Last night I went to UPS to se an excellent, professional movie, the first of The Ikkatsu Project. The movie is ³The Roadless Coast² and shows three skilled Sea Kayakers doing transects along the coastline of the Olympic Peninsula from Neah Bay around Tatoosh Island and down to Ruby Beach on a three-weeks expedition. It¹s a beautiful and interesting movie. Their assignment was to locate, photograph, bag up, and prepare for removal, all the plastic debris they could find, especially noting the Japanese debris that has come across the Pacific to our shores from the Tsunami in Japan. They did lots of measurements, photos, etc. (Thanks Prof. Peter Hodum) To emphasize the problems of plastic being eaten by sea creatures, there was a big table of specimens from UPS¹ Museum of Natural History -- seabirds of every size and shape....wonderful display from this historic collection. (Thanks Prof. Peter Wimberger) The Ikkatsu Project is dedicated to EXPLORE, EDUCATE PROTECT the environment. This rugged 3-man trip to collect plastic flotsam was its beginning. Seabirds are dying in great numbers from eating plastic ‹ especially Styrofoam, which crumbles up to look like bits of food. AND it never goes away ‹ stays in the environment forever. Their flyer says; > Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. > Every year, Americans make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of > Texas. > The average American office worker goes through around 500 disposable cups > every year. > In the U.S. every second 1500 single-use water bottles are sold. > There are, on average, 47,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of ocean. > www.ikkatsuproject.org http://www.facebook.com/TheIkkatsuProject > What has our species done to our earthly habitat!!! Helen Engle