What: CaribbeanSEA Beach BLAST
Date: March 9th, 2012
Time: 7pm – 11pm
Place: The Mill, 1601 Gulf Street, Chattanooga, TN
Cost: $50 / person

Say goodbye to winter and hello to the beach!! Our party features a buffet dinner and open bar with special Caribbean food and drinks, plus dancing, limbo, and live and silent auctions! Attire is beach casual but feel free to dress up or down as you desire.. just make sure you can limbo in whatever you choose! It’s going to be a fun night, so join us and bring your friends along!

Special thanks to this year’s sponsors: Chattanooga Times Free Press / GetOut Magazine, Signal Wind, Hamilton County Water Quality, Tennessee Aquarium, EPB, Contemporary Portraits, and Leisure Time Dive.

I find the reactions to this article very interesting.  People are claiming bio-terrorism and saying that the workers should wear biohazard suits and all this nonsense… Now, let me tell you something: I bet you $10 I could find E. coli in your own apartment/house/abode.  If I were keen, I bet I could find it on your body (I will decline the opportunity though, thank you).  So, are you a dirty bioterrorist too? Well, you may be a little dirty but the already overcrowded prisons probably won’t taking you in today for these crimes. And your paltry bioterrorist attempts could be killed with a little bit of bleach too. 

E. coli is horribly misunderstood by the general public.  We hear that it has killed a couple of people and outbreaks force us to throw out our otherwise perfect vegetables, and all of a sudden E. coli is an evil villain.  (Hey, I’ve heard people die from dihydrogen monoxide sometimes too… we should probably wipe out that and E. coli both, right?)  Thing is though, that without it, we wouldn’t survive! It is one of the bacteria that lives in our guts and actually helps protect us from the real bad pathogens! Most of the time when we talk about an E. coli outbreak, the fact is that the presence of E. coli, which is a pretty sturdy little booger outside of the human body, often just indicates to us that the really bad bacteria are likely to be out there.  Yes, some strains of E. coli can be deadly – usually only if you are immuno-compromised in some way or the other, but most E. coli strains are harmless.  

Escherichia coli is actually an amazing bacteria for scientists because it is easy to culture, split and study.  Because it lives for a decent amount of time outside of the gut and it is so easy to culture, we are able to do simple tests on many water bodies to see if they are contaminated with human or mammal waste. If we didn’t have E. coli, we would be forced to do complicated cultures at specific temperatures in labs to find the same information… instead, I can grow the E. coli cultures in my bedroom and tell you within 48 hours whether or not a water source is going to cause you intestinal distress if you drink it. 

Anyway, if these people with the 25 vials in their fridge are bioterrorists, then I could probably be proclaimed a national hero for reporting a couple hundred bioterrorists with massive stockpiles of not only wild E. coli, but also other (actually) harmful fecal pathogens that has been proven to be entering directly into our water supplies. And unlike the E. coli in the 25 vials in the fridge, the ones in our water are actually of concern to the general public.  MSNBC, call me.  We’ll talk about some front page news worthy E. coli contamination!

Exotic Caye Beach Resort in Ambergis Caye, Belize is donating 50% of all room bookings made between January 22 thru February 21 to support hands-on environmental education programs. CaribbeanSEA and the Canadian NGO Direct Abundance will use these funds to offer educational programs about coral reef and mangrove conservation, safe water and sewage discharge solutions in San Mateo, Belize.

Here’s their website!
http://directabundance.com/2012/01/22/be-a-belize-vacation-superhero/

I have come back to the Dominican Republic for the next 2 weeks, where I am working with a couple of different projects (of course), but one that I am very proud of personally is my first ever attempt at graphic design! Behold, I made a poster to promote sustainable fishing! It was approved by the DR Ministry of Environment and will be handed out to restaurants during times of la veda (the ban- when you can’t have those fish) to explain why customers can’t have those items at that time. If you can read Spanish, it’s pretty informative!

So when we come across grossly misinformed charts like the following, we also hope it’s a joke, and yet it rarely is. It’s things like this that remind us how important it is to educate kids and adults alike about the water cycle and conservation.

SEA Currents November 2011

Check it out to read about some of our ongoing projects, including Maria’s updates from Saint Lucia, collaboration in the Dominican Republic with utility provider Haina, and our local TenneSEA stormwater education and Best Management Practices work. I say “some” because there’s so much going on right now, we didn’t have room to fit everything!

I know some of the pages are really messed up right now , but please bear with us! We’re working on it! In the meantime, if you are unclear of something, please contact us and ask questions!  Or if you are better at website stuff than we are, also contact us! We would be more than happy to have your help!

USA Contact Information:
809 Kentucky Avenue
Signal Mountain, TN 37377 USA
Phone: 423.413.0471
Fax: 423.267.4616

St. Lucia Contact Information:
Desir Avenue, Sans Soucis
P.O. Box 5907
Castries, St. Lucia, W.I.
Phone: 758.520.1970 

Email: info@caribbean-sea.org

I’m debating on whether or not I should tell the kids I am teaching about this…
*ppftph*… What! Miss! I was just telling a secret!

(video link: http://youtu.be/OcwCYIfm6eA)