Earth Day Symposium

The University of West Florida celebrated the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on the Pensacola campus on April 22.

Starting at 9 a.m. in the Conference Center, The Earth Day Symposium presented five speakers from different lines of expertise who spoke about how being “green” was put into their career. Speakers included Andy Holdnak, from hospitality and tourism, Lawrence Howe, from philosophy, William Huth, from marketing and economics, Gary Ghioto, from environmental journalism and Sherry Schneider, from psychology.

It began with Holdnak presenting a powerpoint presentation which showed different hotels and attractions becoming greener as the years go on.

“The first Earth Day was 40 years ago, coincidentally that was the very first year of Sesame Street,” professor in hospitality, recreation and resort management at the Fort Walton campus Holdnak said. “Kermit the frog’s famous song, it’s not easy to be green and in 1970 it really wasn’t.”

Throughout the years, Florida has tripled in population from 6,789,000 to an estimated 18 million people now. The attractions were different in 1970 as well.

“We were all natured based,” Holdnak said, as he presented a 1970s Florida tourism commercial. “Notice no mouse, no amusement parks, no theme parks. Beaches, nature, that was us.”

Holdnak continued to speak about the new advances hotels and theme parks are adding to become greener. He said Disney actually asks their employees to recycle and to become greener.

“Their cruise ships are their biggest carbon footprint,” Holdnak said about Disney.

The second speaker was Howe from the philosophy department of UWF and he spoke about how important nature was to Aldo Leopold.

“One of the things he pointed out before he wrote that(The Land Ethic) was that some forms of recreation destroy their base and therefore it’s no longer desirable, and other forms of recreation don’t destroy their base and he promotes those types of recreation,” Howe said.

Howe ended his presentation by saying how he doesn’t use air conditioning in his house to save energy.

The next speaker, Huth, presented on the economic evaluation of ecosystem services, such as artificial reefs, springs and fisheries. There are 2,000 artificial reefs across Florida and of those, 400 are submerged vessels.

“They(Navy) spent $18 million on sinking the Oriskany off the coast of Pensacola,” Huth said.

Huth explained how the sinking of the Oriskany along with many other vessels has helped economically but actually hasn’t helped the natural coral reefs.

“The Vandenburg just went down in 2009 off of Key Largo,” Huth said. “It has actually caused more pressure on the coral reefs.”

The last speaker was Schneider from the psychology department and she started off by saying she could never live in a home with no air conditioning.

“No way will I live in Florida with no air conditioning,” Schneider said, referring to Howe living with no air conditioning. “My own hypocrisy was thrown back at me.”

She ended with saying that one person cannot make a difference but collectively, a community can make a difference.

“You run these risks of people taking too much,” Schneider said. “If you restrain yourself, these things will replenish. We kill the things we love.”

Deadman's Island restoration with Heather Reed

Gulf Breeze is home to an island that has been needing restoration for years and thanks to Heather Reed, of the Ecological Consulting Services, that island is finally being restored.

On April 7, Reed came to the University of West Florida to explain about the restoration process and project she is currently working on. Deadman’s Island is need of nourishment due to the extreme wave erosion throughout the years.

“It’s not really an island, it’s more of a peninsula,” Reed said. “There are five shipwrecks over there that UWF has excavated.”

She says that you never know what you may find while on the island. It is home to history back until the 1800s. 

“It was used by the Spanish and British,” Reed said. “In the 19th century, it was used to quarantine ships during the yellow fever epidemic.”

In 1977, Gulf Breeze took ownership of the island and since then the erosion has been increasing due to homeowners building seawalls.

“When Hurricane Dennis came through it exposed an unmarked cemetery with six coffins,” Reed said.

Reed is currently working on a five phase project to restore Deadman’s island. The first phase is complete and was to design breakwater around the island. The breakwater was made from oyster shells.

When Hurricanes Claudette and Ida came through the panhandle in 2009 Reed thought it was perfect timing to test out the anchor system on the breakwater.

“The anchor system worked,” Reed said. “Some of the structures are lopsided but none were lost, I have to look out for rogue storm surges.”

The breakwater is only 3 feet in height while the water depth around the island ranges from 2-15 feet. After seeing this she decided to go onto phase two.

Phase two includes putting together ecodiscs which are not depth limited because you can continue stacking them to whatever height you need them. They also don’t need an anchoring system and they won’t be affected by the tides or salinity of the water like the breakwater would.

“We had our first ecodisc made by the little flower school,” Reed said.

The next step is to build coir logs which will slow down the wave action and to begin planting along the shoreline.

On April 17, Reed invites everyone to come out to Deadman’s Island to volunteer their time in building these coir logs and begin the planting. For more info, visit deadmansisland.br33z3.com.

A River Restored

After watching this intense documentary about Fossil Creek in Arizona I saw the hardships that environmentalists have to go through when they're trying to get a dam decommissioned. The way they went about it was really good because they had many people behind them. They weren't being forceful but telling FERC how they felt about the dam. I personally didn't know that dams were bad for the environment. I thought they were good because of the hydroelectric power that saves on the energy taken from coal. The Fossil Creek area was gorgeous after the dam was decommissioned especially when all of the fish and organisms came back to the environment.

Oneness with Nature on March 31, 2010

It’s spring in the university woods along the Ball Nature Trail and I feel calm, that is until a big black ball of fuzz buzzes past my ear. It’s a little past 1:30 in the afternoon as the rest of my class continues along the boardwalk leaving me all alone to sit and wait and listen to the nature around me. The boardwalk shakes just a bit as they walk off and then dies down the further away from me they get.

There’s a wooden bench attached to the boardwalk where they leave me, it’s a perfect spot for me to sit with my notebook and pen and write what I’m sensing. The bench is littered with small pink petals and twigs that have fallen from somewhere above me and so is the ground. 

As I sit quietly I notice a couple of inch long black ants crawling along the ground and up the sides of the wooden railing. As long as they don’t come close to me I don’t have a problem with them. The quiet is disrupted by a sudden rustling off into the distance in the bushes and then birds begin chirping and singing their spring songs. I’m surrounded by trees on all sides, some in full bloom others are still completely bare, having not recuperated from the long winter. 

Behind the bench, I can see the bayou and the water is a murky brown-green color and sits calm and still until a quick breeze blows by, sending ripples throughout the bayou. 

I decide to stand to get a better view of the area and I notice an ant approaching me, I quickly step to the side. As I move, another buzz zooms past my ear and I see the black ball of fur fly off into the trees. It turns back around and zooms past my ear yet again, I don’t think it helps that I’m wearing a coconut scented body spray. 

I look back at the bench I was once sitting on and three of those large ants have taken over it, no more of me sitting there. I decide to look closely at the trees opposite of the bench as the sun blazes on my back and shoulders in between the branches of the trees. On a nearby branch I notice something shimmer; as I get a closer look I notice that it’s a spider web. Red leaves have been caught in its grasp but there is no sight of its owner. 

I look to my right and there is a tall tree with a bush of bright green leaves at the very top yet the bark is shredding away like when a person shreds paper. It’s just stripping down the trunk of the tree in inch wide strips. 

There are trees everywhere, fallen and standing. There’s one on its side rotting away along the edge of the water. The fallen trees were most likely from a past storm and the few left standing are the survivors. When I look straight up I can see an array of colors ranging from green to red to orange and then there’s even pink. That’s where those pink petals came from. As I’m looking at the trees behind the bench I see another glimmer of a spider web but then…bang bang bang.

Before I can even think of looking for the spider a ruckus begins on the other side of the boardwalk. I try to ignore it until I hear my professor’s voice screaming out for us to come back in. It’s 2 p.m. and I got to experience the tranquilness of the nature trail for a half hour with no one bothering me, except for the occasional buzz by of a bumble bee and the fairly large black ants crawling a bit too close for comfort.

Nature on human beings

After reading the two essays in Listening to Earth, I see that every person has a different view of how nature is connected to them. Edward Abbey was writer of the essay “The First Morning,” which I found to be very interesting. It was very descriptive of the sunrise he was waiting to see and how close to nature he was as he was sleeping. He lived out in nature in a tiny housetrailer. I loved how he started the essay by saying, “This is the most beautiful place on Earth.” I believe that was my favorite line from the whole essay. His view on nature with human beings was very close, he described all of the animals that he lived so close with including the mice and rabbits.

The second essay “Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination” written by Leslie Marmon Silko was a bore. It was very hard for me to even keep my eyes open to read it. I felt like I was reading a history lesson and I didn’t like it at all. The way she was describing the life of the Pueblo people was showing that they are extremely close to nature, so close that they “become dust.” She was describing how everything in nature is connected to each other and to Mother Earth and everything becomes dust in the end.

My views on how nature is connected to human beings are not as complex. I believe that everything is connected but I won’t go as far as saying that we become the dust flying around. I don’t think we are as connected to nature as much as the pueblo people. We may be connected to nature more closely to Abbey’s version. I would love to be around animals, living on a nature preserve now on the college campus I get the chance to see animals I would never see back at home. I get to see armadillos on an almost nightly affair; I had never seen an armadillo until I moved to the University of West Florida. I see plenty of squirrels back home and I’d see the occasional raccoon if they ventured out of the forest a couple of blocks from my house.

But every person definitely has a different view on how nature is connected to human beings.

Sunshine Law Survey

My assignment was to go to the Pensacola Police Department and ask for the daily cop log for any day and then after reading through the cop log, pick out five incidents and get the details for them.
My roommate drove me over to the police department after Festival on the Greens finished for the day, so I had an equality heart on my face from the Gay-Straight Alliance booth and "amor" written on my arm from the To Write Love On Her Arms booth as I walked into the building.
I was shocked to see so much glass blocking me off from the officers, I guess it's for their protection. The officer behind the desk asks what I need and I asked him who would I need to talk to, to get the daily cop log? He asked me what I meant by a cop log so I just explained it and he told me that I would have to go to another office that is only opened Mondays-Thursdays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. I thought I wouldn't be able to get anything because it was a Friday afternoon. I was about to leave with nothing but then there was another person behind the desk messing with lots of paperwork and said to the officer, "I think this is what she's looking for." The officer asked me what day did I want and I told him Wednesday. He also asked why I needed it but when I went back and said do I really need a reason he didn't push it and he willingly copied the sheet for Wednesday and handed it to me. I of course couldn't get all of the full details because I would need to come back to the office that was closed at the time.
I believe he complied with me completely. I especially didn't think he was going to make a copy of the paper for me and just hand it to me. I was really expecting him to ask me more questions but he simply gave me the paper and I left. He did have a confused expression on his face the whole time probably because of the heart on my cheek.

*By the way, I'm not naked in my photo, I promise.

Sea Grass is Dying

Sea grass is a dying ocean organism. Today there is an organization that is trying to fix the decline in the Pensacola area.

Shelley Alexander from the Northwest Florida Aquatic Preserve Office came to speak about the decline of sea grass and its importance on March 17.

“It takes 20 or more years for sea grass to grow back,” Alexander said.

The decline of sea grass has progressively been getting worse since the ‘50s. This was because of the large industrial point sources.

The Northwest Florida Aquatic Preserve Office has been taking action towards the decline and has enforced a new law into the Florida statutes.

“All those years, from 1950 to 2010, we just now got regulations,” Alexander said.

There are signs located around the Gulfbreeze peninsula stating, “destruction of sea grass in Aquatic Preserves is a violation of Florida law (section 253.04(4a)F.S.) and carries a penalty of up to $1,000.”

The main causes of the decline in sea grass is overfishing and the boats going through lower water level areas and pulling at the sea grass.

“Pensacola Bay has lost all of its sea grass,” Alexander said. “The Gulfbreeze peninsula is where all of the sea grass is now in salt water.”

Some people may be thinking, what is the importance of sea grass. Sea grass acts as a habitat for many smaller fish.

“Sea grass habitat is very important for shellfish,” Alexander said. "Major oyster harvesting going on in the turn of the century also led in the decline.”

Sea grasses can be destroyed by boats just “plowing” out quickly through lower water level areas.

“Instead of plowing out of there real fast, tilt your engine up,” Alexander said.

She said there are many things that regular people can do besides being careful with their boats.

“When they’re snorkeling, people think sea grass is boring or not as cool as coral, we don’t have coral reefs but we have sea grass,” Alexander said. “The best thing you can do is pass this information along.”

NFAPO is working with the Emerald Coastkeeper group replanting sea grasses and enforcing the laws in the preserve areas.

March 27 is Seagrass Awareness day. For more information on sea grass issues visit NFAPO’s web site at http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/sites/yellow.