Helping Hands ~ What Inspires

Caring for a capuchin monkey is similar to caring for a human child if the kid had super-human strength AND a tail. She was like a very hairy child with thumbs on both feet and hands who requires nearly as much time as a human child. (Probabally shouldn’t keep a kid in a cage… with a lock.) Foster parents bathe and diaper their monkeys so the monkey is a part of the family’s activities.

A foster family’s responsibility involves loving and caring for a monkey in their home. Caring for a monkey is fun and rewarding, but it is not easy. Two-out-of-three is still very time consuming, entails some expense, and requires a considerable amount of patience.

The Hardest Part: Foster parents must be willing to return the monkey when Helping Hands determines necessary. This can be very difficult. Foster families invest time, energy, and love in caring for their foster monkey. The primary comfort for foster parents is the knowledge that the monkey will eventually go to a disabled person who will live out his or her life with more freedom, independence, and companionship because of this special friend. It is the gift of part of one’s self.

Buy, print, share, make others aware of Helping Hands Monkeys.

“We cannot see our reflection in running water.”

Taoist Proverb

Dear Reader,

Thank you all for viewing, reading, and commenting on this FLOG (FLOATING Blog) We have hit another exciting mark in April. Average readership per day, not counting spam or search engine spiders, is 170. With that I rededicate myself to research and author more articles for you about Earth, Ocean and the human impact. We live on a dynamic planet; there’s lots going on if we take a moment to look beyond our own back yards.  ~ Paul

Did you know… the earliest known sharks date back more than 420 million years ago, before the time of the dinosaurs?

[See the video below]

United Nations wildlife trade body denied three proposals for cross-border commerce of sharks threatened with extinction. Conservationists argued fishing for sharks is unregulated, but Japan led the opposition, arguing management of shark populations should be left to regional fisheries groups, not CITES.

Only one new marine species is protection by the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the Porbeagle, a shark that resembles the Mako and is fished for its meat. Bids to impose a global trade ban on seven species of precious coral also fell short of the required two-thirds majority.

The shark species left unregulated commerce are; Scalloped Hammerhead, Oceanic White Tip, and the Spiny Dogfish. The fish are often tossed back into the water after their precious fins have been sliced away. And we thought Michael Vick was a monster? Yes he is a monster. We cannot justify bad behavior by pointing to other bad behaviors; it’s not a sliding-scale. Millions of Hammerhead and White Tip sharks are taken to satisfy a psychotic appetite for sharkfin soup, a prestige food to the uninformed, selfish, greedy, mostly wealthy, mindless classes of morons. Two decades ago these two shark species were common semi-coastal and open-water sharks, but  demand for fins have slashed populations by 90 per cent in several regions.

In the Gulf of Mexico, the White Tip is 99% depleted.

Gus Sant, a shark expert at wildlife monitoring group TRAFFIC said: “The decision not to list all of these sharks is a conservation catastrophe. The current level of trade in these species is simply not sustainable.”

“We see clearly now the Japanese motivation for opposing all these marine species proposals,” said Anne Schroeer, a Madrid-based economist with Oceana. “For the whales, they say they are catching them traditionally. For the bluefin tuna, they say they are eating it. But for the sharks, there is nothing but pure economic self-interest.”

More in this FLOG on human cruelty toward sharks, read hawaii-shark-feeding-business see the video clip and hear what Stephen Frink has to say about his favorite animal and how important animals in the Ocean.

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NEW DELHI – For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal.

New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said.

“What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,” said Hazra. (I respectfully disagree.) Here are the details that were ‘creatively’ NOT published by the emotional media, but was published by the smh.com.au

Professor Hazra said sea-level rise, changes in monsoonal rain patterns which altered river flows and land subsidence were all contributing to the inundation of land in the northern Bay of Bengal. How could the media overlook this important detail from Prof. Hazra?

Proof of Global Warming??? Really?? Proof?

If so, why isn’t the Ocean rising at the same rate around the globe? Click the map and take a closer look; you will see this wasn’t an island at all, rather a rock in the mouth of a river delta. Take a closer look at image two. Throughout Earth-history rivers have changed course as sediment build up forced the flow to adjust. That’s not global warming, that’s called gravity. Stick a buoy on it!

Ocean rising or Land sinking? The real question.

Tectonic plates shift all the time. The tsunami and the Chilean earthquake are good examples. We live on a dynamic organic planet. It is not benign; it is always moving. Could it be that the sea level in the Bay of Bengal may not be rising, rather the land may be sinking?

“Question with boldness or risk loosing yourself to the popular thought, which is often flawed by human emotions!”

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R U ready for fun & sun?

Not until you Shop @ Ocean Beach.

Carefully considered casual clothing and much more, including our personal shopper’s “best of” selections from NOVICA.

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Sadly I report that my team did not get the National Park Service contract to provide high-speed catamaran service to Dry Tortugas. [ read about it from the NPS]

Dry Tortugas from Space

Recently the National Park Service re-issued a ten year contract to provide high-speed ferry service from Key West, FL to Fort Jefferson at The Dry Tortugas. In the next 60-days Congress will be asked to approve the contract, but they should take another look. http://keysnews.com/node/20390

Click the image for full screen. Image was requested by Captain Ghidoni and was taken by the Int’l Space Station.

The Keys from higher

In this specific case it seems remarkable the incumbent was awarded another ten years. Public outcry locally is well documented. http://keysnews.com/node/20390 The public is overwhelmingly negative because Key West locals know the history.

Does it serve the community for this large entity to grab yet another long-term contract in such a small town? The incumbent operates in several cities. In tough times which of their operations will suffer first? Maybe the smallest, least significant  - Key West? This is exactly why we feel our smaller footprint could do it better, faster, cheaper.

Are we disappointed?  You bet, it has been a long, long, competitive process with 18-months of delays, but they are the better company.

We carry forward the experience and we fully support the decision of the National Park Service. If you get to Key West; plan a day for Fort Jefferson.

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Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis on a long cold night must have freaked out Ancient Man.

When do you use recur in stead of reoccur? Recur means - to repeat or reappear periodically, like a actor in a Recurring Roll. Reoccur - is a more random occurrence and less controlled. A Reoccurring Dream or nightmare can’t be scheduled. While the words recur, recurring, and recurrence are more often used, the words are subtly and distinctly different…

Do the Northern Lights recur or reoccur? Geomagnetic storms that ignite auroras happen more often during the months around the equinoxes; from September to October and from March to April, so Auroras recur.  And that is excellent.

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Ocean ambiance, relaxed presentation,
our 2009 DVD get HD2O online.

I agree with personal responsibility at home and especially while on vacation. Travelers tend to think they don’t need to be too concerned or bothered when that is exactly when they should; visiting sensitive environments. Liter and carelessness are inexcusable human diseases cured with care and mindfulness.

Simple; don’t litter.

We live on a dynamic planet. Earth changes will happen as they have for millennium. These changes should not be exploited by politicians who selfishly combine eco-emotions with issues of personal responsibility. Fjords for example happened because of Earth changes and no politician can change the weather.

But we can all influence others to be conscience of the environment. Be realistic steward and others will follow your good example.

via Blog Action Day: Climate Change. We can make the difference « eXplorer.

Could this be ‘yo mama’? Odds are she is ‘everybody mama‘!

After 15 years of rumors, researchers made public fossils from a 4.4 million-year-old human forebear they say reveals that our ancestors were more modern than scholars had assumed, widening the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from apes and chimpanzees.

You’ve got to see highlights of the extensive fossil trove, a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind’s beginnings. One million years more human history? This throws a serious curve ball into the entire theory of human existence. Could there be even older human existence? Could ‘yo mama’ be the oldest? This is NOT the old human ever, because who was her mama?

An international research team led by paleoanthropologist Tim White at the University of California, Berkeley, unveiled on Thursday remains from 36 males, females and young of an ancient prehuman species called Ardipithecus ramidus.

Unearthed in the Awash region of Ethiopia starting in 1994. The creatures take their scientific name from the word for “root” in the local Afar language. They aren’t the oldest known fossils of hominids — as prehuman species and their relatives are called — but constitute the most complete set discovered so far.

Read on, see a slide show and interactive graphics via Wall Street Journal:

Fossils Shed New Light on Human Past.

Madrid — The Oceana Ranger catamaran is equipped with a robot that has dived down to 500 meters depth to film species that are rarely spotted, or have never even been seen, in the Canarian archipelago.

The goal of the expedition is to identify areas that should be turned into marine protected areas. Only 2.7% of the EU’s marine surface area is protected, but the United Nations calls for 10%.

Oceana has found around a dozen species in the Canary Islands whose existence in the archipelago was unknown until now. Glass and rock sponges, ball, white and black coral, and armored searobin are some of the species that have been found. A wide variety of rare species, or species for which hardly any biological information is known, were also able to be filmed live, including channeled rockfish, anglerfish, silver and pink gallo fish, fan coral, bathyal sea fans, Venus fly-trap anemones, and lollipops sponges.

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By KENNETH CHANG, NY TIMES

September 10, 2009

With ferocious flames and smoke in the barren Utah hills north of Salt Lake City, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Thursday successfully test fired the first stage of a new rocket. read on