The endangered fish that speaks the truth

The fish get a brief reprieve

This week’s fish series came from an article I read about Greenpeace dropping rocks in the North Sea to stop fishing trawlers chewing up the seabed.

The fishing industry seems determined to catch every last fish in the North Sea. The governments of the region and the EU have done little to stop them, but they may soon hit a few snags: a team from Greenpeace Germany and Greenpeace Netherlands has sailed into the German North Sea and begun placing 150 granite rocks on the seabed. They are hoping that the rocks, each weighing 2-3 tonnes and measuring one square cubic metre, will prevent fishing boats from bottom trawling on the Sylt Outer Reef. This highly destructive fishing method involves a net being dragged across the seabed indiscriminately catching everything in its path.Bottom trawling not only decimates stocks of popular fish, such as sole and plaice, but it also results in a large amount of bycatch – which is thrown back into the sea either dead or dying.

Ed knows Aikido

This strip came out of doing a self-defence course with an Aikido instructor. I found the course really useful, but one of the thing that bothers me about this and other martial arts is that you can’t just do it in your track-suit. Once you get serious, you have to wear a daft-looking outfit that you will never be wearing outside should you need to use the skills you learned…

They liked the backdrop of Luna Park (you can also see Penelope the bicycle that also starred in the film)

Once the episodes go up on the internet, I’ll put a link up.

Me with the director, Sergio

Billie poses in front of our plot

Our potatoes are coming up and pak choi survives the bug attacks

some young plants can be protect with cut down plastic bottles

We’ve had a few servings of mixed salad leaves this week and the watercress has been a surprising star of the well-drained plot.

The view from a brainstorming point by the canal

A beautiful day for brainstorming in Melbourne

I like to think up ideas for Arctic Circle in several locations – cafes and  along Elwood Canal to the beach are two favourites, but I’ve just added a third – the State Library.

The La Trobe Reading Room

The La Trobe Reading Room is old school gorgeoous and even has desks that can be set to slope. The only problem is that it must be examination time and the normally quiet room has been inundated with twittering wittering students.

A warm up sketch from the library

Oscar puts out the rubbish

The Story of Stuff is a cute little animation explaining what happens to all the stuff we buy, consume and ultimately (often far too quickly) throw “away”.

The Story of Stuff

Treehugger reports

The Story of Stuff is expanding. Or rather, it is splitting off into specialized areas. Leonard and crew wanted to respond to the many requests from viewers over the last two years to make films on specific topics. However, there were two things stopping Leonard from doing just that some time ago. First, Leonard points out that she doesn’t have that kind of specialized knowledge – she spent, literally, 20 years thinking about the issues that went into the original The Story of Stuff, and would need to tap the minds of experts in the various specialized areas people want to know more about. The other problem is facilitating the activist flame that is kindled up in viewers after watching the films. Her group just doesn’t have the resources to funnel people towards appropriate outlets.

Read the full article to see how The Story of Stuff is expanding to tap into viewers’ desire to act. And if you haven’t seen the animation, I recommend it: it’s great fun, as well as being informative.

I love melbourne

But if the growth to 7 million is going to be through urban sprawl, it is going to get ugly.