WiLD Blog

I stayed 40 miles south of Cancún, near the town of Playa del Carmen, on the Tulum corridor in the province of Quintana Roo; this area is a rapidly growing tourist destination. The area is famous for its pristine beaches, lush forest, Mayan ruins and premier diving and snorkeling.

Yes but, I stayed in a 397-room resort, called Fermont/ Mayakoba, that is making so much business that they already started developing five additional Hotel sites, two golf courses and residential properties in the area. As usual, the developers will not stop until they have destroyed all the pristine beauty of the place. It’s so depressing to see the destruction that they call development.

Also the beaches are full of plastic trash and the hotels only clean the strip that is in front of their property, so if you go for a walk or run on the beach you find plastic bottles, shoes, and assorted garbage.
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The ocean also brings in trash. My 7-year-old daughter fished a grey peace of plastic out of the ocean that happened to unfoled into a very big plastic bag. So she and her four friends ( boys and girls, ages 4 to 9) started to clean the beach, I saw them and went to help them carry the huge bag. When the bag was overflowing, the kids went to their room to get the room’s laundry bag, and continued picking up trash. Every day, for the next three days, we had a beach clean up.

Thanks kids, please educate your parents and the rest of the adults it is your planet.

Fay

Submitted by Jessica Glanz, a UCSC Freshman and longtime WiLDCOAST member:

"As an environmental studies student at UCSC, I believe global warming is the issue of our time and the future holds a scary outlook if we do not start to change the way we live. Currently, the majority of regulations with the intention of protecting the environment consist of end-of-pipe laws. These try to control pollution after its creation and dispose of it responsibly. However, pollution prevention should be first priority, not only because it is a more sustainable approach, but is also a more cost-efficient one since money would not be spent on filtering and disposing contaminants properly. This is what the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act aims for and why it is extremely important to get passed. Reducing or preventing emissions of greenhouse gases as a nation would accomplish major progression in slowing down the increase in global temperature and its effects on the ecosystem."

-By Jessica Glanz, "Fight Global Warming at Source", Santa Cruz Sentinel; October 20, 2007


If you read the front page story of the SF Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.

She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, a line tugging in her mouth.



A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate ) and radioed an environmental group for help.
Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her...


One slap of the tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles.
She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them,
pushed gently around-she thanked them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.


Photo: Fernando Ochoa

The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eye was
following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

May you, and all those you love,
be so blessed and fortunate
to be surrounded by people
who will help you get untangled
from the things that are binding you.
And, may you always know the joy
of giving and receiving gratitude.

I pass this on to you, my friend, in the same spirit.

Posted by: Aida

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During what was a very windy and cold November morning Tom and his crew including surfing legends Micky Munoz and Jericho Poppler arrived in IB after a paddle from Coronado.

The WiLDCOAST team was there to meet and greet them and made plans with Tom to help organize the final leg of the journey and arrival at Border Field State Park toward the end of the week.

Congratulations to Tom and all of his amazingly dedicated and hard-core watermen crew. We were stoked to meet you and learn about your journey!!! Felicidades!