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All writings Copyright © 2008 OCEAN.
All photographs Copyright © 2008 Diane Buccheri unless otherwise noted. No portion of OCEAN's materials may be copied or reproduced
in whole or in part.
OCEAN, Spring 2007, Volume 4, Issue 14
IN THIS ISSUE . . .
Orcas swim at him in his kayak - like freight trains - only to pass around him
and feed in a spectacle of struggle, death, and life. James Michael Dorsey is awed, and honored. The whales graciously
allow him in to witness their private ceremony - a true gift.
Waves as large as her mountain sweep over, crash through, and submerge . . . Kathryn
Magendie swims underwater with her husband and dogs, reveling in the beauty of the ocean.
By water Sean O'Reilly travels to the frigid waters of Greenland and
is met by surreal majesty and grace, ancient and real. "As the days pass, some deep silence seems to enter and abide in me.
I become as polished and bright as the ice around me . . . A new power drawn from the mysterious and beckoning North Pole
seems to arise within."
A great white shark! - for all to see at the Monterey Bay Aquarium - it's the
second the aquarium has captured for research, and released successfully.
One young boy captures the essence of life in a drop of water.
The ocean, a haiku whispers, ". . . gives and takes away."
Two kayakers dance with abandon, and laugh with joy following Alaska's record breaking
rainfall.
The seafarer's wife binds herself with expectations of loss. Upon return, her fisherman
reminds her with a salt-laden kiss, ". . . the sea brings everything back."
A mother shares her sand dollars in trust with her young daughters whom she
hopes will grow up to love and fight for our ocean "with an astounding ferocity".
"What if . . . you were floating? We wonder about the unknown . . . Comes the day
we cease to wonder and we begin to know." A fifteen year old writer explores the realms of possibilities.
Carl Safina's Voyage of the Turtle is a beautiful tribute to
the ancient creature of the ocean, an exploration into their modern struggle to survive, and a declaration of hope, with our
cooperation, for their future.
Who has seen the wind?
Ah, the mystery in Nice involving a Mayan conquest continues . . .
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A glimpse into the current issue of OCEAN . . .
| UNDERWATER ON MY MOUNTAIN |
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| by Kathryn Magendie |
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I am between the mountain and the sea they call to me with their haunting
ancient voices. The mountain's call is in the wolf's howl and the wind that saws the branches together in natural symphonic
song; and the sea's call is in the plaintive cry of the whale and the crash of wave as the sea folds in on itself. On dry
land, I shade my eyes from the rising sun flaming sky and mountain ridge, where beyond the unforgotten distance between time
and space and my dreams, the ocean lifts and releases, calling me to her. In the early morning on my mountain, the mists drift
in, linger, and then float away, drift in, linger, and then float away.
My dream last night was overfilled with water. Waves as big as my mountain hurled
over my head with a roar. I looked up through layers of deep and heavy water, watched the surface push and shove against itself.
The sun created kaleidoscope prisms, its rays parted the undulating plane. My breath held, then released in a rush of bubbles,
as up I swam, up towards the restless surface. I awoke with a yearning, placed my feet upon the cool floor, and found my balance,
still waivering under water in that world between mountain and ocean.
UNDERWATER ON MY MOUNTAIN (read more - click here)
| FACE TO FACE with a GREAT WHITE |
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| by Cat Campbell |
With pectoral fins extended like airplane wings, a great white shark glides by
the 13-inch-thick acrylic wall separating his aquatic world from that of his human visitors. Children and adults stare in
awe at his beauty and gracefulness, despite the slightly open mouth exposing the glint of sharp teeth. That was the scene
up until the 137th day of his visit, during which he played an important role as emissary to 600,000 people, all eager to
learn about ocean conservation. Shortly after sunrise on January 16, he was tagged and released back into his natural habitat.
For
the second time in its 22-year history, the Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA), located along Monterey, California's Pacific coastline,
was home to a living, healthy great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). The male shark was caught several miles offshore
in Southern California's Santa Monica Bay. He was kept in a 4-million-gallon ocean pen off Malibu for two weeks, where he
was observed feeding several times, before being moved on August 31 to Monterey. His safety was ensured by use of a 3,000-gallon
mobile life support transport vehicle. Upon his arrival, he was 5 feet, 8 inches and weighed 104 pounds. The shark's temporary
home was the 1.2-million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit, where researchers observed his behavior and visitors were able to see a
great white up close.
FACE TO FACE WITH A GREAT WHITE SHARK (read more - click here)
| GREENLAND: A LAND AS OLD AS TIME |
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| by Sean O'Reilly |
. . . a land that was old before the dinosaurs walked the earth . . . with whales,
musk oxes, seals, and reindeers among the iceberg littered fjords of Greenland . . .
The great Norwegian explorer
of Greenland, Fridtjof Nansen, wrote about a mythical ancient people of the far north, the Hyperboreans, who knew neither
injustice nor war, nor age and disease. Joanna Kavenna, author of The Ice Museum, notes, "They entertained heroes,
Perseus among them. Only the divine and semi-divine knew where the Hyperboreans lived; the poet Pindar gave elusive descriptions:
'traveling neither by ships nor on foot could you find the way to the assembly of the Hyperboreans.' They were an immortal
race living beyond the fierce north wind, in farthest northern ocean, where the tired stars sank to rest, where the moon was
so near that it was possible to see the imperfections on the surface. Some sources said there was a marvelous temple, shaped
like a sphere, which floated freely in the air, borne by the winds. There were three giant brothers there, twelve feet high,
who performed the service of priests to the sanctuary." The myth of the Hyperboreans merged over time with the Thule alluded
to by the Greek historian Pliny, among others.
The notion of Thule, a land far to the north where the seas were frozen, was at
the very edge of the Greek and Roman imagination. Having conquered England, the Romans considered the lands further to the
north to be beyond the edge of their concerns, being far easier to consign the far north to the land of imagination than to
think about conquering it. The Roman legions that served in England and Scotland, for example, found the duty in those cold
and damp lands dreary and undesirable. Needless to say, and according to the historical records that we have, the Romans never
made it as far north as Greenland or Iceland. What was unthinkable to the Romans is made attainable by nautical technology
to the modern traveler seeking the refreshment of wild places.
GREENLAND - A LAND AS OLD AS TIME (read more - click here)
| WHAT IF . . . |
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| by Katie Morris |
What if
When you walked outside today
There was no ground beneath
you
And you were floating
Looking out into an endless blanket of stars?
What if
It wasn't
cliché
To want to be an astronaut
Walking into the final frontier
With nothing to hold you back?
All
of us wonder
Is it possible?
Can it happen?
Then the acceptance letter comes
It is possible. It can happen.
We wonder about the unknown
Things we've never seen or done
Someday soon perhaps,
Comes the day
we cease to wonder
And we begin to know.
What if
When you look up at the sky at night
And
you say to the person standing beside you,
Whisper in their ear,
"I've been there."
What
if
When you walked outside today
There was no ground beneath you
And you were floating
Looking out into the endless
blanket of stars?
What if?
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