you'll always have the sky

A Nazca booby sits like a sentinel on Española Island, Galapagos archipelago. See my Galapagos photo gallery for more pics.
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

Where has the week gone? I'm starting a new article on virgin birth in sharks, which is just incredibly cool and interesting. Have just started on my taxes... They're always a bear since I do them myself, and being self employed there are like 10,000 forms... (that might be a slight exaggeration). :)

I watched the movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona tonight while sorting out my receipts for taxes and the beauty of Barcelona and Spain ignited my wanderlust. Watching it made me want to travel and experience a different culture again, and to see the beauty that is there in Barcelona, or anywhere but the concrete jungle of Houston. One of my students in my writing class said that a Hopi woman once said to her, when she lamented living in a city, at least you have the sky.

The other night Doug and I went for a lovely walk around his neighborhood at dusk and the sky was just beautiful. The sky was a lovely pastel periwinkle blue with clouds illuminated by buttery sunshine. Then the full moon emerged, so large it looked four times it's normal size, peeking out behind a dark grey cloud. The contrast between the grey and the blue and yellow - it was just very luminescent. I only wish we had more stars here in the sky. All the lights of the city drown them out. I still imagine so clearly the absolute brilliance of the night sky in Costa Rica in December of 1999 when Discovery Channel sent me there to write about leatherback sea turtles (Love & Death on Turtle Beach). It was a new moon, and as I patrolled the beach looking for nesting sea turtles at night I was astounded, I mean truly astounded that I could see so many stars. Never in my life had I been in so much awe of the night sky. I've seen stars since but never like that. It was a magical time, a magical moment.

I also loved this quote from the movie. Juan Antonio is the main male character in the movie, and at one point Vicky and he visit his dad, who is a poet who writes beautiful poetry in Spanish but refuses to publish because he hates the world and the people of the world. Vicky asks Juan Antonio why, and he replies, "Because after thousands of years of civilization, they still haven't learned how to love." I thought that was very profound. I'm so tired of hate and prejudice and intolerance and judgment.

Tomorrow I hope to get started again on my book. I had to write that article on cyanobacteria which took time away from it, and am now getting back to my chapter on young earth creationism and my visit to the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose. I watched the movie Alice in Wonderland as "research" today for that chapter.

On a practical note I just announced the opening of a new session of my online writing class! It will begin April 11. If you're interested check out the writing page website, or email me. http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com/nature.htm

shark reflections

Copyright (c) 2008 Wendee Holtcamp
Richard gives a whitetip reef shark some water which flows over its gills and helps it breathe out of water.

This is a blog entry that I wrote as the last entry but they ended up just ending on the previous day's so I thought I'd post it here. I just found this, and thought it was an interesting summary and reflection on the trip back in April.

And for those who watched the show, I am in it in several places- way in the background but I'm there! I am the only blonde on the boat so if you see blonde hair, that's me. I am in one scene wearing a black sarong and a hoodie carrying an extension cord. I walked into the scene when they were filming - oops!

I'm in L.A. and arrived without a hitch. Hanging out with Paige today and tomorrow.

Reflections

I have seen a lot of wildlife around the world in my writing career, but the experience of scuba diving with sharks – scuba diving with sharks for goodness sake – was truly one of my life’s best. I had the opportunity to see these magnificent, graceful, agile, sleek, sensual animals, more ancient than the dinosaurs, swimming through the azure ocean completely in their element. Wow.

It amazes me that so many people have such fear of these creatures, animals that showed absolutely no interest in me as I spent time in their underwater world. I did not register in their minds as something to eat or attack. I was just another part of the underwater furniture.

I watched the movie Nim’s Island with my kids today, and after watching a scene with three sharks circling around a boat, I thought to myself, ‘That is why people have such fear of sharks.’ Misconceptions about “man-eating” sharks get perpetuated by Hollywood, by news reports of shark attacks, and maybe even by our own instinctual fears. Yes, sharks can be dangerous, as Mike can attest, but why such drastic disconnect between the reality of swimming at arm’s length from these agile creatures and the utter terror expressed by so many people?

I wish people had less fear and more awe for sharks. I wish more people revered sharks and wished to protect rather than to destroy their lives for short-term economic gain. Shark fins sell for around $40 per fin in a Hong Kong market , and upwards of 29,000 can end up on a single boat. The amount of money to be made from shark finning makes it well worth the risk of accidentally taking the wrong species (some of which are protected under international agreements such as CITES), which happens frequently according to researchers at the Guy Harvey Institute.

Unfortunately, of the 400 species of shark, few receive any sort of global protection at all. For most species, so little is known that it’s simply impossible to say whether the populations are stable, declining, or critically imperiled.
Scientists have no way to accurately census sharks, so the best estimates come from mortality data. Up to 73 million sharks get finned per year, and certainly many more go undetected. We do know sharks reproduce slowly, most having only one to two offspring per season. That means it takes a long time for a depleted population to recover. Scientists have no idea what would happen to oceanic ecosystems if these top predators disappeared, but the effects would surely ripple throughout the marine web.

Every person - and every generation - should have the opportunity to swim with sharks as I did. Unfortunately, that won’t happen if their habitat, including Osprey Reef, remains unprotected. Conserving Osprey Reef, along with other isolated reefs in the Coral Sea, has been a long-time passion of JR’s. Much of what will be seen in Expedition Shark hailed from the pipe dreams of this man. He came to Australia from the U.S. many years ago, but quickly achieved success interweaving business with conservation. He is the person who first introduced Richard to Osprey Reef, and also to Raine Island where the crew filmed tiger sharks feeding on green turtles (and no, Ian, sea turtles are not just hamburgers-with-flippers, despite what Richard may say). It was JR’s dream to set up a monitoring system around Osprey Reef to find out more about how sharks and other marine creatures use the habitat. And now, through the Expedition Shark documentary, these sharks, these reef ecosystems, and these scientific endeavors will receive an international audience. JR should rightly be a happy man. And he is, but I also know from talking with him and the others that the work remains far from complete.

A lifetime of research lies ahead, and yet more urgent is the need for science-based conservation of sharks and any currently unprotected reef habitat. Agreements between fisheries organizations and tourist operators are highly commendable, but ultimately can change in an instant without any formal governmental protections. Osprey Reef has suffered abrupt coral bleaching and coral death, particularly notable in its central lagoon, but its beauty, biodiversity and brilliance stands out like a gem among gems among Australia’s reefs.

Expedition Shark wouldn’t have happened without the hard work and bright personalities involved. Richard’s zany sense of humor adds a lot of fun to the film. Mike has a smile that lights up a room, not to mention the wealth of knowledge he has and his incredible bravery working with sharks despite admitting he still has some fear every time he swims with them. Sanjayan adds his fun personality to the mix, and entertains with his perspective as a terrestrial ecologist. Celine brings a conservation ethic as well as an always bright smile to every scene. And those crew members who stay mostly behind the cameras have contributed every bit as much as those in front. The past several months have been a whirlwind of filming, and the producers and editors are busy in the cutting room, getting the show into final form. This has been an incredible opportunity to bring awareness of the plight of sharks and the groundbreaking research being done at Osprey Reef to the world.

shark mysteries

Copyright (c) 2008 Wendee Holtcamp
Richard looks up while Mike deGruy and Sanjayan hold down a whitetip shark. Dean is in the background hanging off the back of the duckboad.

Last night I got to see the final product of the documentary filming that I witnessed part of when I first went to Australia in April, Mysteries of the Shark Coast (You can read my Expedition Shark blog live from the field here) I watched the show at my friend Melody's house because I don't have cable anymore! It was so cool to see it, and be like, "I remember when they filmed that!" and "Oh ya! I remember when he said that!" I am in the background in several shots, very very background but I'm the only blonde in the show so if you see some blonde hair quickly flitting through the scene, that's me. We're going to watch it again Saturday - woohoo! How cool is that. This photo to the right, I think Cat Gennaro took it, or maybe Sanjayan, but that is what I was wearing in the documentary thyough there are also a couple places where I'm wearing a black sarong, in one scene I was walking through the shot (oops!) bringing out my extension cord so I could upload the photos and blog entries via satellite phone to the US!

Alanis is coming to Texas - yay! Well I had something else to say but I can't remember so this is all for now. If you watched the show, let me know what you thought!

cassowaries and sharks

Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp
My adorable kids under a ginormous staghorn fern in the rainforest in the center of Australia's Fraser Island, the world's largest sand island - and a World Heritage Site.

I'm starting to get excited about my upcoming trip to Australia! I leave August 5th for a couple days in L.A. and then on to Australia. I am going to spend a few days in Mission Beach and talk to people who are working on cassowary conservation. Cassowaries are an endangered bird that lives in the rainforests. They are relatives of emus and ostriches, and really cool. And there's only around 900 left in the wild! The recent Cyclones that have struck the Australian coast have wreaked havoc on their habitat, and many people started feeling sorry for them and started leaving fruit out to feed them. Well that turned out to not be such a good idea... it led to a lot more car strikes and dead birds. So feeding cassowaries was recently made illegal. There's a rehabilitation center led by the Australian Rainforest Foundation that works with injured birds, and I'm trying to also meet with some biologists studying the birds.

I first learned about cassowaries when I was at the School for Field Studies (SFS) Center for Rainforest Studies in Fall of 1990 as a college student, and was fascinated that they're the only bird that can "scarify" certain rainforest seeds. Many seeds must pass through the gut of an animal to germinate, but some rainforest trees have fruits with seeds so large that only the cassowary can eat them. There are not any large mammals in Australia and the cassowary is the biggest animal there! So if it goes extinct, many rainforest species may go extinct also.

Speaking of SFS, remember how I went back to the Center when I had a couple extra days at the tail end of the first trip in April, after the shark blog work, and I gave a talk to the current students? Part of this "Visiting Alumni" program was that I also write a short article about the visit and my career for their Alumni newsletter, and you can read it here, Wendee Finlay Holtcamp: Return to Warrawee.

Also mark your calendars, the documentary that was being filmed during my shark blog work, Mysteries of the Shark Coast (formerly called Expedition Shark) airs in the U.S. during Thursday of Shark Week which is July 31st at 9pm EST, and that is 8pm my time (Central)! We're having a viewing party!! Unless I got cut out, I may be in the documentary background as the "shark nurse" handing biologist Richard Fitzpatrick tools as he surgically inserts the radio transmitters into the whitetip reef sharks at Osprey Reef.

Last year during the 20th anniversary, Discovery Channel got a lot of grief because they focused so much on shark attacks. This year they changed their tune and focus much more on conservation and the ways we humans have attacked sharks!

(Image Copyright (c) 2008 John Rumney)

Last but not least, check out the new Sharkrunners Game Season 2: Australia - the Great Barrier Reef, which I wrote the "facts" for... it is all based on the actual data Richard et al collected on real sharks, their movements are tracked from the transmitters that were put in while I was at Osprey Reef! (they put some in at other times too, but... still! Cool!)

savies shark facts

Mike deGruy and Richard Fitzpatrick with a couple of whitetip reef sharks on the Undersea Explorer out in the Coral Sea off Australia

(c) 2008 Wendee Holtcamp

I'm working on a project now writing shark facts for a "game" and I came into my office, and Savie says to me, "Mom this is so easy. I've already written down all the facts you need. This just takes a couple minutes!" Here is what she wrote. I think she is a creative genius! ;)

1. Sharks have fins
2. Sharks have scales
3. Sharks are fish
4. Sharks are not humans
5. Sharks have skin
6. Sharks live in the ocean
7. Sharks live in salt water
8. Sharks have teeth
9. Some sharks are little
10. Some sharks are really big
11. Some sharks eat krill
12. Some sharks have spots
13. There is a tiger shark
14. There is a whale shark
15. There is a thresher shark
16. There is a great white shark
17. There is a reef shark
18. Humans can eat sharks
19. The Japanese shark fin
20. Sharks have blood
21. Sharks have eyes
22. Sharks have brains
23. Sharks have hearts
24. Sharks do not have lungs
25. Sharks have gills
26. Sharks are not purple and yellow
27. Sharks have mouths
28. Sharks have tails
29. Sharks have guts
30. Sharks have heads
31. Sharks are not birds
32. Sharks are not mammals
33. Sharks are not cats
34. Sharks are (most likely) not from Mars
35. Sharks don’t have fur all over their bodies
36. Sharks are not worms
37. Sharks are not vegetables
38. Sharks do not eat chocolate
39. Sharks reproduce
40. Sharks are (above all) SHARKS!!!

Sharkwater & a shocking proposal

Last night we went to the premier of the documentary movie, Sharkwater in Cairns. Rob Stewart, the Producer and host of the award-winning doco, was there. The movie was released in Fall 07 in the U.S. and I didn't even know! It should be out on DVD now. Everyone must see this movie.

This movie is incredibly emotional and powerful. It blew me away. It's a true story of the lifelong love Rob Stewart has had for sharks, and then how he ended up almost arrested by the Costa Rican authorities for his role in uncovering illegal private docks used for vast shark finning operations associated with the Taiwanese mafia, as well as illegal finning out off of the protected Cocos Island. The movie made me cry. They fin so many sharks, a brutal practice, and it's made sharks around the world decline by 90%. Yet he was shown in the movie swimming with, even holding gray reef sharks and other sharks, and swimming with vast schools of hammerheads in the Galapagos Islands. (I have got to get back there to go diving with them).

And then at the end of the movie he gave a short talk and had a Q&A and dropped this bombshell: Australia has a proposal on the bench that would open parts of the protected Great Barrier Reef to shark finning!!!!!!! (Check out this article in this month's Dive Log Magazine Australia, "Say No to Shark Finning on the Great Barrier Reef"). Everyone here at the Undersea Explorer (Sean works for them as the skipper of the boat and we went with the company) are in shock and trying to raise awareness of this.

Send your objections to:

Anna Bligh MP, Premier of Queensland

PO Box 15185

City East QLD 4002

Email: ThePremier@premiers.qld.gov.au

And check out some links that Rob has put together to do something about this reckless wanton horrific destruction of one of the world's most beautiful creatures, which I can personally vouch for --diving with sharks was absolutely one of my life's best experiences.

• Abandon Fear - the Sharkwater Blog http://www.abandonfear.com/
• Saving Sharks - http://www.savingsharks.com/
• WildAid - wildaid.org-- WildAid is doing incredible things to stop the sale of Shark Fin Soup in Asia, where many people falsely believe this tasteless soup is a sign of wealth and cures disease In reality because of the way sharks concentrate toxins due to bioaccumulation, sharkfin soup would cause more health problems not cure them. A study recently showed that many Asians do not even realize that shark fin soup has shark in it! The translation (at least in 1 language) is "fish wing" soup.

But this practice is just destroying sharks around the world, and there's no telling what will happen if the ocean's top predators disappear or severely decline. We may have just seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is happening to the oceans.

bird by bird

I had checked out the Shark Week 20th Anniversary DVD set from the library and finally got time to watch a couple of the shows. I hesitated as to whether I should watch this, because I really do not feel scared at all about the prospect of swimming with or diving with sharks, so I wondered whether it might just be best to stay in a state of total oblivion as to what I'm getting myself into, rather than sitting around watching shark attack shows!

But I decided to watch. At first I just watched a nice sweet documentary about various sharks - the gentle giant whale sharks, the smaller reef sharks, manta rays, and a bit about great white shark natural history. Ho hum. Then I decided, what the heck, I will next watch the Shark Attack show.

Big Mistake!

Just kidding.... Actually, it didn't scare me at all either. I did learn some things that were quite interesting. For one thing, most shark atacks occur at the surface when people are swimming and thrashing about or surfing. Underwater, as I will be, you're at much less risk since you are not kicking and appearing to be a struggling prey item. One one of the shows, one shark diver regularly swims really close to tiger sharks - the second most aggressive shark - and believes it to be safe.

What scares the bejesus out of me is staring at the ginormous stack of receipts from 2007 that I have to now organize and compile for my income taxes. I am only home for 6 more days before leaving for Australia (there's a trip to Colorado and Palo Duro Canyon in there first). How the heck am I going to get it done, with all the other things I need to do?

In the writing classes I teach, my students often talk about feeling overwhelmed at the task of knowing where to begin. There are so many angles to tackle learning to publish in magazines. We analyze the magazines themselves. We come up with saleable ideas. We work on our writing, and we work on query letter writing. So with all these things, it can simply seem overwhelming to get started and to just sit down and do it. But that's what you gotta do. Just start.

Anne Lamott writes in her book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, (which is one of my favorite books and absolutely hysterical) about how her brother had this huge report due on birds that he's waited until the last minute to do. He was in near tears sitting at the kitchen table, overwhelmed. Their dad came up and said to him, "Bird by Bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

I like to call them microsteps . Often an overwhelming task can be broken down into something more manageable when you set microsteps, and accomplish them one by one. Bird by bird.

scuba diving and sharks

I got my NAUI Scuba Diver certification card replacement this weekend. I absolutely love the ocean and have spent a lot of time snorkeling but haven't been diving since my certification dive in 1992!! We snorkeled daily in the Galapagos Islands last year and it was my favorite part of the trip. It was breathtaking and peaceful and amazing. I snorkeled in Australia a few times with the kids when we went in 2006, even though it was their winter and the water was chilly! It was my first visit to the Great Barrier Reef in Fall 1991 that created in me the desire to get Scuba certified, which I did as soon as I returned back home and started back the next semester in college in 1992. I spent hours diving in the Olympic sized pool at Texas A&M University, but alas besides my certification dive in Lake Travis in Austin - which had such murky water you could not see your hand in front of your face - that is the extent of my diving experience... I started an advanced Scuba dive class at A&M but I dropped the class. So that doesn't count.

One time in Florida about 8 years ago, I thought I might dive in the crystal clear Homosassa River with manatees and go down into a cave. But I got my equipment on and the regulator mouthpiece wasn't fitting right and the mask was leaking and I was like, ain't no way I'm going down into that cave unless I feel comfortable... and I didn't, so I popped back up.

So I'm really excited about learning to dive again! This will mean - after I get back from Australia or if I survive the sharks according to my kids - I can finally go out to the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico and dive with whale sharks, which are peaceful plankton eating sharks that are completely harmless yet are one of the biggest fishes in the sea - up to 30 feet long. They're GORGEOUS! (I hear Steve Irwin's voice when I write that!) And they visit the sanctuary every summer, so I'm going to see if I can't just write an article on them and have an excuse to get out there. (Image copyright PRETOMA - and there's some cool research where divers can take photos of them with the Shark Trust's Whale Shark Project)

I'm going to do a recertification program in Australia when I first get there then go on a dive in the Great Barrier Reef before getting on board the shark research vessel, headed out to Osprey Reef. I hope to get a lot of diving in!

Funny thing, I got some Scuba books from the library and on one of the book covers it has three divers underwater with the "thought bubbles" above their heads and one of them is thinking, "Will I get eaten by a shark?" ha ha! Last night I watched a documentary on sharks with Sam. They are just such graceful and majestic animals. I'm looking forward to seeing them for real, in the wild, up close and personal. And I'm glad it's not great whites I'm going to be swimming with - MAN - they have some JAWS!!!! Not to mention TEETH!! Anyone out there watch the Planet Earth "Shallow Seas" episode with the ultra-slo-mo clip of great whites catching Cape fur seals? Wow that was cool.

I wrote the online profile of Great Whites for Planet Earth's website. There are 10 animals profiled there - click on the shark thumbnail image. One alarming stat: Sharks only kill 4-8 people per year, but people kill 26-73 MILLION sharks annually!!!! Depressing actually.

accidental death & dismemberment

It's been a long day, but a good one. I had lunch with a friend and that was not only an absolutely delish meal but more importantly, great companionship and conversation! And hey, I recruited an Obama supporter!! Yea! I read an article on CNN.com that said he was now a bit ahead of Clinton nationally in polls, and would beat McCain whereas Clinton might not.

In the afternoon, I went to my kids' track meet and boy it got windy and cold!! We were there until well after dark. Savie was supposed to run in the Relay but one of the girls left early - which is really annoying - and so the whole team had to forfeit. Why the heck would she come out halfway across Houston and then leave before doing their event?! That was Savie's only event, but then I told her she was going to run the 800m whether she wanted to or not! ;) Mean mommee strikes! She wasn't really upset about it, she was just complaining a bit that she was cold, her knee hurt etc but then she ran and did awesome (3:28 time for what is a half-mile - she didn't medal but that's a good time for her) and she was happy she got to run. I knew she would be! We got home late, almost 9pm.

Copyright (C) Tim Calver/DCL 2007

I'm trying to get caught up on some things, and am getting super stoked about going to Australia in just about a month. I still have not even looked at my wall map of the world to see where the heck the Coral Sea is! OK just did - it's just the name of the Pacific Ocean section off the NE tip of Australia. Here's some of what I know so far: I'll be on a liveaboard ship for about 10 days out at Osprey reef and scientists are tagging white tip reef sharks, grey sharks and tiger sharks, which happen to be the 2nd most dangerous sharks to humans. Richard Fitzpatrick is the main scientist on this project, and you can see a photo of what they'll be doing here at his research website, Shark Research. They have tagged the sharks and will be catching them and gathering information on the sharks. Meanwhile a crew is shooting the Discovery Channel Shark Week 2008 documentary, based on this groundbreaking research. The filming has been going on for a year already but this is the last big shoot. I'll be blogging almost daily from the boat -- not to here but to the Discovery Channel website along with photos by Cat Gennaro.

At the track meet, I was talking to some parents from the kids' school about me diving with sharks and of course everyone is kind of freaked out when I mention this because most people think Oh My Gosh diving with sharks?! Are you crazy?! (as a matter of fact...I am! LOL). I have no fear at all at this moment in time but when I get down there in the water with them, I'll probably pee my pants. At least I'll be in the water. ;) When I was in the Galapagos we were supposed to get to snorkel with sharks at one spot but we couldn't find them that day, and I was disappointed. Anyway, the funniest thing is that one of the moms asked me if I have a good insurance policy (I think she meant life insurance) and I said no but I'll get an accidental death and dismemberment policy for travel, and only when I said it out loud did I get the irony of what I was saying - or realize that there is a real risk of "dis-member-ment"!!! Well my friend Elise told me yesterday that I'd still be damn sexy without a leg.

swimming with sharks

No not the sharks I'm dealing with related to my car situation... I have a new adventure in the works! In April I'm headed back to Australia to write about a white-tipped shark research project for Discovery Channel!!!!!! (You will be able to read my live posts from there at http://discovery.blogs.com/ but I'll post the exact URL when it gets closer). Check out the research: http://www.sharkresearch.com/ and specifically here about white-tips.

I'm sooo thrilled! Actually I'm a wee bit apprehensive about swimming with the sharks (and Savannah also said she didn't want me to!) but I am more excited than you can imagine to go back to the magical country that has my heart! I love that place. And I will go a few days early (or stay late) to visit my friends Jenny and Rin!

I have so much work to do or I'd write more. I have a lot of blog posts I've written in my mind... Guess they will have to wait. :)