3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 2018
Huge sea-life sculptures made from
OCEAN’S PLASTIC TRASH
A giant jellyfish sculpture made from
fishing buoys and cut-up water bottles
that washed up on the Oregon Coast.
AP Photos/Janet McConnaughey
‘Greta the Great White Shark,’ one of six huge sea-life sculptures from a project called Washed Ashore: Art to Save the
Sea, is viewed at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans.
Plastics were
collected on
Oregon Coast
By JANET
McCONNAUGHEY
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS —
Huge sculptures of sea life
are dotted about New Orle-
ans’ aquarium and zoo, all
of them made from plastic
trash that washed ashore.
There’s a great white shark
made partly of bottle caps
and beach toys and a jelly-
fish made mostly of cut-up
water bottles.
The artwork, part of
a project called Washed
Ashore: Art to Save the Sea,
is the creation of Angela
Haseltine Pozzi, who
started making the pieces
after seeing plastic heaped
by the waves onto Ore-
gon’s southern coast. Pozzi
was in the town of Bandon,
where her grandparents had
lived, mourning her first
husband’s death.
“I’d known its beaches
all my life,” she said. “I
went to the ocean to heal
and found that the ocean
needed healing.”
She wants the scale of
her creations to make people
realize just how much plastic
gets into the ocean — and to
act on that knowledge. Signs
next to each piece suggest
simple ways to reduce the
problem, such as not using
plastic straws, reusing water
bottles, and picking up other
people’s litter.
“Every piece of trash
picked up and properly dis-
posed of is a piece that will
not cause harm to local
environments and animals,”
states the sign for “Greta the
Great White Shark.”
Pozzi’s aim is art that
is “beautiful, and a little
horrifying.”
An army of volunteers
in Oregon — about 10,000
since Pozzi started in 2010
— help her collect, prepare
and assemble the beach
trash into art. One of their
wash-basins for plastic is a
bathtub also found on the
beach.
She now has more than
70 pieces in three exhibi-
tions currently traveling
the U.S., and has requests
from overseas. Her work
has been displayed at zoos,
aquariums and botani-
cal gardens, and she has
permanent exhibits at the
Smithsonian Museum of
Natural History and a gal-
lery in Bandon.
The Audubon Aquarium
of the Americas is showing
six sculptures, while one of
a puffin is on display at the
Audubon Zoo; more pieces
will be added to both loca-
tions in October.
In addition to the shark
and two jellyfish sculp-
tures, there’s a walk-
through whale ribcage
made with bucket lids, bot-
tles, buoys and bait traps;
a marlin with a beak made
of fishing rods; and percus-
sive “Musical Seaweed.”
That statue’s long leaves
include metal and plastic
bottle caps strung on wires
so they rattle when a leaf is
hit lightly.
Robert and Lauryn Geo-
sits of Mandeville, Loui-
siana, were visiting with
their three children.
“This is such a great
idea for people to visual-
ize just how much trash is
in the ocean,” said Lauryn
Geosits.
Her husband read from
a sign while their baby
slept in a stroller and Chel-
sea, 7, and Preston, 8,
searched the shark for the
items he named: “There’s a
toy car bumper, bottle caps,
beach toys, a lighter …”
Asked about the strang-
Angela Haseltine Pozzi, of Bandon, describes
her art project made from plastic trash.
est piece she’s used, Pozzi
said: “When you’ve pro-
cessed more than 21 tons
of debris into more than 70
pieces of art you’ve seen
pretty much everything.”
“One of the most shock-
ing are bleach bottles that
have bite marks from fish,”
Pozzi said.
A fish made entirely of
fish-bitten plastic is among
the pieces to be added in
October.
Most of the pieces com-
ing to New Orleans this
fall are on display at Shedd
Aquarium in Chicago,
including a river otter, a
seahorse and a clownfish in
an anemone.
“We are very sad to see
them go, because they’ve
been very successful,”
said Tynnetta Qaiyim, vice
president for planning and
design at Shedd.
She said the response
has been far beyond what
she expected, both in the
number of pictures patrons
have posted on social
media and in increased
conservation awareness.
Qaiyim had thought
the exhibit might be more
interesting to coastal resi-
dents, but said it also con-
nects Midwesterners to the
Great Lakes.
“People are talking
about plastics and the Great
Lakes and the waterways
in a way that we were hop-
ing for but not really sure
it would happen,” she said.
In New Orleans, the
sculptures are in a variety
of places and will stay up
through April.
“Look! A jellyfish!
A jellyfish!” Elliot Har-
old of Chalmette shouted
as he approached a stair-
way below one of Pozzi’s
creations.
“It’s the only thing
he’s liked all day,” said
his grandmother, Gera
Mendel.
Conservation groups sue Oregon to help protect tiny seabird
Clash over the
marbled murrelet
By STEVEN DUBOIS
Associated Press
PORTLAND — Conserva-
tion groups sued the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wild-
life Commission on Thursday
for failing to strengthen pro-
tections for the marbled mur-
relet, tiny seabirds that venture
inland to raise their young and
depend on old-growth forests
for nesting.
The groups petitioned the
commission in 2016 to reclas-
sify the bird’s status from
threatened to endangered
under the state Endangered
Species Act. A listing as endan-
gered would require the state
to develop a management plan
and survival guidelines for the
birds that are about 9 inches
long and weigh 7 to 8 ounces.
The commission denied the
petition in June by a 4-2 vote,
after hearing testimony from
officials in timber-rich coastal
counties who worried about the
economic impact of restricting
logging to save the birds. Com-
missioners opposed to reclassi-
fication said researchers from
Oregon State University are
in the early stages of a 10-year
study about the seabird, and
they wanted to wait for results.
The defeat was tough for
conservationists because the
commission in February had
accepted a recommendation to
grant the petition.
The marbled murrelet was
listed as threatened under the
federal Endangered Species
Act in 1992 and the Oregon
Endangered Species Act in
1995. The species is state-en-
dangered in Washington and
California.
In 2015, there were believed
to be about 11,000 marbled
murrelets in Oregon, but sur-
vey numbers are uncertain
because the birds have only
been counted at sea and are
extremely elusive in the forest.
Experts believe the population
has declined by more than 50
percent from historic highs.
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their sincere thanks and appreciation
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And thank you to you, the public,
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