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Post by PigsnieLite on Sept 6, 2010 21:52:54 GMT -5
How did you ever find this, Frito?____________________________________________________ {PLite giggles like Mad.] ;D The only thing missing is its breeding cycle, when it mates wid a bag from Tesco and gives birth to sanitary napkins!
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Post by sunfrog on Sept 7, 2010 3:16:51 GMT -5
That's excellent!
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Post by PigsnieLite on Sept 7, 2010 3:27:04 GMT -5
The Evool Yorkie, Plastic Bag Killur, Resting after A Bloody Plastic bag Rampage!
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Post by sunfrog on Sept 11, 2010 17:19:57 GMT -5
I love these commercials!
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Post by dragrat on Sept 12, 2010 0:55:07 GMT -5
Two extremes put together.. Simple carrot mixed with extreme action.. Might work for many people how haven't seen a carrot before.. Haven't seen it here in oz.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Sept 12, 2010 3:21:32 GMT -5
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Post by Avril on May 14, 2011 5:31:05 GMT -5
Deadly diet of marine plastic kills seabirds Andrew Darby, Hobart, The Sydney Morning Herald. May 14, 2011
Problem ... above, Dr Jennifer Lavers collects plastic on Lord Howe Island. Photo: Ian Hutton
Read more: www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/deadly-diet-of-marine-plastic-kills-seabirds-20110513-1emff.html#ixzz1MJze1uFT
FOR years a remote patch of the North Pacific has served as a benchmark of global marine plastic pollution - and now it appears we have our own.
Seabirds which forage in the Tasman Sea are mistaking plastic for food, eating it and perishing on Lord Howe Island.
''The problem is here - in our backyard,'' a zoologist, Jennifer Lavers, said.
Large amounts of plastic are being recovered from flesh-footed shearwaters on Lord Howe. In the latest survey, one bird's stomach contained more than 200 pieces and others held more than 50.
The sharp-edged fragments tear internal organs and toxic substances bind to the plastic. Mercury, which is toxic to birds at four parts per million, was found in the shearwaters at up to 30,000 ppm, according to Dr Lavers.
The bird's numbers are plummeting on Lord Howe, once an Australian stronghold. Dr Lavers, of the Tasmanian Museum, said in last month's survey 95 per cent of nesting shearwaters had some plastic in their stomachs and it was hard to find living chicks.
Other seabird deaths linked to plastic are also emerging around our coastline as the UN Environment Program calls for intensified research on its impacts and Birds Australia warns it must be treated as a serious threat.
The first clear evidence of the scale of the problem came with the discovery of the ''North Pacific garbage patch'' - a gyre, or giant circular current, north of Hawaii where Asian and North American plastics gather.
Most of the marine life that dies there falls to the sea floor unchecked, but laysan albatross brought plastic back to island nests, where both adults and their chicks died.
Stark images of laysan skeletons full of plastic became symbolic of the garbage patch, and struck a chord with the Lord Howe naturalist Ian Hutton.
In his walks through island forests, where the shearwaters nest in burrows, he said he started to come upon more plastic. When he began to examine the stomach contents of live birds, most contained plastic too.
Dr Lavers joined Mr Hutton in 2007 for surveys and and has been returning annually year. ''It's just so heart-breaking to go back year after year and see the problem gradually get worse,'' she said.
An initial suspicion that the migratory shearwaters might have brought plastic with them when they flew down from the North Pacific was eliminated.
''When we examined their stomachs on arrival in September they were clean - not a single piece,'' she said. ''We know they forage from Lord Howe in the Tasman Sea off the coasts of NSW, Victoria and Tasmania. A few months later we are finding them full of plastic.''
The shearwater population on Lord Howe has at least halved since the 1970s. Even so, in a good year 50 per cent of burrows contained chicks. ''This year we checked more than 200 nests and we found six chicks - one of them dead,'' Dr Lavers said. ''We have to ask: 'is this just a bad year, or is this population tanking?'.''
At the same time cases of bird deaths linked to plastics are growing around the coast.
This week a giant petrel, which roams from the Antarctic to the Tasman Sea, floundered ashore at Lakes Entrance in eastern Victoria and died.
A Bairnsdale vet, Jason Wong, said he found a piece of plastic blocking its crop, and styrofoam in its stomach. He said he routinely finds plastic in other dead seabirds too.
The UN Environment Program in its Yearbook for 2011 described marine plastics as a new toxic time bomb. It said that in addition to entangling wildlife, or being mistaken for food, floating plastics served to accumulate and concentrate chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenols (PCBs) and the pesticide DDT.
Read more: www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/deadly-diet-of-marine-plastic-kills-seabirds-20110513-1emff.html#ixzz1MJy9Q65r
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Post by Frito Freddie on May 14, 2011 13:14:16 GMT -5
That's pretty sad. Does Australia have an active green community to help clean up beaches?
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Post by shoegirl on May 14, 2011 17:10:20 GMT -5
That is horrible that the birds are eating marine plastic and dying I think Marine garbage is a huge worldwide problem. Here we have volunteer groups that clean up our local beaches (ocean and lakes) several times a year. There is also a volunteer dive team that goes under water looking for garbage. I think they only go once a year though, which I am sure is not often enough.
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Post by Avril on May 14, 2011 17:54:37 GMT -5
That's pretty sad. Does Australia have an active green community to help clean up beaches? We do, and since 1989 thanks to Ian Kiernan and Kim McKay, who started the Clean Up Australia and then the Clean Up the World Campaigns , there is a great deal more awareness. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Up_AustraliaBut these photodegradable plastics that are mentioned in the article are old and in such tiny pieces they can't be picked up.
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Post by PigsnieLite on May 14, 2011 19:15:13 GMT -5
I dont go near beaches. I dont like beaches. The British coastline is not pretty.
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Post by Avril on May 14, 2011 23:22:50 GMT -5
It's amazing how much rubbish ends up in the ocean through First World drainage and sewage systems.
Facts & Information on Litter, Litter Everywhere:
Lifespan of commonly littered items: * Glass Bottle ~ Approx 1 million years * Cigarette butt ~2-5 years * Nylon fabric ~ 30-40 years * Painted wood stake ~ 13 years + Source: California Waste Management Bulletin / Keep California Beautiful Ventura, CA volunteers picked up 229,928 cigarette butts from California�s coastal and inland waterways in 2007.
Facts: ~ Cigarette litter is deadly to wildlife on land, which mistake the filters for food. Many butts left on sidewalks and streets wash into storm drains, which take them to the ocean and other waterways. Marine animals eat the litter, think they are full, then die of starvation. ~ Children who find and ingest more than one cigarette, or more than three cigarette butts may show symptoms of nicotine poisoning. ~ Cigarette filters are not biodegradable. Many contain plastics (not cotton as in the past) and can take up to five years to break down, leaking toxins into land and water environments. Source: City of Ventura Integrated Waste Management Division
Plastic is not biodegradable and very little of it (less than 4%) is recycled. Because it is durable and light-weight, plastic debris travels over vast distances and accumulates on beaches and in the ocean. The majority of marine debris is plastic. In the Central North Pacific Gyre, pieces of plastic outweigh surface zooplankton by a factor of 6 to 1. Fish and seabirds mistake plastic for food. Plastic debris release chemical additives and plasticizers into the ocean. Source: Alglita Marine Research Foundation
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Post by Avril on Apr 20, 2012 19:44:06 GMT -5
Sunfrog, don't eat any fish from polluted waterways. You may turn into Sandrafrog. Chemicals may be cause of gender bending fish Ben Cubby April 21, 2012, The Sydney Morning Herald.
Read more: www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/chemicals-may-be-cause-of-gender-bending-fish-20120420-1xccp.html#ixzz1sdBmM345
Traces of human contraceptives ... the Cooks River at Tempe. Photo: Jon Reid
SYNTHETIC chemicals being released into rivers and bays around the coast could be forcing fish to become more feminine, researchers say.
Traces of human contraceptives and other chemicals have been detected in over a dozen waterways, including the Cooks River and the Alexandra Canal in Sydney, according to a series of national studies.
Overseas research has demonstrated correlations between the release of the hormone oestrogen and the feminisation of male fish and the next step is to investigate potential links here.
''There are lots of results and clearly there are lots of different chemicals out there - but at this stage we don't have the data to measure specific impacts on fish,'' said Stuart Khan, a University of NSW water researcher. ''Until we have it, it will be tough to link cause and effect.''
While water contaminated by human pharmaceuticals usually passes through treatment plants before it re-enters the natural environment, not all chemicals are removed.
Some fish species overseas have been observed having their gender suppressed when exposed to oestrogen, while in other species male fish have been stimulated to produce chemicals normally associated with female fish pregnancy.
Australia's leading water researchers met in 2007 and the outcome was the ''Black Mountain declaration'' - an agreement to co-operate and work out the effects of chemicals on the natural environment.
''There is widespread compelling evidence that a range of natural and synthetic chemicals, which are present in the global environment, are continuing to impact wildlife by a variety of mechanisms that directly or indirectly disrupt the endocrine systems of some species including birds, fish, mammals, reptiles and molluscs,'' the group's communique said.
The result was a series of overlapping studies by universities and water utilities, supported by industry groups and the Australian Research Council, to find out what was passing out of Australia's bathrooms, kitchens and factories and into rivers.
''It's now nearing the end and we can look to the next stage to look at the impacts on fish and other animals,'' Dr Khan said.
It is not just fish being affected. A German study, published in February, found that male frogs that had been exposed to treated sewage effluent containing low levels of synthetic oestrogen had changed their mating calls.
Instead of the trilling sound indicating sexual interest, the male frogs were issuing a lower, rasping mating call that female frogs found more repellent, the Berlin researchers found.
This week, scientists at the University of Exeter in Britain announced that they had created a breed of genetically-modified fish that glow in the dark when in the presence of oestrogen.
The modified zebrafish appear to glow green in different parts of their bodies when they confront the pollutant, helping researchers diagnose the effects on individual organs.
''This is a very exciting development in the international effort to understand the impact of oestrogenic chemicals on the environment and human health,'' the lead researcher, Charles Tyler, told the BBC.
The Australian research project has not found any evidence of current or potential impacts on human health. The findings of several different studies into hormone pollutants in waterways will be published later this year.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Apr 20, 2012 20:33:57 GMT -5
Thats why I only eat the British species called Goldus Fishus Stickus.
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Post by Avril on Apr 20, 2012 20:50:00 GMT -5
Made from cod, haddock or pillock, oops, no, pollock, full of mercury and all the poisons fish lower in the food chain have ingested. According to wikipedia, 'cod feed on molluscs, crabs, starfish, worms, squid, and small fish. Haddock feed primarily on small invertebrates, although larger members of the species may occasionally consume fish. 'Interestingly, pollock and other species of cod are plagued by parasites, one of which is the cod worm, Lernaeocera branchialis, indeed a copepod crustacean. At its final stage, the female parasite, with fertilized eggs, clings to the gills of the fish and metamorphoses into a plump, sinusoidal, wormlike body, with a coiled mass of egg strings at the rear.' Good to know what we're really eating.
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