… the WWF team went into Suva city center to try and gain some support for Earth Hour from the peeps on the streets – it was rather boring, which wasn’t a huge surprise.
Next week we are going the same thing at a the county’s largest rugby ‘carnival’, hopefully that will be buzzing!
I highly admire the work produced by the photography agency, Getty Images, and have decided that it would be nice to profile a Getty photographer each week.
So that is what this is, and to kick things off I’m going to start with a photographer that is a huge personal inspiration to me – Brent Stirton.
Why I have a high regard for this American photojournalist is because of his alternative approach to field photography – namely lighting. Brent travels to his locations with far more lighting equipment than most other photojournalists, in fact, many studio photographers would be happy to work with the equipment he does.
The dynamic, powerful and unique results he achieves combined with his utter dedication are the reasons for my admiration.
I would HIGHLY recommend you download and read Brent’s feature project on Papau New Guinea – now that is what I call photojournalism!
This weekend I was very kindly invited onboard a truly unique sail boat by the Fiji Voyaging society for two days of ocean bound bliss.
The boat (or yacht? I don’t know) was a modern-day replica of a traditional Polynesian drua – in this reincarnation that means a double hulled, triple sailed beauty!
The boat, and four others, were made by a German charitable foundation in November as part of a project aimed to raise awareness of ocean noise.
Each of the boats have been handed over to groups in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands and Tahiti. The aim is for each of the boats and their crew to sail from Aotearoa to Tahiti and then on to Hawaii.
It was a truly great weekend and I must say a massive thank you to the Fiji Voyaging Society and the crew who took very good care of me.
Between the Communications Workshop and Turtle Workshop I attended a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of diving the Great Sea Reef with WWF colleagues in order to retrieve two temperature loggers from the sea bed.
We took a taxi from Labasa, where our hotel was, to a beach near a small village where we could get a fisherman to take us the hour or so across to an island resort where we were to suit up for the dives.
The resort that was helping to facilitate this project was incredible – apparently a couple of years ago it was voted one of the ten best island resorts in the world! Unfortunately we didn’t have time to enjoy it for long as we soon were on another boat heading out to the reef.
The devices that we recovered from the sea had been recording the temperature of the water every hour for the past six months and the data was to help understand the relationship between a coral reef’s health and its proximity to mangroves.
Coral is very sensitive to water temperature fluctuations. An annual variation in water temperature is normal but prolonged periods of high temperature, which causes coral damage, has been witnessed in recent years.
Although coral has shown that it can adjust to increases in water temperature, they can only do so with enough time – the current rate of sea temperature increase doesn’t provide them with this.
What the WWF wanted to explore by placing the temperature loggers, was to what extent mangroves aid the corals in resisting sea temperature rises.
Our first dive was over a part of the reef that was totally exposed – about an hours boat ride offshore. The water was warm and although the coral was reasonably healthy, the concentration of marine life was not what I have come to expect form reefs of this size.
Our second dive was about 500 meters from a large mangrove island and the difference was noticeable. Below five metres the water temperature was noticeably COLD, not cool but cold! The health of the reef and the level of biodiversity was also clear to eye.
The problem is that in Fiji tourism is a big industry and increasingly areas of mangroves are being removed in favour of holiday resorts. This not only harms coral but also Fiji’s protection against major storms and tsunamis, which, it appears, are in the future to increase in ferocity.
Since this project the WWF in Fiji are now planning work to increase their effort to promote mangrove appreciation, so you can expect me to be writing about it again soon.
As part of my volunteer placement with the WWF in Fiji I have a number of tasks, the main one is to help organise Fiji’s Earth Hour campaign.
As the world’s largest environment NGO it’s fitting that the WWF also runs the world’s largest conservation event – Earth Hour. The basic idea is that for an hour each year, this year on 27th March, as many people as possible stop using electricity.
For me, Earth Hour is all about getting people to question our dependency on energy. While we live in a world with a finite amount of fossil fuel and one incapable of cleanly producing energy, we should address our sometimes flippant attitude towards using electricity.
Last year over 400,000 people did this and, in Fiji, the WWF managed to get 30,000 to do the same – which I need to try and better this year.
Last week, to launch Earth Hour in Fiji, we organised some activities in Suva’s main park, Sukuna Park. A good time was had by all, especially those who enthusiastically continued in the clubs afterwards.
Have a look at the Earth Hour International website or our WWF South Pacific site.
