Showing posts with label rafting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rafting. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

July 12 2022 - And then it was washed away

 

There's no update on the washing away of the sand art sculpture on the beach in Tofino, B.C. I would like to see a video of the art fading away in time-lapse.  

In the meantime, there might be things rolling into the beach. The disastrous Japanese earthquake of 2012 that killed 12,000 people sent a torrent - 25 million tons of wreckage into the ocean.  Everything from fishing vessels to destroyed homes and possessions. It drifted towards North America by 2014.  

Pete Clarkson has been creating sculptures out of marine debris since he moved to Tofino to work for Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.  An inter-tidal artist, he forgoes paint, pencils and clay, to work instead with the garbage polluting our oceans and shorelines. Looking closely at one of his assemblages can reveal an unlikely combination of objects from umbrella handles to bath toys and wood from shipwrecks.

And what else is making its way in the debris?  Invasive species living on the boats and other debris from Japan.  Japanese sea slugs washed ashore in Oregon in 2015.  By 2017, more than 289 Japanese species had been swept across the Pacific Ocean.  It is called "rafting".  With the plastic and other new materials, the process is now "mega-rafting".  The materials can float for ages and make it possible for reproduction of creatures on the detritus rafts over the years it took to cross the ocean.  One such megaraft was a 165 tonne dock made of concrete, steel and polystyrene foam.  It was coated with almost 100 different species.  
 

The Pump house was on the tour in Niagara-on-the-Lake.  Here is the steam engine nicely settled in a rose garden.  I'd expect the roses to the the War of 1812 Roses

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