Protei is the brain child of Cesar Harada, who we were very fortunate to meet up with while he was on his way up the coast of Africa. In 2010 Cesar quite his dream job and moved to New Orleans to develop a more efficient way to soak up oil. He designed a highly maneuverable, flexible boat, capable of cleaning large tracts of oil quickly. But rather than turning a profit, he has opted to open-source the design.
We are now into the thick of producing Moving Sushi into a documentary, and as a result our world has become immersed in sound bites,voice overs, colour, design andstorytelling. In this process we came acros thisdocumentary that is anything but traditional.Receivinggreat reviews It's a near-wordless, almost abstract depiction of an 80-foot groundfishing boat heading out of New Bedford, Mass. A mesh of sounds, with no voice over direction- just images of a world on board and around a fishing boat out at sea. Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, Taylor is director of Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab, where they explore art through the sensoryexperienceof being inside of aparticularculture."We still wanted to create this multiplicity of perspectives that would relativize the human," he says. Perspectives that "would make the spectator rethink humanity's relationship to nature, in relationship to a plethora of other beings, of other animals, of other kind of inanimate objects — the elements, the earth, the sky, the sea, the boat, mechanization, fish, crustaceans, starfish — everything that is involved in the ecology of what's going on in industrial fishing today."
Just the trailer alone is an overwhelming sensory experience, take a look for yourself.
We are very proud to announce that Mike has been voted in as a member of the Explorers Club.
With its international multidisciplinary professional society the club encourages intrepid, envelope-pushing adventurers to assemble and share information about the earth, oceans, air, space, ancient civilizations and species, science and to promote conservation. Since its inception in 1904, the Club has served as a meeting point and unifying force for explorers and scientists worldwide.
The sweet smell of success!
Since setting off in November 2012, the East African Marine Transect team have been through and survived a verydifficultexpedition. This was a hard fought expedition, requiring everyone to dig deep into reserves at times we were not even certain we had. To say this wasn’t a pleasure cruise would be an understatement, a big one.
Moving Sushi is currently on expedition till the end of March. We are travelling up the East Coast of Africa ,by boat, doing the longest underwater transect survey across South Africa, Mozambique,Tanzania and Kenya.
For details of our latest adventure go to www.marinetransect.org , or follow our feeds on facebook and twitter
“it’s not that we use technology, we live technology “ – Godfrey Reggio
What really makes technology so fun is it’s ability to take an idea and evolve it into action. Don’t get me wrong that is probably also it’s downfall, the scope it has to be both terrific and terrifying at the same time, to be able to create an incredible idea or a terrible idea into being.
On our expedition we have two key aspects of technology that I think are the former, Stereo Video and ROV. While our boat sits in a small sate of disrepair I think this is an opportune time to explain the kind of tech we are using on the expedition and why.
Read the rest of the post at Marine Transect
Setting Sail
Currently we are sitting in a backpacker in a rather damp Durban, the boat moored and covered in all manner of paraphernalia- just hoping we will be ready to set sail on Monday, our d-d day for heading out to try and avoid hurricane season up past Mozambique. Our team is scattered far and wide, from Cape Town, to Durban to the US.
Expeditions are never an easy, no matter how much it is slightly romanticised. One comment we often get when we talk about what we are doing is “oh boy, sound’s like a amazing adventure/you are going to have so much fun/I wish I could come along “- and this is all only partly true.
Read the rest of the post at Marine Transect
Beneath the warm coastal waters of tropical and subtropical East Africa lies some of the richest coral reefs in the world. Spanning many hundreds of kilometers they are home to an incredible array of fish communities and support millions of people living and surviving off the coastline.
Our first expedition, one of five over the next five years has seen an team of plucky andadventurous young scientists,entrepreneursand film makers travelling for four months across up the coast of East Africa collecting underwater data through diving transects. We want the data collected to be used from education purposes, high schools, universities, through to NGO, and governments and MPA managers. The users are essentially unlimited. The value is in the exposure that is across platforms, from scientific to social media and all in between. Meaningful, useful and accessible datawe think can inspiresolutions, strategies and positive and constructive outcomesfor East African coral reef fishes, where anyone can have access.
It's not a documentary on what is wrong with the East African coral reef ecosystem. It's an expedition to provide essential baseline data and solutions for management and conservation.
We envision this becoming a globally deployable strategy where each coastline or major coral reef network around the globe can be studied in such a way. A standardized and repeatablesurvey tool means it can be done year after year if need be.
This trip is not just about exploration- it is about looking at the relationship between humanity, our marine environment, science, technology and cultures in order to shift in the way we build or begin to build our conservation networks on coral reefs.
Read the rest of the post here at www.marinetransect.org
Bag It has been garnering awards at film festivals across the states. What started as a documentary about plastic bags evolved into a wholesale investigation into plastics and their effect on our waterways, oceans, and even our bodies.
Film maker Jeb Berrier began exploring the effects of plastic bags, opting to stop using them as his wife enters pregnancy.
After conducting research with the help of an environmental scientist, he then begins to analyze all the environmental problems and health problems that plastic is creating in our world.
An interesting look into how plastic affects land ecosystems, the marine environment and the human body
SASC is a small non-profit shark research group found in the harbor of Hermanus, Western Cape. Founded in 2007 they now conduct a variety of lab- and field-based research projects, ranging from elasmobranch biology & ecology to reef monitoring.
Dedicated to promoting a holistic approach to conservation and management of marine resources in South Africa their research projects focus not only on elasmobranchs (sharks, skates, rays), but also on marine ecology and the socio-economics of fisheries.
They have two really interesting programs namely the Marine Ecology Research Programme and the RECfishSA program (to understand the impacts and importance of recreational elasmobranch fishing in South Africa)
They also work tirelessly to develop a multi-faceted approach to improving understanding, conservation and management of an iconic, near-threatened shark species in southern Africa, with their work in the Breede River having been featured in numerous media including television, Internet and newsprint.
http://www.sharkconservancy.org/index.html
Twitter @SASC3
