The Marine Mammal Center Participates in Safe Seas 2006

Oil spill response and readiness exercises increase disaster preparedness.


Sausalito, CA (PRWEB) August 9, 2006 -- Today, The Marine Mammal Center, along with local, state and federal agencies, will participate in Safe Seas 2006 – an oil spill response and readiness exercise that takes place in the Gulf of the Farallones and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries waters near San Francisco. The goal of Safe Seas 2006 is to demonstrate techniques and technologies used to protect marine and coastal resources and to develop individual skills in contingency planning and emergency response in the event of an oil spill disaster at sea. The three-day disaster drill, lead by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is the largest of its kind to be held in U.S. waters. The Marine Mammal Center will respond to simulated oiled marine mammals because of a hypothetical massive oil spill 12 miles off the San Francisco coast.

“We are the only marine mammal rescue unit between Mendocino County and San Luis Obispo County that is ready to respond to stranding emergency response events involving marine mammals," said Shelbi Stoudt, Stranding Manager at The Marine Mammal Center. "We take these drills very seriously and see them as a way to improve our own response protocols.”

Participants will respond to a scenario involving a collision of a bulk-freight cargo ship arriving in to San Francisco Bay, with that of a barge, resulting in 300,000 gallons of oil to spill into The Bay. Thousands of multicolored, biodegradable drift cards will be disbursed to represent oil making its way to shore. The Marine Mammal Center’s stranding and rescue team will patrol beaches at Crissy Field, Baker Beach and Fort Funston to look for these cards as part of its protocol in locating marine mammals that have stranded on beaches. The simulated disaster outlined would threaten the Gulf of the Farallones, Cordell Bank and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Pt. Reyes National Seashore, and the economic and ecological resources dependant on San Francisco Bay.

More than 300 people from multiple agencies will participate in drill, training, field operations, oceanographic surveys, and incident command post activities. The agencies participating include NOAA, the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Air Force Reserve, Marine Spill Response Corporation, Alameda County Sheriff’s Department and Bodega Marine Laboratory.

The Safe Seas 2006 exercises also provided an opportunity to refresh skills through educational short courses. Dr. Frances Gulland, Director of Veterinary Science at The Marine Mammal Center, Dr. Mike Zaccardi with the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, and Dr. Teri Rowles with NOAA’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, taught courses involving protocols in wildlife capture and care during an oil spill response. They also outlined techniques and guidelines in handling live and dead wildlife with infectious diseases.

About The Marine Mammal Center
Headquartered in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in Sausalito, California, The Marine Mammal Center is a nonprofit hospital dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation of ill and injured marine mammals, and to the research of their health and diseases. Volunteers and staff have treated more than 12,000 California sea lions, elephant seals, porpoises, and other marine mammals, along 600-miles of coastline stretching from Mendocino County to San Luis Obispo County. Staff and volunteers uniquely combine rehabilitation with scientific discovery and education programs to advance the understanding of marine mammal health, ocean health and conservation.
On the web: http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/

Plant Trees Worldwide in a Click -- Adoptree.Com is Pioneering an Entertaining Ecological Online Service

Adoptree.com is a new and adventurous endeavor that began in August 2006 in Russia, at Lake Baikal. It offers any Internet user worldwide the opportunity to name a tree, have it planted near the lake and to track its further life for ages on a regular basis.

Irkutsk, Russia (PRWEB) August 15, 2006 -- StartingthisAugust,athttp://www.adoptree.com/, you can have a tree planted near Lake Baikal in Siberia and then receive regular updates on its growth. This new enterprise provides fruitful experience for people of all ages worldwide who love nature,innovation, and fun. Adoptree.com is a project pursued by a group of creative individuals from Siberia -- graduates of Irkutsk State University.

The idea is to create a global Adoptree.com community involved in creation and development of international parks in all parts of the world. Their first spot is Lake Baikal, which is known for having the cleanest water and is the deepest lake in the world.

A visitor of the website first chooses a tree of the local flora. The tree might be even the one from The Red Book. Botanists then plant it on the territory of Lake Baikal resorts and set a named plaque nearby. The designated person receives a certificate by snail mail and regular reports and photos by e-mail. He or she may visit the tree someday and enjoy extra items and services, provided by adoptree.com.

Dmitry Germanov, the leader of adoptree.com project, says, "What we actually want is simply to help people be closer to amazing natural places worldwide,and provide them with up-to-date tools for favourable environment development and change. Tree planting is a true care of nature and unique online experience as well!

"Adoptree.com's aim is a global project offering ecological, educational, and thrilling adventure for the community via perpetual innovation, growth, and relationship building.

About Exotic-City LTD:
The company pursuing Adoptree.com was founded by a group of creative students and their instructor in e-commerce. Started as a course work project, it has since become their primary business and concern.

GOOD SCHOOL ATTENDANCE EARNS CAMBODIAN SIXTH GRADERS

PEPY, an adventure cycle tour and humanitarian aid organization, announces the launch of its Bike-to-School Program, giving bicycles to students in Cambodia who have shown a commitment to education through high attendance rates. “Over the course of many school visits on our Cambodian cycle tours, we learned that after elementary school, students were often unable to continue on to secondary school due to the long distances they had to travel to attend classes. We researched more and found that rural students are 60% more likely to attend secondary school if their family owns a bike. The Bike-to-School Program is PEPY’s way of helping keep bright kids in school,” said PEPY Ride co-founder, Daniela Papi.

Since 2005 PEPY has been bringing travelers to places they may have only visited in dreams, giving people a chance to intimately experience the beauty of Cambodia’s people and nature as they ride through rural villages like the locals do, on a bicycle. Now, with the help of its Bike-to-School program, PEPY hopes to further extend the reach of its educational contributions. Each $100 donation buys more than a bicycle, it buys a life-changing opportunity for a motivated student. “By encouraging more students to continue their education through high school, the Bike-to-School program is a real opportunity to help communities break the cycle of poverty,” says Daniela.

Many people donate money to support development projects they will never visit, but with PEPY, people can go where their money goes. In the past year, over 80 travelers from 14 countries have visited the organization’s first project, The PEPY Ride School, and enjoyed supporting educational and building projects.

Travelers love seeing first hand the difference they can make when they visit a developing country: former rider Julia Davies, age 33, said after PEPY Ride experience: "This trip has been invigorating, gritty, and fun. It is amazing to think we touched over 2,000 lives at the schools we visited along the way. There is something to be said for the satisfaction of arriving at your destination, tired, dirty and happy. The highlight for me was the combination of team spirit, camaraderie and adventure that developed while connecting with the people in Cambodia.”

PEPY’s tours provide travelers and locals with life-changing experiences. Each adventure trip fee includes a separate, tax deductible, donation fee that supports the ongoing humanitarian projects in Cambodia visited on the tour. Itineraries range from high intensity multi-week cycle trips to week-long volunteer projects focusing on a specific developing area. Each trip is designed to introduce participants to development work in Cambodia and provide an exciting, authentic experience of Cambodian culture and hospitality.

For more information, to make a donation, or to sign up for any of the upcoming volunteer trips, please visit www.pepyride.org. To donate funds in support of this trip, please visit www.firstgiving.com/pepyride.

The PEPY Ride is a New York State registered Non-for-Profit Corporation founded in 2005 to support educational projects in developing countries and disaster relief areas with a focus on the relationship between the environment and our health. Emphasizing education through action, where participants both learn from and give back to the communities they visit, PEPY Tours organizes volunteer and adventure travel in developing countries and redevelopment areas suffering from natural disasters.