Georgia’s Thoughts –Mermaid reflections on a weekend of festivals

After a busy weekend of travelling, talking and bean bag tossing, I Georgia the Mermaid would like to reflect on my experiences at the BC Shellfish Festival in Comox and Car Free Day in Vancouver.

Cruising along the Island Highway, and basking in the early morning sunshine, my GSA companions Megan and Mikaela (M&M) talked through their upcoming weekend agenda. Sunscreen? Check. Information brochures on Green Boating and Salmon Farming? Double Check. Oh, and that beautiful blue mermaid Georgia? “Check!” I thought.

Enjoying the sunshine with Megan
Photo credit: M. Wilson

As Megan’s little Rav 4 pulled smoothly into Comox Marina Park (what an excellent driver she is) I was excited to see tents, tables and a gathering of people on the park’s grassy lawns –the beginnings of a day long festival! As I remember from past years, the Shellfish Festival in Comox always brings a hearty crowd, interested in sampling local oysters, salmon, and seafood sauces, but also eager to discuss environmental issues impacting the Georgia Strait. As I lounged in my lawn chair (M&M really do treat me lavishly) I heard them talk of GSA’s Green Boating and Clean Marine BC programs, responding to critical questions like “what is a more environmentally-friendly substitute to making docks from Styrofoam?” and “what are the top four ways I can improve my boating practices?” If you’re curious to learn more about such issues, I highly recommend perusing GSA's website.

Then Shellfish Day wrapped up and I had some time to rest in Mikaela’s Jeep, but the girls were off early the next morning for Car Free Day in Vancouver. I must admit I was rather fatigued at this point, and nodded off more than once to dream of the mermen suitors and mysterious kelp forests from my past ocean abode. But I persevered, and was greeted with upbeat music, and intriguing smells of deep fried meats and Mars Bars (believe it or not) as the girls set-up their display on Commercial Drive. Hundreds of vendors and non-profit organizations lined the bustling street for some car-free, care-free fun. I watched as M&M played their Marine Matching bean bag toss game with dozens of people –young and old, all eager to get a sparkly fish sticker.

Megan's cousin Hilary meets the GSA crew
Photo credit: M. Wilson

But what most impressed me most from this thriving festival was the interest passers-by showed in our Stewards of the Strait pledges, and our Rename Georgia Contest. M&M highlighted our Exploring the Shoreline pledge, which overviews simple guidelines all residents of the Georgia Strait should follow which enjoying our exquisite ocean environments. Tips like following marked paths, and always handling sealife gently with wet hands are important reminders –even for marine experts like myself.

In closing (it’s about time I rest before our next event at Bowen Farmers Market) I would like to remind you all that our Rename Georgia Contest is free to enter and running all summer (just e-mail us your entry, with your name and contact information!) Since 1990, my GSA family has graced me with a few new coats of paint (purple was my favourite, before becoming blue) but not yet a new name. We had some excellent entries this weekend –like Aquamarine, Marina and David, but I would appreciate further suggestions. Since my figure and hair-do still look stunning after all these years (I must say) it would  be the cherry on top to have a more modern, youthful name.

Have a lovely week, and as always check our Facebook page, tweets and Events page for GSA updates!

~ ~ ~

Georgia (as interpreted by Megan)

Summer Students off to the Races

Hello everyone! Megan and Mikaela here, and we're this summer's GSA Outreach Coordinators. If you see a Georgia Strait Alliance booth at an event on Vancouver Island or in the Lower Mainland over the next few months, we'll be manning it. So come say Hi!

Our summer got off to a great start this past weekend when we helped celebrate World Ocean's Day in both Victoria and Surrey. Needless to say, we learned a lot during these initiation events, and many adventures were had. Want to hear what our experience was like? Read on...

Bright and early Saturday morning, we dropped by the office, picked up our gear, and drove from Nanaimo to Victoria in Megan's little RAV4.We were warmly welcomed at the event location in front of the Victoria Maritime Museum in Bastion Square, and our slot was already set up. Surprisingly, our first attempt at setting up the booth not only went without a hitch and in a timely fashion, but it looked great! Unfortunately, we

Courtesy of M. Spencer

showed up in shorts and light sweaters expecting the sunshine to warm us up; but someone forgot to tell the clouds, and they hung around until an hour before the event ended. Add the lack of sunshine to the permanent Victoria Harbour wind, and suffice it to say we were rather chilly most of the day (Note to self: bring clothes for ALL weather conditions!). Other than this inconvenience, the event was lots of fun! We had a few great conversations and were able to get some information out to others, focusing primarily on closed containment salmon farming and the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, and our newly designed bean-bag toss game was a hit with the kids.

We also unveiled our new promotional event of the summer: the Name our Mermaid Contest! We have decided that "Georgia," our 20-year-old mermaid mascot, needs a newer, more modern name. So for the rest of the summer we'll be accepting ideas at all our events. At the end of the summer, we'll put the names to a vote in our office, and whoever entered the winning name will win a fantastic prize! If you think you have a great name that would suit our mermaid, just drop by our table at any upcoming events and fill out an entry form. Or you're welcome to contact us by email. Please provide your full name, address, and phone number along with your entry.

Stickers: the best prize around! M. Spencer

Our Sunday event was a little further away from home. We caught the first ferry out in the morning, drove across Vancouver, Richmond, and Surrey in Mikaela's Jeep (it holds the tent in the trunk and not beside the passenger's face, very convenient), and finally reached our venue at Blackie Spit in Surrey. Now this is where the learning started. We tried to set up the tent, and it was missing a rather vital bolt (Note to self: ALWAYS bring spare parts!) so we couldn't use it. Luckily, another vendor brought an extra tent, so we set

Our new bean-bag game! M. Spencer

it up instead... Right on time. No sooner was it up than the skies opened and a torrential downpour drenched anyone silly enough to stay out in it (Note to self: pack an umbrella!). The squall quickly passed, we got the rest of the booth set up, and we were underway just as the sunshine started to show its face. Then the wind picked up. First our display board went flying (Note to self: keep an eye on wind direction!), then a random gust sent our whole TENT flying (Note to self: tie down your tent!). It's okay, we caught it. Soon we had everything held down and secured, and we were able to fully enjoy this great event. There were thousands of people over the course of the day, most of them families with young children, so our bean-bag toss was in use almost constantly. In addition to this, we had some great talks about the various conservation efforts the GSA is working on right now, and got a bunch of name suggestions for our mermaid.

We're also intensely focusing on our Stewards of the Strait program this summer. Are you an active diver? Do you love to kayak along the Sunshine coast? Or maybe you just like walking along the beach and enjoying nature's beauty? We'll be collecting pledges all summer by people like you who want to do their own little part to help preserve our amazing Georgia Strait. All you need to do is read what the pledge entitles, and if you think you can follow those guidelines, you can sign the pledge. You can choose just one pledge, or all eight! The GSA currently has pledges for the following recreational activities:
     - Exploring the Shoreline              - Boating              - Kayaking              - Diving              - Fishing
     - Bird Watching              - Whale and Wildlife Watching              - Waterfront Living

I think we had a really successful first weekend, stay tuned for next weekend's summary: we're heading to the BC Shellfish Festival in Comox on Saturday, and back to Vancouver for DriveFest 2013 on Sunday. Hope to see you there! You can also check out our events page for a little more information about events we'll be attending in the coming weeks. We'll try to keep it updated!

- Mikaela

Filmmakers tell ocean tales worth seeing

I’m a word person, always have been.  Give me a pen (or a laptop) and stories and ideas start to flow. Give me a paint brush or a video camera and, well, the results can be what people call “interesting”!

So it’s not surprising that in my work as an environmental advocate and educator, when it comes to connecting and touching people, words have always been my stock and trade.  Whether spoken or written, I put words together to create the stories that I hope will touch people.

That is why I’m so blow over by the ability of documentary filmmakers to tell their stories by bringing together images, sound and words, and to evoke through those stories laughter, tears and appreciation for something we might never of have seen in real life. 

My work at the Georgia Strait Alliance tells you I have a love for oceans, so that shows why I’m so excited to once again be attending the Vancouver Festival of Ocean Films.  Looking back on last year, I still remember laughing to tears through “Paddle to Seattle: Journey Through the Inside Passage” but still being touched by the real world dangers this duo faced in their travels.  I felt the eerie familiarity of a fight to stop a pipeline in Ireland in “The Pipe”, and lost myself in the wild exuberance of surfers trying to ride one of the world’s most dangerous waves in “The Ultimate Wave Tahiti”.

This year the films look to be as interesting and diverse as ever.  The ones I’m particularly looking forward to seeing are: “Stand” a journey into the Great Bear Rainforest, a place I’ve never been; “The Island President” the story of political leadership in light of climate change for a small island community; and “The Big Fix” a damning look at the human causes behind the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Vancouver Festival of Ocean Films is telling entertaining and important stories with pictures, and if you’ve ever lost yourself in a shoreline walk, paddled the intertidal in your kayak, or just love living near the waters that are so important to our quality of life in this region, I look forward to seeing you at this year’s Festival. Tickets are on sale for all 3 screenings this weekend – check out what’s playing and lose yourself in a great story!

Talking transition with tanker owners

As a campaigner who spends most of my time speaking out about the risks of shipping tar sands oil through the Georgia Strait, I found myself in a somewhat unusual position last week: standing in front of a roomful of tanker owners and port managers, talking about a future beyond oil.

Photo: Green Marine / Port Metro Vancouver

Although it wasn't exactly an easy sell, the crowd was more receptive than you might think. I was presenting at the annual conference of Green Marine, an industry-led program under which ports, terminals and shipowners attempt to measure and reduce the environmental impact of their operations in areas such as greenhouse gas emissions, waste management and oil spill prevention.

In media debates about increasing tanker traffic off BC’s coast, the shipping industry often takes the position that they are unfairly targeted. The sentiment is: ‘we don’t extract the oil or make the laws that govern it – we just carry it’. In my presentation, I suggested that this position wasn't going to fly anymore in BC – not when what the ships are carrying is oil, which is culturally and politically, and not just environmentally, toxic. The shipping industry is now under the microscope every day, not just when there is an incident or a spill. At least at the moment in BC, the shipping industry’s reputation is bound up with the reputation of the oil industry’s; and that reputation is not being helped by failing to acknowledge that ship owners and ports are more than innocent bystanders in the life cycle of oil.

So while we need to acknowledge that tanker safety and oil spill prevention have come a long way since the days of the Exxon Valdez, and that many members of Green Marine are working hard to reduce the direct impacts of their operations, true environmental leadership means taking into account the impacts of the products you carry. There is no doubt that the task of measuring and assessing these impacts is technically complex, and that mitigating them raises big questions about the future of the shipping industry in a carbon constrained world. They are certainly questions that are beyond the scope of a program like Green Marine in its current format – but the climate challenge demands that they be asked.

It also demands that we work together across traditional divides, which is why Georgia Strait Alliance has decided to become a supporter of Green Marine. Although we will encourage the program to raise the bar in how it defines sustainability and environmental leadership, we also need to acknowledge that many of its members are making genuine efforts to reduce their environmental footprint, and working with them to push the envelope is more effective than washing our hands of an initiative just because it doesn't yet go far enough. There are always tensions when strange bedfellows come together – but these can be productive, and building unusual alliances to find solutions is what Georgia Strait Alliance is all about.

Newcomer's View of Our Ocean Home

Over the summer, we have the pleasure of having Bryan Nordley join us as our Communications Assistant.  Here, he shares with us some of his thoughts on our oceans.

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Photo: Bryan Nordley

The ocean is the heart beat of our planet. We depend on it for recreation, for food and for our economy. Human life as we know it could not survive without these vast, majestic and mysterious waters that surround and divide our continents.  Our reliance and dependence however places great stress upon the complex ecological systems and species which inhabit the sea. As the human population increases and nations around the world continue to industrialize the world’s oceans will face unprecedented stress and challenges to their ecological well-being. 

Unlike most organisms in the world, humans don’t live symbiotically with their environment, including the ocean, and the problems we create are numerous.  Pollution in particular is a critical problem.  One would think humanity would find occurrences like the Great Pacific garbage patch to be unacceptable yet this offensive toxic bed of floating trash grows each year and is estimated to be anywhere from 270,000 sq mi to 5,800,000 sq mi. In larger terms the estimate is 0.41-8% the size of the Pacific Ocean.

Elsewhere marine traffic such as containers ships and tankers continue to pollute the air and water across our oceans leaving suspended particles in the water.

Furthermore our release of C0² carbon emissions, which contribute to global climate change, actually cycles into our oceans increasing acidification. Ocean acidification critically affects species with carbonate shells, like molluscs by impacting their ability to create their shells and survive, and this has a big impacts on ocean ecosystems as many marine species depend on these species for food.  Eventually this problem alone will directly cost coastal nations' economies with losses in the billions of dollars. The problem will only be compounded with industrialization of Asia and the global south, whose economies are also most at risk as they rely heavily  on our oceans as a food source for their growing populations (the first article talks about economic impact). These are only a few problems, which plague our seas.

Here in Vancouver, we are surrounded by the beauty of the mountains and the ocean, home to an abundance of marine wildlife.  In my opinion, it is a coexistence unlike any other major city in North America.  Because we are immersed in such beauty, the larger man made problems of our oceans may seem

Photo: Bryan Nordley

 far away. Those who grew up here may not be aware of the rest of world’s oceanic perils but this is often something we take for granted.  Vancouver’s environmental awareness has spawned both from community and political efforts that emerged from dedicated and concerned citizens of British Columbia.  British Columbia’s climate of environmentalism is one of the factors that drives people to come, experience and live here. There are very few places in North America where is it safe and verifiable to swim in a bay with such a spectacular backdrop of a skyline.  Beaches in Vancouver Harbour are regularly safe to swim in, with little to no beach closures throughout the summer. This is in stark contrast to beaches in Los Angeles, with famous destinations like Santa Monica Pier Beach closed 57% of last years season.

Our stewardship as a community  is what makes this place unique and it’s environment so awe-inspiring.  British Columbians love the relative pristine waters of their Georgia Strait, and this unprecedented environment is what drew people like me to want to live here from thousands of miles away. Yet the Strait of Georgia faces many threats like the world at large such as increased tanker traffic and ocean acidification.

But it is the community of advocacy and awareness which helps maintain the health of our waters and protect against such increasing threats.  And this is why programs like Georgia Strait Alliance's Stewards of the Strait are vital to maintaining the health of our waters and their ecosystem as well as a community of awareness. 

We may not be able to fight against all the greater oceanic problems of our world but we can make changes where we live at the grass roots.  Stewards of the Strait's pledge system of simple everyday practical steps can help us do our small but important part in protecting  species and ecosystem against harm.  Easing the damage that greater issues may place on them and our environment might not seem like much but a water recreational and beach city constantly interacts with its oceanic environment and if every person does their small part, together as community, we can maintain the health our inland sea, continue to set an example for other oceanic communities and in the process protect our environment for generations to come.