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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, Winter 2008, Volume 5, Issue 17 - SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY ISSUE!
| Ocean Eyes Photography, Joyful Heart Foundation |
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Cover Photograph by Lisa Denning Kreick
www.oceaneyesphotography.com
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A new beginning. Born from the present, a reflection from the past,
from moments of chaos into an utter peace. Beauty birthed from the beast, a rebirth.
Between the chaos and peace, before the birth, or after, is the breath
holding moment. The moment of knowing not what. The moment between despair and hope. The moment before joy and love.
And then we live again. Moving forward with our past, choosing and making
the directions of our future as we live our present. We make the pattern of our lives unknowingly. Only later can we perceive
it, and see as we would like, and what we don't, but maybe couldn't change.
Every moment is precious, full of the living, filling our experience
with essence. The good and bad, dirty and clean, ugly and beautiful, simple and complicated, youth and age, all weigh our
essence. It's all tragedy and comedy. It's all a love story. It's all about love.
Diane Buccheri, Publisher
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IN THIS ISSUE . . .
Aground!
by Henry Strauss
The Ships, the Sailors,
the Rescuers
by Diane Buccheri
Breaking
by Kathyrn Magendie
Antarctica, The Global
Warning
excerpted from ANTARCTICA
The Global Warning
by Sebastian Copeland
Virgin Shark Birth
by Diane Buccheri
Salt
by Tom Sheehan
In the Realm of Pure
Thought
by Larry Tritten
Bridge Hut
by Wallace J. Nichols,
Ph.D
Ixchel, the 12th Part
by Derek Rowley
Virgin Surfer by Christine Brooks
A Red Shovel in the
Sand
by Melba Milak
Splendor
by Janelle Segarra
A glimpse into this issue . . .
| AGROUND! by Henry Strauss |
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For 2 days we had been
plowing through high seas, gale force winds, and snow. It was just before 8 in the evening, and I was finishing my watch on
the bridge. I could see no more than a half mile ahead. Somewhere out in that white blanket Truxtun and Wilkes were riding
herd on us as we neared the jagged coast of Newfoundland.
“It’s all
yours, and I don’t envy you.” I told Quartermaster First Class Harold Brooks, my relief. Bone cold and tired,
I headed below for the warmth of my sack and quickly fell asleep.
After what seemed like
only seconds, I was awakened by a terrific crash, followed by 3 quick jolts. As I was thrown from my bunk someone shouted,
“We’ve been torpedoed!” A siren shrieked, followed by the clanging of general quarters. Another sailor said,
“We’ve run into 1 of the tin cans.”
In the jumble of falling
bunks and stumbling men, I groped my way to the bridge. It was chaos. Stools, books, charts, and men were hurled from one
side of the wheelhouse to the other. I made my way out to the port wing where the roar of breakers drowned out the shouts.
I saw a jagged snow covered cliff, white against the blackness. The ship took a sickening lurch to starboard and a wave roared
over the decks. We were aground.
It was 4:52 A.M. In
the blackness behind us the bright blue of an arc searchlight stabbed the stormy sky. Quartermaster Third Class Tom Turner,
Brooks, and I fought our way up the icy ladder to our searchlight platform. We clung to the rails as the sharp jolting of
the ship nearly threw us off. Radio silence was broken with a call from Wilkes. She was aground, too, and had sent an SOS.
It was her searchlight we could see.
I headed down to the
main deck for a lead line to take a depth sounding just as a wall of water crashed into us. With that the bomb racks on the
forward deck splintered, thousand pound bombs –– part of the deck cargo –– spilled out. I expected
to be blown to kingdom come, but the weapons were washed overboard where the lifelines had already been carried away.
We dropped the lead
line over the starboard side, and it ran through my frozen hands until it stopped at 8 fathoms. We had 48 feet of water on
our starboard side, and our port side was fast on a reef.
Another lurch nearly
knocked us off our feet; in a whirl of foam, the battered and splintered forward starboard motor launch went spinning by.
There went my abandon ship station. By this time the radio shack had sent out an SOS and our approximate position.
AGROUND! (to read Henry Strauss' whole story, click here)
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| ANTARCTICA, THE GLOBAL WARNING, Sebastian Copeland |
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Text and photographs
by Sebastian Copeland
from ANTARCTICA, THE
GLOBAL WARNING
Scale and
light. That is how I will remember Antarctica. As I
review six cumulative weeks’ worth of intense shooting, I am awed by the raw power of nature in this surreal environment,
where mankind, yet again, is dwarfed by such gigantic proportions. Towering volcanic peaks plunging precipitously into the
sea; glaciers nonchalantly and inexorably pouring into the ocean, where chunks of ice the size of city blocks carry their
last hurrah as they float away to their inescapable fate. Trapped in frozen air bubbles are hundreds of thousands of years’
worth of environmental data.
Despite the broad areas
ominously uncovered by ice and the suspiciously eroding rain, one definitely gets the sense that Antarctica holds untold amounts
of geological and climatic secrets — a dynamic environment, rich in mammal and sea life, never conquered by humans.
Yet, remotely and systematically,
greed and ignorance are spoiling this extraordinary place, as global temperatures threaten the ice so crucial to the climate
balance of our planet. In the last 60 years, the poles have warmed up at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world,
while the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by up to 5 times the global average. I wonder if, in the future, people will even
have the privilege of witnessing what I have seen; and what will they think, then, of those generations who waited so long
before taking action.
The poles hold 30 percent
of the world’s water, and Antarctica, 90 percent of its freshwater. Melting ice is projected to raise ocean levels by
as much as 20 feet within the next couple of centuries, uprooting 80 percent of the world’s population. Within as little
as 80 years from today, 35 percent of the world’s species will disappear. Polar bears will be extinct in the north,
and many penguin species will disappear in the south . . .
ANTARCTICA, THE GLOBAL WARnING (read OCEAN's full excerpt from Sebastian Copeland's book, click here)
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| VIRGIN SHARK BIRTH by Diane Buccheri |
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This baby has no father. The father hasn’t taken off to sow his wild oats; there never was a father.
For more than three years Twilight, a white spotted bamboo shark, has swum alone in her tank, the largest one at The
Center for Marine Science at Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix, Arizona. About a year and a half after her arrival from the
Phoenix Zoo, she laid approximately thirty eggs, none of which were fertilized. Another year and a half later, during May
2007, she laid approximately thirty more eggs, which were placed in their own small tank for observation.
The Carl Hayden Center for Marine Science, a four year academic and hands-on program of study with a facility of twenty
tanks, introduces students to oceanography and marine biology, then delves into applied marine biology and senior marine research
with underwater equipment such as digital cameras, camcorders, and S.C.U.B.A. gear enhancing in-school experiences and field
trips. The program offers the opportunity for S.C.U.B.A. certification.
During the 2006-2007
school year, Kristen Shriner, in her third year of the marine program, was assigned to care for Twilight and her tank. Daily,
each student in the marine studies program tends to a tank, feeding and monitoring its fish and their living environment.
Five to six students care for the larger tanks, two to three care for the smaller ones. A large reef tank has an engineer
goby, a clown fish, a chocolate chip sea star, and a watchman goby. The second largest tank has a panther grouper and a snowflake
eel.
The school’s program director and marine science teacher, Mr. Faridodin Lajvardi, along with its marine biology
teacher, Mrs. Betha Ellickson, and volunteer students maintained the fish and their tanks through the summer.
When Kristen returned to school August 6 for her fourth year in the marine studies program, she examined the eggs,
lighting them from behind, and discovered an embryo had developed in one! She contacted several aquariums for information
and advice. As advised by Lise Christopher, the Shedd Aquarium’s Wild Reef Collections Manager, the egg with the embryo
was separated from the other eggs and suspended on fishing line from a pipe to allow water circulation in its own small tank.
How could this embryo have developed? The mother has had no chance of contact with any male sharks since she was donated
to the school by the zoo several years ago.
VIRGIN SHARK BIRTH (to read the full story, click here)
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| IN THE REALM OF PURE THOUGHT by Larry Tritten |
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We were in the realm
of pure thought, which was, surprisingly, a sea –– not terrain, as we had expected it would be when Dimley had
promised to take us on the journey. We were not prepared for this (so confident had been our sense of imagery), and now we
found ourselves on the deck of a small craft with bundles of extraneous gear –– ropes, pitons, picks, and climbing
boots we had supposed we would need once we’d crossed the fields of inquiry and were ready for the assault on the peaks
of cerebration. Clearly it amused Dimley to see our preoccupations dashed.
Spindrift tickled my
face as I stood near the prow of the boat beside Dr. Dimley, the old phenomenologist who had organized the expedition. “Point
Moot,” he said, directing my attention to the broken, gray crag piercing the mist a mile or so distant. We watched the
thickening fog conceal it as it slipped like an afterthought behind us.
“How far out will
we go?” I asked Dimley, smiling at Pamela as she joined as at the rail. She was holding a tattered copy of Husserl and
the violet crayon she used to underline illuminating passages.
“We’ll follow
the current of thought a way,” said Dimley. “And then . . . just look for signs of life. Simple.” He touched
a meditative forefinger to the point of his chin and betrayed a private smile, a somewhat cinematic expression and one that
I liked to think had been characteristic of the boldest of explorers –– Balboa, Cortez, Livingston, Hilary, and
their ilk.
A sound distracted me
from my musing and I looked up, seeing a flock of pastel birds, blue, lilac, soft green, pale yellow, silver gray, and rose
pink, keening softly in their graceful passage.
“A flight of fancy,”
Dimley exclaimed with as much excitement as his disciplined mien would permit. “Fantastic.” We shaded our eyes
against the brightness of the sky and watched the birds drift westward. “They’re looking for food . . . food for
thought,” Dimley explained. “They dine mostly on whim, the little sardines that come up from the depths of reflection
and bask on the surface in the warm water along the stream of consciousness.” As he finished speaking, we saw a single
bird, a fat, pale-golden creature, veer out of formation and angle down to pluck a plump, orange whim from the water, gobble
it, and climb the sky again.
IN THE REALM OF PURE THOUGHT (to read Larry Tritten's essay in full, click here)
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| BREAK-ING by Kathryn Magendie |
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| Photograph © Lisa Denning Kreick |
Break up through the waves her great tail thrashes
the water boils
no thoughts of her grounding
are allowed known measured revealed
Killer Whale Sea-wolf Grampus Sword Whale
heavy body defying the heaviness ––
seal is plucked, pulled
back to deeper water
flick of body fins tail beauty
down down and then . . .
BREAK-ING (to read Kathryn Magendie's poem, click here)
And there is so much more . . .
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