Film maker Wes Skiles, who entertained Gainesville Environmental Film Festival attendees with his films, tales and wit last March, died while diving off Boynton Beach, Florida, on Wednesday. Skiles’ death is a great loss, and our thoughts are with his family.

“Photographer and Florida springs advocate Wes Skiles died Wednesday while filming off the coast of Palm Beach County, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.

Based in High Springs with Karst Productions, Skiles, 52, was a former member of the Florida Springs Task Force. During the past 15 years, Skiles produced and directed over a dozen major films on adventure and science. His work included most recently the IMAX film “Journey into Amazing Caves” and a film for National Geographic in Antarctica on exploring the largest iceberg in recorded history. He shot the August National Geographic cover photo of caves in the Bahamas.

via FloridaEnvironments.com: Cave explorer, springs advocate Wes Skiles dies while diving.

See also National Geographic blog posting: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/2010/07/national-geographic-photographer-wes-skiles-dies.html

The last thing we want is for future generations to reminisce one day, “The ocean was dead when we were children.”

via asahi.com（朝日新聞社）：VOX POPULI: This year, we ought to apologize to the ocean – English.

“For three decades, Dr. Kathy Cantwell was a tireless advocate for preserving the environment and protecting the natural beauty of North Central Florida.

The Gainesville physician died early Tuesday morning at Haven Hospice of complications from a brain tumor. She was 60.

Fittingly, the activist will lead the way in yet another environmental cause.”

via ‘Green burial’ near Paynes Prairie for enviromentalist | Gainesville.com.

To live sustainably, we first need to be part of a greater, systemic transformation toward a culture that regards that as a worthy goal.

via Robyn Griggs Lawrence: Is Sustainability an Impossible Dream?.

“Alexandra Reau, who is 14, combines a little bit of each: last year, she asked her dad to dig up a half acre of their lawn in rural Petersburg, Mich., so she could farm. Now in its second season, her Garden to Go C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) grows for 14 members, who pay $100 to $175 for two months of just-picked vegetables and herbs.”

via Food – A Michigan Teen Farms Her Backyard – NYTimes.com.

“Especially at this stage of a recovery, businesses and economists want to see people of all incomes spending more, because the demand for goods and services would in turn encourage companies to hire workers. The American consumer accounts for an estimated 60 percent of the country’s economic activity.”

via The Rich Catch Everyone Else’s Cutback Fever – NYTimes.com.

Oh, the plight of sealife in the Gulf is so, so sad. There are many commendable rescue efforts underway… I hope they’ll help. Alas, no one mentions in this story that sea turtles travel far and wide to return to the shore of their birth when it’s their turn to lay eggs. Three decades to maturity – I hope the oil is gone by then.

In other news, I’m glad to hear the concerns of animals caught in burning oil has been heard:

“…federal officials said that surface burning of oil has resumed after being called off on account of high seas. But now, unlike before, there are federal observers on every “burn team” to make sure no turtles are incinerated by mistake.

…the Sea Turtle Restoration Project have demanded that the government halt the release of hatchling sea turtles from Padre Island National Seashore in Texas into the Gulf of Mexico, for fear that they would enter the oil slick and die. But Crouse, from the Fish and Wildlife Service, said Friday that officials believe those turtles are far enough away from the spill zone. “We think they have a good chance of making it in the southern Gulf,” she said. “We don’t want to disrupt their orientation behavior and food-searching behavior.”

Here, via the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, is “a heartbreaking video from YouTube, posted by an activist group known as Sea Turtle Oversight Protection.” Shot on the evening of July 10, it shows “activists attempting to guide some tiny sea turtle hatchlings in the right direction, i.e., toward the ocean. Unfortunately, the little dudes keep heading straight for the lights of Port Everglades, A1A — or for the bright chandeliers of an empty ballroom.”

via Turtle Rescue Efforts Are Guided By Hope And Guesswork, Not Data VIDEO.

“We can’t keep blowing up mountains to keep the lights on,” said Maria Gunnoe, an organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and a director of SouthWings, which organizes flights to document environmental damages, a resident of nearby Boone County who has received death threats and travels with a 9 millimeter pistol.

via Project’s Fate May Predict the Future of Mining – NYTimes.com.

Researchers who conducted the study downplayed the potential effects for the 5 million people along the 981-mile river who use it for drinking water. The contaminants, they said, are in extremely low concentrations.

But outside scientists who reviewed the data noted that some of the pollutants have been tied to feminization of male fish, effects that should serve as a warning to people.

“When we see something this basic being altered in fish, we should be concerned about what it’s doing to our own health,” said biologist Peter DeFur, a research associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who specializes in chemical contaminants in the environment and was not involved in the study.

via Ohio River study finds drugs, chemicals that slip through waste treatment | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal.