Our Ocean Backyard, by Dan Haifley
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_14524691
Posted: 03/06/2010 01:30:05 AM PST
Sometimes life does imitate art. Take, for example, Mexico's Baja California peninsula, which hosts a series of murals on the walls of restaurants, schools and gas stations.
The subject of those murals is a familiar and revered one to peninsula residents -- sea turtles. A recent study indicates that this public art has had a profound impact on attitudes and behaviors toward the marine environment.
The murals include images of turtles recycling plastics or feeding on pelagic red crabs; or local residents releasing Adelita, equipped with a transmitter to follow her swim from Mexico towards Japan several years ago. These murals are billboards marking the start of turtle highway -- their migratory route across the Pacific. In my next column, I'll examine an extraordinary effort at the other end of the migratory route -- near Santa Cruz's sister city in Japan.
While turtle images appear on some of Baja's walls, their real counterparts move through nearby waters where they breed -- and are still hunted, which is why they have become a symbol of Baja's growing marine protection movement.
Tufts University student Alyssa Irizarry conducted research on what impact the murals had on residents' views about and behaviors toward the environment. The award-winning study broke new academic ground and its conclusions provided positive feedback to Mexico's conservation movement for its education work.
Mexico has a history of murals as social commentary -- an example is Diego Rivera's celebrated work. Irizarry's study found that murals can be a powerful tool for conservation as they have been used in social and political commentary.
Ever since Spanish colonization, turtle meat has been a desired food item in Mexico. During most of the 20th century, turtles were commercially harvested in Baja for both the domestic and international market. As a result Mexico's sea turtle population nearly collapsed in the 1980s.
Much of Baja's economy, which is centered on fishing and tourism, depends on the ocean. A prohibition was placed on turtle hunting in Mexico in the 1990s, but their consumption is still an important cultural tradition in some areas. Despite this, Irizarry's study found a trend away from the consumption of sea turtles and toward a desire to protect them.
Irizarry's study dovetails with the work of Grupo Tortuguero, formed in 1999 to protect Baja's marine resources. California's Dr. Wallace J. Nichols often cites her research in his work with the organization. "Can murals save sea turtles and the marine environment?" he asked recently. "The answer is yes, and the conclusion of this study is: keep going."
Irizarry conducted surveys which showed that the murals are effective in developing environmental awareness: "It is unknown whether or not the actions are realized, but sea turtle murals can provide the motivation for community discussion and participation in turtle conservation," she says.
Youth in Baja schools and adults each responded to Irizarry's surveys that their attitudes and actions towards the environment were affected by more than just their initial attraction to the murals. She concludes that knowledge of sea turtles by school aged youth resulted from environmental education, and that viewing the murals afterwards served to reinforce that knowledge.
Dan Haifley is executive director of O'Neill Sea Odyssey. He can be reached atdhaifley@oneillseaodyssey.org.
Posted: 03/06/2010 01:30:05 AM PST
Sometimes life does imitate art. Take, for example, Mexico's Baja California peninsula, which hosts a series of murals on the walls of restaurants, schools and gas stations.
The subject of those murals is a familiar and revered one to peninsula residents -- sea turtles. A recent study indicates that this public art has had a profound impact on attitudes and behaviors toward the marine environment.
The murals include images of turtles recycling plastics or feeding on pelagic red crabs; or local residents releasing Adelita, equipped with a transmitter to follow her swim from Mexico towards Japan several years ago. These murals are billboards marking the start of turtle highway -- their migratory route across the Pacific. In my next column, I'll examine an extraordinary effort at the other end of the migratory route -- near Santa Cruz's sister city in Japan.
While turtle images appear on some of Baja's walls, their real counterparts move through nearby waters where they breed -- and are still hunted, which is why they have become a symbol of Baja's growing marine protection movement.
Tufts University student Alyssa Irizarry conducted research on what impact the murals had on residents' views about and behaviors toward the environment. The award-winning study broke new academic ground and its conclusions provided positive feedback to Mexico's conservation movement for its education work.
Mexico has a history of murals as social commentary -- an example is Diego Rivera's celebrated work. Irizarry's study found that murals can be a powerful tool for conservation as they have been used in social and political commentary.
Ever since Spanish colonization, turtle meat has been a desired food item in Mexico. During most of the 20th century, turtles were commercially harvested in Baja for both the domestic and international market. As a result Mexico's sea turtle population nearly collapsed in the 1980s.
Much of Baja's economy, which is centered on fishing and tourism, depends on the ocean. A prohibition was placed on turtle hunting in Mexico in the 1990s, but their consumption is still an important cultural tradition in some areas. Despite this, Irizarry's study found a trend away from the consumption of sea turtles and toward a desire to protect them.
Irizarry's study dovetails with the work of Grupo Tortuguero, formed in 1999 to protect Baja's marine resources. California's Dr. Wallace J. Nichols often cites her research in his work with the organization. "Can murals save sea turtles and the marine environment?" he asked recently. "The answer is yes, and the conclusion of this study is: keep going."
Irizarry conducted surveys which showed that the murals are effective in developing environmental awareness: "It is unknown whether or not the actions are realized, but sea turtle murals can provide the motivation for community discussion and participation in turtle conservation," she says.
Youth in Baja schools and adults each responded to Irizarry's surveys that their attitudes and actions towards the environment were affected by more than just their initial attraction to the murals. She concludes that knowledge of sea turtles by school aged youth resulted from environmental education, and that viewing the murals afterwards served to reinforce that knowledge.
Dan Haifley is executive director of O'Neill Sea Odyssey. He can be reached atdhaifley@oneillseaodyssey.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment