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November 30, 2010

School Garden Magic!

By, Tiana Kamen

SG1 Mayor Carvalho and the Furlough Friday Task Force, YOU ROCK!!

Last month the Mayor and 16 county workers got down and dirty at the Kilauea Elementary School Garden on their day off! We couldn't let the weeds have too much fun in the keiki's garden!

Dedicated volunteers, Benjamin Redman and Maren and Mose Orion, led the Kilauea School Garden "makeover" and organized the attendance of the Mayor's Furlough Friday Task Force. Beautiful new beds were filled with a ½ soil ½ compost mix donated by Mark Freeman and Heart and Soul Organics in Moloa'a.

Classes visited the garden throughout the day to help spread mulch on the pathways, claim their new garden beds and even plant new seedlings donated by Robin Torquati from Heaven on Earth (you can find her at the Farmer's Markets selling her beautiful plant starts!). Mayor Carvalho made sure the kids all remembered to invite him back to the garden help with their first harvest!

A big mahalo from the keiki at Kilauea Elementary School and The Kaua'i School Garden Network to all who helped bring the school garden at Kilauea Elementary back to life!!

SG2 Heart and Soul Organics has generously donated a flowing supply of his special compost mix to get EIGHT SCHOOL GARDENS GROWING on Kaua'i! If you pick up some compost or mulch from Heart and Soul, make sure you thank the crew for all of the heart and soul they have brought to the keiki through school gardens!

Kauai's School Gardens need your kokua!

Gardens at many of our keiki's schools on the island are just beginning to sprout and need your support. Whether you are a knowledgeable about gardening, Hawaiian studies, nutrition, cooking, or just want to lend a helping hand, please contact Tiana about getting involved with a school in your neighborhood. Service groups and other organizations are also welcome to become a catalyst for change and adopt-a-school garden or a fruit and veggies snack program.

The Kaua'i School Garden Network is also currently looking for the following resources to distribute to schools:

VOLUNTEERS with or without gardening or agriculture experience
DUMP TRUCKS!
Seeds and starts of native plants, fruit trees, vegetables, herbs and flowers
Manure, mulch, and other organic soil amendments
Worms
Tools (wheelbarrows, hoes, rakes, cultivators etc.)
Garden and Irrigation Supplies (Seed trays, automatic timers, irrigation piping, watering cans, nails, buckets for worms, etc.)
Cooking supplies (Camping stoves, woks, soap, sinks, utensils, knifes, general cookware, instant hot water heater)
Funding
Helping hands!!

Mahalo for helping grow our keiki and planting the seeds of our future ... one school garden at a time.

Please contact Tiana if you would like to get involved or for more information:

Tiana Kamen
Kauaʻi School Garden Network Coordinator
808.828.0685 ext 12
tiana@malamakauai.org

Recruiting businesses for GREEN MAP

Malama Kaua`i Green Maps are slated to be printed during the first or second quarter of next year and will be distributed at multiple locations across the island. Find out if your business qualifies for membership in the Green Business Program which guarantees placement in the upcoming version of the map.

Send an e-mail to coco@malamakauai.org for more information.

Let's help make Kaua`i a more sustainable place to live and spend our money.

Only a few garden plots left ...

Grow your own food at the Kilauea Community Garden. E-mail coco@malamakauai.org for more information.

Open ocean aquaculture

can be destructive

By, Neil Frazer

Look out, Hawai`i! Open ocean aquaculture (OOA), also known as sea-cage farming, has many problems.

OOA of carnivorous fish is worse than over-fishing. Production of one pound of farmed tuna requires the oil from over 10 pounds of wild-caught fish, usually anchovies, menhaden and sardines, which are an important source of protein in Third World countries and an important source of omega-3 fatty acids in developed countries. Farmers use as much soy as they can, but tuna can't survive without fish oil.

Anchovy, menhaden and sardines are important "cleaners" of the ocean. When these plankton-eating fish are over-harvested, jellyfish are released from competition for food, and they proliferate.

Farmed carnivores have higher levels of organic pollutants than wild-caught fish of the same species, and they have lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids because farmers use as much soy as possible in their feed.

Sewage from sea-cage fish is like human sewage in its effects on the ocean. OOA supporters say that dilution is the solution, but this only pushes the problem somewhere else.

OOA promotes disease in wild populations by acting as a reservoir of infection. When a wild fish falls ill, it starves or is eaten by predators, but sea-cage fish are fed and protected from predators, so when they fall ill they remain alive, shedding pathogen into the water. Pathogens are carried for miles by currents, and the rise in pathogen level causes wild fish to decline. Disease promotion by OOA goes unnoticed at low densities, and farmers ritually deny it, even where the evidence is overwhelming.

The Oahu moi-farming operation started by Randy Cates and Virginia Enos is exceptional because they chose a schooling fish with large scales and raised it outside of its customary surf-zone environment, away from wild moi. The UH scientists who helped Cates and Enos frankly admit that they lucked out in their choice of a fish. Kona Blue Water was less fortunate, and regular disease problems now have it on the road to drugs.

Escaped farm fish interbreed with wild fish, producing young with lowered rates of survival. Experienced OOA companies assume that 5 to 10 percent of their fish will escape by accident or by passing through the mesh of the cage when they are small.

Hawaiian aquaculture avoided such problems by using what is now called ecological engineering. Ocean ponds were situated in areas with edible seaweeds attractive to juvenile fish and upwelling fresh water in which fish could rid themselves of parasites. Cultured fish were as wild as juveniles, so escapes did no harm to wild stocks. Most of the cultured species were herbivorous, but a few barracuda were tolerated because Hawaiians understood their importance in disease control. Predators are not disease-specific, unlike the drugs used in OOA.

It is surprising that would-be OOA farmers like Bill Spencer ("Isle fish farming good for environment and economy," Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Nov. 21) refuse to learn from Hawaiian wisdom. Bill and his friends suffer from what scientists refer to as techno-arrogance -- the belief that modern technology makes ecology irrelevant. They remind me of the Norwegian salmon farmers who took the coast of British Columbia away from its aboriginal peoples. It'll be different here, they promised us. But it wasn't.

Volunteers needed to help endangered seabirds

Each fall the keiki of Kauai's native seabirds fly to the ocean for the first time using the moonlight on the sea to navigate their way. Unfortunately on their way to the sea, they cross lands covered with glaring lights. These endangered birds are attracted to the lights and circle them until they are exhausted and/or injured during their fall to the ground.

The number of shearwater fledglings being brought into the Humane Society has doubled this year and the staff could use help IMMEDIATELY washing kennels and helping with the birds. It's an opportunity to work with an endangered species for a few weeks. If you have the time and energy to help it would be greatly appreciated. Please contact Save Our Shearwaters at: sos@kauaihumane.org (email preferred) or 635-5117.