Local eco warrior and clean up crusader, Heidi Taylor from Tangaroa Blue Foundation has travelled over to new york to attend a high profiled event entitled 'Parley for Our Oceans' in New York.

According to their website, www.parley.tv,  Parley is an event facility where creators, thinkers and leaders can come together to raise awareness for the beauty and fragility of our oceans and collaborate on projects that can end
their destruction.

Parley for the Oceans addresses major threats towards our oceans, the most important eco system of our planet.

They believe the power for change lies in the hands of the consumer, given he/she has a choice – and to shape this new consumer mindset lies in the hands of the creative industries.

Artists, musicians, actors, directors, fashion designers, journalists, architects, product inventors, and scientists have the tools to mold the reality we live in and to develop alternative business models and ecologically sensible products to give us earthlings an alternative choice, an everyday option to change something.

The superstar collaborators, who are really making things happen include Pharrell Williams, Mega music artist, producer, serial collaborator, and entrepreneur. His company Bionic Yarn produces the first high-performance ecoyarn. Its patented spinning process is capable of incorporating fibers from recycled plastic bottles into durable and refined quality textiles.

And Fabien Cousteau, third-generation explorer, documentary filmmaker and environmental activist. He is founder and CEO of plant a fish, a nonprofit dedicated to marine restoration through active community engagement.

They all agree that to succeed, they need to find ways to synchronize the economic system of mankind with the ecosystem of nature. And make environmental protection fiscally lucrative for pace setting major companies.

Parley has been created to accelerate a process of change that is already in progress. No other big movement in the history of mankind has developed faster than the environmental cause. We want to make sure, we are fast enough to meet the ultimate deadline and turn the ship around before we lose a treasure, which we have just started to explore and still don’t really understand: the fantastic blue ocean universe beneath us.

Millions of sharks end up in prestigious restaurant tables as shark fin soup, whale sanctuaries get looted for new beer brands or exclusive dog food. More fish get eaten by house cats than by seals while hundred of miles of drift nets vacuum clean the sea. Anything wrong with that?  After all, there are plenty of fish in the sea and the supermarkets are stacked, right?

According to the Parley website, they wont be stacked for long and if we believe the scientists. 2048 seems to be the overall accepted deadline for the collapse of all commercial fisheries, already by 2025 all the coral reef ecosystems in the world will be gone. Leading environmentalists already see the end of most sea life happening in 6–16 years.

Combine the problems of the apparent over fishing with the massive amount of plastic trash that ends up in our oceans every year and the problem becomes an even bigger crisis.  The ocean currents have formed five gigantic slow moving whirlpools where the plastic collects, nicknamed Vortex.
 
Recent studies indicate that at least 40 million pounds of plastic has accumulated and is floating in the north pacific ocean alone. The majority of the plastic debris remains in these Vortexes, however a significant percentage of it washes onto our coastlines daily.

After sunlight photo-degrades the plastic into small pieces, aquatic life and sea birds mistake these fragments for food and ingest it.
 
While its difficult to know exact figures, a 2012 report from WSPA indicates that between 57,000 and 135,000 whales are entangled by plastic marine debris every year in addition to the inestimable – but likely millions – of birds, turtles, fish and other species affected by plastic marine debris.
 
New studies show that ingested plastic damages the internal organs of fish. This raises the question about the safety of our seafood.

"If the oceans die, WE die," so states Captain Paul Watson, co founder of Greenpeace with Robert Hunter, founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation society in 1977, and has been an activist for over 40 years.  His work is recognized and supported by the best minds and feared by his opponents.

Diminishment of bio-diversity in our Ocean is the single greatest threat to the survival of humanity. With diminishment of species in our oceans comes diminishment of the quality of life for humanity. What are the causes of this continuing mass extinction and imminent threat to our collective survival?

Human over-population and over consumption of resources are the primary threats and they bring chemical, oil, noise and plastic pollution with it. Global warming, oceanic acidification, over-fishing, agricultural run-off.

The threats are many but so are the solutions.

It will be interesting to hear what our own Heidi Taylor has to say when she returns from this event. In this company she will have learnt even more and will undoubtedly be even more inspired to succeed on her quest to clean up the beaches and oceans of Australia (and the world).

More info visit: www.parley.tv