Storm washes away seal and turtle island home

[Catherine]

East Island, Hawaii is the home of many of the world's Hawaiian Monk Seals. It is also the nesting site of half the world's Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles. A powerful hurricane washed East Island away. An added tragedy, many sea turtle nests had not hatched yet and were washed away with the island.

https://qz.com/1436004/east-island-a-rem...o-the-sea/

Welcome to the wonderful world of catastrophic climate change. Sea levels rising will wipe out many small islands anyhow, but before that can happen warmer oceans are causing more intense storms. East Island is one of many islands that will disappear because of global warming.

For Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles and Hawaiian Monk Seals it means the loss of their homes and quite possibly the loss of their species. For many creatures the changing climate and effects of what we have done to the planet will be fatal. If we cannot and will not do something we get to watch the world we know turn into something we may not want to know.  For East Island and the Hawaiian Monks Seals and Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles the world is already a place they don't want to know.  If you are a tired seal swimming, what do you do when the place you normally rest is gone? If you are a turtle preparing to lay eggs what do you do when your nesting site is gone?
If you don't care about this, maybe you should ask yourself what you will do when something you need is gone.

[Tobi]

Hiow very sad. Those poor creatures.

Well said Catherine. The problem I thnk is people find it hard to wake up to the idea that what they do may be affecting weather patterns. And even if they do, they find it hard to change their ways and routines.
One small Earth-unfriendly thing we do may be nothing much, but multiply that by 7 billion and that will cause great damage.

It is deeply sad for the Turtles and the Seals.

[Catherine]

I can't imagine what they are going to do. The seals will search and find somewhere to rest. They have no choice. It is a little harder for the turtles. They have been laying eggs in the same place for who knows how many years. Ideal nesting sites are not so easy to find.

Who knows how many baby turtles died in the egg when the storm washed them away. They had no chance at all.  

We are doing a great many little things that together are adding up to a lot of big, serious, climate changing things.
Every one complains about the storms, the wildfires, the floods and the increasingly high tides. No one makes the connection to the many little things we do.


We can't even get people to stop using and discarding plastic bags. There are reusable bags everywhere. They sell them, they give them out, they beg people to use them. My grocery store still offers them to every customer and  many still use them.  I always say, No Thanks, the oceans already have enough bags. 

People still drive cars all over when for most trips public transit is easier anyhow. You don't have to park the bus when you get there. It is different if you live in the country or work where there in no transit. I live on a 24 hour bus route. I am a few houses from the bus stop. I can't think of any reason why someone like me would use anything but public transit. My street is lined by cars on both sides. I only know of one of them that is ecologically friendly.

People still don't recycle properly or compost properly. The city picks up the compostable material every week and provides us with special bins to keep it in between pick-ups. The stores are offering sales on LED bulbs to get people to switch over.

Ways of helping are right there in front of us, sometimes at no cost or inconvenience to us. So why isn't everyone trying their best to live green? The planet needs us all to do our best and most people just don't care. They don't see the connection and why should they be the ones to do something. We all need to do something.