “bitchy” in the worst sense – but.. she kind of is, isn’t she?  Just a bit?  And with this interpretation you take it and let it run deep underneath it all.

She is angry and doesn’t realize the depths of it.  She is hanging all her hopes on martial arts giving her control back over her life and doesn’t realize how desperate she is for it.

With that, you could do some really interesting things of having her be close with Leo, have him think he understands her... but as she begins to crack, and everything she’s been repressing starts spilling out, have Raph start recognizing parts of himself in her, gaining understanding of her while Leo is still floundering.

I think it would add some texture and push growth for all three characters!

...and, -sigh-, if we’re going to talk about the love triangle.  You could look at the mess with “the boys fighting over her and making moves in uncomfortable ways” (she can’t control them, its confining, she needs the turtles to like her early on) for some thematic relevance – perhaps with a hint of “trying to gain back control, she begins to try and manipulate/control their reactions/affections”?  Not particularly healthy, mind you, but it could be done to make it more of a clusterfuck all around.

But honestly if it has to be here, I would prefer for it to just affect Donnie’s development and be more of a background thing to April while she focuses on all the above aspects.  Her biggest actions would be just trying to dodge it all, until she shuts it down for good, given she seems generally uninterested.

So, there’s my emotional conspiracy board on April O’Niel.  Obviously with this level of interpretation (and blatant re-writing) it’s a subjective, YMMV type thing, but I think the groundwork is there. 

And it could have been so good.