Trying to combine Oceans, Fish and Plastic will be hard to do. I do like to fish, and I do like to fish in the Ocean!  and I do use Plastic products! (It’s hard not to!)

After a recent trip to Monterey Bay Aquarium, I was struck by how many people care about our ocean environment. I am from Arizona after all, where many of our citizens don’t care much about the environment.

But even if plastic recycling is viewed as a waste of time by a lot of people, there is a movement growing in Arizona to recycle our throw away products, but we are still far from environmentally minded. I guess we are far enough away from the ocean that we do not see the plastic flotsam and jetsam floating along our desert shores.  We do see a lot of plastic bags in the Mesquite trees however.

So, anyway Monterey Bay Aquarium is considered the premier Aquarium in the United States!

As a matter of fact Trip Advisor names it the #1 Aquarium in the world.  I don’t really want to advertize like this, but why not. What they do for the oceans and for the worlds fish population as well as for the education of all who go there towards the perils that our oceans face…Its worth it!

Monterey Bay Aquarium

http://www.tripadvisor.com/TravelersChoice-Attractions-cAquariums-g1

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/

The Jellies intrigued me

The Ocean intrigues me

The Ocean Intrigues Everyone

But there was a display in the Aquarium that was pretty serious

The display concerned the Pacific Gyre, and the amount of plastic that is building up in it.

The Pacific Gyre

The Plastic that roams the oceans instead of being recycled!

A sculpture of a sea gull made of plastic

“every object has a spirit, an object discarded before its time weeps at night inside the trash bin”

Sayaka Ganz

Sustainable Fishes

One thing really good about the Monterey Bay area is the seafood.  There are lots of good seafood restaurants in the area. After all the Aquarium is built right where one of the Sardine Canning factory in Cannery Row was located! Most of these factories went out of business in the 1930s after unregulated sardine fishing dropped their numbers dramatically (a less on in sustainability perhaps!).

One educational tool that the Aquarium is attempting to do, is to educate the public on which fish are sustainable and which are not.  The Bluefin Tuna for example is declining in numbers at a substantial rate, so much so as to be close to extinction in the Atlantic Ocean. Check out the aquariums fish feeding show to learn more about sustainable fish!

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/bluefin-tuna/

 Protect our Oceans

Recycle your plastic trash

Eat Sustainable Fish

Enjoy Life

Bon appetit!