Underwater Museum in Mexico Offers Hope for Natural Coral Reefs

Cancun’s got a new museum. But to view its installations, you’ll have to snorkel, dive, or ride a glass-bottomed boat. That’s because the museum is on the ocean bottom near Mexico’s National Marine Park of Cancun, Isla Mujeres and Punta Nizuc. Apparently, underwater is the new place to be. (Remember the under meeting of Maldives government held last October to make a statement about climate change?)

During the latter part of 2009 and much of 2010, artist Jason deCaires Taylor will cover this seabed withhundreds of life-size statues, art that Taylor and his partners from the National Marine Park and the Cancun Nautical Association hope will eventually form a reef structure for marine life to colonize.

Taylor plans to make each piece from cement, sand, micro silica and fiber glass—a combo said to promote coral life—and place the installation over 1,600 square feet (about 150 square meters). An area so large will intentionally draw the more than 750,000 annual visitors away from the Marine Park’s heavily strained natural reefs, giving them a chance to survive and regenerate.

The installation’s inauguration happened last November when three of Taylor’s pieces hit ocean bottom: The Gardener of Hope (La Jardinera de la Esperanza), The Archive of Lost Dreams (Coleccionista de los Suenos), and Man on Fire (Hombre en Llamas). Phase two is happening now, with an exhibition Taylor calls TheSilent Evolution, a set of sculptures cast from real people from local and international communities. The last of the three-parter includes commissioning artists from all over the world to contribute installations and host events.

For Taylor, it’s about recognizing the importance of nature. “With the advance of technology and the built environment, we seem to have lost our intrinsic link to nature,” he writes in the installation description. “The manifestation of living organisms cohabitating and ingrained in our being is intended to remind us of our close dependency on nature and the respect we should afford it.”

Source: http://magblog.audubon.org

Maldives to support 350 with a 24 hours dive

350.org is a global campaign dedicated to unite the world to address the climate crisis. The mission of the 350 movement is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis — to create a new sense of urgency. The focus is on the number 350, as in parts per million - the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere.

This December, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark to craft a new global treaty, the predecessor to Kyoto protocol, on cutting emissions. The problem is, the treaty currently on the table doesn't meet the severity of the climate crisis.

Divers Association of Maldives has teamed up with the 350 movement to create a highly publicized, grassroots movement in the Maldives. The movement has created a new wave of positive energy throughout the country. The campaign also aims to educate the public and leaders on the socio-economic impact of climate change through creative means.

A 24 hour underwater dive, organized by Divers Association Maldives is scheduled to take place in the lagoon just outside of Malé, in front of the President’s Office on the 24th of this month. A total of 350 divers will participate in this event showcasing different activities at a depth of around 03 meters. An underwater protest — to highlight Maldives’ vulnerability to climate change, a Bodu Beru show (traditional Maldivian drums) and a bike ride is among some of the activities that will take place during the dive marathon.

World’s first underwater Cabinet meeting held on the 17th of October was also organized by Divers Association Maldives – in collaboration with The Government. The meeting, well received by the International media and the World community, helped to put Maldives on the map as the first nation that would be driven to extinction, due to the climate crisis.

Source: visitmaldives.com.mv

Maldives officials dive for climate change

GIRIFUSHI, Maldives (AP) -- The president of the Maldives says he's trying to make people realize his low-lying island nation is a "frontline state" facing the threat of global warming.

To that end, President Mohammed Nasheed convened a Cabinet meeting today about 20 feet deep at the bottom of a lagoon.

The Maldives is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean made up of nearly 1,200 low-lying coral islands. They average 7 feet above sea level.

Many fear that climate change could cause sea level to rise and swamp the Maldives within a century.

Nasheed and 13 other officials donned scuba gear and used hand signals at a table on the sea floor. He says the stunt is an effort to draw attention to the serious consequences climate change could have for nations such as the Maldives.

The issue has taken on urgency ahead of a major U.N. climate change conference in December at which countries will negotiate a new international treaty.

Source: AP

Maldives MPs sink to all new lows

Politicians in the Maldives have sunk to new lows, as the President and his government ministers donned scuba gear for a cabinet meeting at the bottom of the sea.

The stunt was designed to highlight the threat that global warming poses to the low-lying nation.

Most of the island nation lies less than a meter above sea level and some scientists have warned it could be uninhabitable in less than 100 years.

Source: skynews.com.au

Maldives Cabinet set for underwater meeting

The government in the Maldives is set to hold its first underwater cabinet meeting Saturday to attract international attention to the dangers of global warming, a spokeswoman said.

President Mohamed Nasheed, dressed in full scuba gear, is to conduct the 30 minute meeting at a depth of six meters (20 feet) just north of the capital Male from 0500 GMT, event coordinator Aminath Shauna said.

Most of the island nation, a tourist paradise featuring coral reefs and white sand beaches, lies less than one meter (3.3 feet) above sea level and scientists have warned it could be uninhabitable in less than 100 years.

Shauna said the ministers had already signed their wetsuits, which would be auctioned on the protectmaldives.com website, due to be launched later Saturday, to raise money for coral reef protection in the atoll-chain.

"All arrangements are in place for the underwater meeting," she said.

The government has arranged a horseshoe-shaped table on the seabed for the ministers, who will communicate using white boards and hand signals.

The Divers Association of Maldives (DAM) said the ministers, who had trained over the past two months, felt confident about the unprecedented meeting.

Of the 14-member cabinet, three ministers will not take part in the dive, two of whom have medical conditions while the third was currently in Europe.

The Maldives, located southwest of Sri Lanka, has become a vocal campaigner in the battle to halt rising sea levels.

In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that a rise in sea levels of 18 to 59 centimeters (seven to 24 inches) by 2100 would be enough to make the country virtually uninhabitable.

More than 80 percent of the country's land, composed of coral islands scattered some 850 kilometers (530 miles) across the equator, is less than one meter (3.3 feet) above sea level.

Source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Maldives cabinet makes a splash

The government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the threat of global warming to the low-lying Indian Ocean nation.

President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet signed a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions.

Ministers spent half an hour on the sea bed, communicating with white boards and hand signals.

The president said the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen this December cannot be allowed to fail.

At a later press conference while still in the water, President Nasheed was asked what would happen if the summit fails. "We are going to die," he replied.

The Maldives stand an average of 2.1 metres (7ft) above sea level, and the government says they face being wiped out if oceans rise.

"We're now actually trying to send our message, let the world know what is happening, and what will happen to the Maldives if climate change is not checked," President Nasheed said.

"If the Maldives cannot be saved today we do not feel that there is much of a chance for the rest of the world," he added.

Military minders

Three of the 14 cabinet ministers missed the underwater meeting, about 20 minutes by boat from the capital, Male, because two were not given medical permission and another was abroad, officials said.

President Nasheed and other cabinet members taking part had been practising their slow breathing to get into the right mental frame for the meeting, a government source said.

About 5m underwater, in a blue-green lagoon on a small island used for military training, they were observed by a clutch of snorkelling journalists.

Each minister was accompanied by a diving instructor and a military minder.

While underwater, they signed a document ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, calling on all nations to cut their carbon emissions.

World leaders at the summit aim to create a new agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Maldives Ministers Dive Into Cabinet Meeting

Ministers in the Maldives are taking part in their first underwater cabinet meeting to draw attention to global warming.

The government has arranged a horseshoe-shaped table at the bottom of the sea and they will communicate using white boards and hand signals.

The event will be "chaired" by President Mohamed Nasheed and there will be a total of 13 officials meeting under water.

Expert divers from the Maldivian military will be on hand to ensure the politicians are safe.

The ministers have been in training over the past two months and say they feel confident about the meeting's venue.

"The ministers are fairly comfortable in the water particularly given that they've just started diving," said Zoona Naseem of the Divers Association of Maldives.

Of the 14-member cabinet, three ministers will not take part in the dive because two of them have medical conditions while the third is away in Europe.

The politicians will sign their wet suits which will be auctioned on protectmaldives.com to raise money for coral reef protection in the archipelago nation.

The Maldives, to the south west of Sri Lanka, has become a vocal campaigner in the battle to halt rising sea levels.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2007 that a rise in sea levels of between seven and 24 inches by 2100 would be enough to make the country virtually uninhabitable.

More than 80% of the country's land, composed of coral islands scattered some 530 miles across the equator, is less than 3.3ft above sea level.

Source: news.sky.com

India sending Dornier aircraft to Maldives for surveillance mission

NEW DELHI: As part of the overall strategy to prevent China from further spreading its influence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), India is sending a Dornier aircraft to Maldives to help the country in maritime surveillance.

Defence ministry sources said an Indian Navy Dornier would begin its maritime reconnaissance missions from Male over the weekend. This comes in the backdrop of defence minister A K Antony's recent visit to Maldives, where he promised measures to bolster defence cooperation with Maldives.

Under the new plan, India will apparently help Maldives set up a network of ground radars in all its 26 atolls and link them with the Indian military surveillance systems.

Moreover, amid fears in Male that one of its island resorts could be taken over by terrorists, India will also provide Maldives with a couple of helicopters, as also help patrol its territorial waters with both warships and reconnaissance aircraft.

India has taken several steps to build bridges with IOR nations, which range from joint patrols with Indonesian and Sri Lankan navies and exercises with Singapore and Oman to providing seaward security for international summits in Mozambique.

Maldives, in particular, constitutes an important part of this strategy since China is making persistent moves in the region as part of its military diplomacy.

India, on its part, has always been willing to help Maldives in times of crisis. Indian paratroopers and naval warships, for instance, were rushed to Maldives in November 1988 by the Rajiv Gandhi government under Operation Cactus to thwart the coup attempt against the Abdul Gayoom government.

Similarly, India had deployed two ships and four aircraft to Maldives after the killer tsunami struck in end-2004. "In April 2006, India gifted a fast attack craft INS Tillanchang to Maldives as a goodwill gesture. Apart from training, hydrographic and military assistance, our ships visit the country regularly,'' said an officer.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Maldives underwater meeting to address climate change

Small island nations have much at stake at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

The Maldives, along with other islands such as Seychelles and Tuvalu, is organizing a series of activities and events to pressure the international community to take action. On Saturday it will hold an underwater cabinet meeting designed to highlight the danger Maldive faces from rising waters and rising temperatures.

Global Voices Online posted a roundup of blogs from Maldive explaining what the small island nation is doing to publicize the urgency of the issue.

One of the first major events, run by Avaaz.org, was a Global Climate Wake-Up Call on Septemer 21 in Malé, the capital of Maldives.

The International Day of Climate Action, coordinated by 350.org, will be on October 24. Among the events of that day: 350 grounded motor vehicles and a 350 kilowatt reduction in energy consumption in Malé.

“350″ signifies the safe upper limit (in parts per million) for carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. The current level is 389 ppm. Vroomfondel explains the movement’s goals:

By having actions all around the world that day, 350.org plans to send a clear message to the world leaders (who will be meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark this December to craft a new global treaty on cutting emissions) that ‘the solutions to climate change must be equitable, they must be grounded in science, and they must meet the scale of the crisis.’

In addition, the Maldives Photographers Association together with the Maldives Science Society is planning to send 350 unique postcards to 350 world leaders and personalities who will be attending the Copenhagen conference (COP15).


Source: worldfocus.org

Maldives cabinet rehearses underwater meeting

Ministers in the Maldives dived in their final rehearsals Friday ahead of an underwater cabinet meeting this weekend aimed at drawing attention to the dangers of global warming for the island nation.

Ministers in full scuba gear dived six metres (20 feet) for the dress rehearsal near the Girifushi island, 25 minutes by speed boat from the capital island Male, coordinator of the event Aminath Shauna said.

"All arrangements are now in place and we are fully prepared to have Saturday's cabinet meeting underwater," Shauna told AFP by telephone.

She said the ministers would sign their wet suits which would then be auctioned on the protectmaldives.com website to raise money to protect coral reefs in the archipelago.

The government has arranged a horse-shoe shaped table at the bottom of the sea for the ministers to hold Saturday's meeting during which they will communicate using white boards and hand signals.

The Maldivian archipelago, located south west of Sri Lanka, is on the front line of climate change and has become a vocal campaigner in the battle to halt rising sea levels.

In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that a rise in sea levels of 18 to 59 centimetres (seven to 23 inches) by 2100 would be enough to make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable.

More than 80 percent of the country's land, composed of coral islands scattered about 850 kilometres (530 miles) across the equator, is less than one metre above mean sea level.

Maldivian officials said the idea to hold the attention-grabbing underwater cabinet meeting came from President Mohamed Nasheed when he was asked by an activist group to support its "environmental day" action on October 24.

"The 350.org group asked if the Maldives can hold an underwater banner supporting environmental day," an official from the president's office said.

"The president thought for a while and then came up with the idea to have an underwater cabinet meeting."

Source: AFP

All set for underwater Cabinet meeting

Government ministers in scuba gear prepared Friday to hold an underwater meeting of the Maldives' Cabinet to highlight the threat global warming poses to the lowest-lying nation on earth.

The Maldives' president will lead Saturday's meeting around a table on the sea floor — 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface — and ministers will communicate using white boards and hand signals.

President Mohammed Nasheed has emerged as a key, and colorful, voice on climate change amid fears that rising ocean levels could swamp this Indian Ocean archipelago within a century. Its islands average 7 feet (2.1 meters) above sea level.

Nasheed is also a certified diver, while other ministers have had to take diving lessons in recent weeks.

"None of the ministers have ever been diving before, except the defense minister, and all of them are very enthusiastic," Zoona Naseem, president of Divers Association Maldives, said in a statement from the president's office.

Nasheed has already announced plans for a fund to buy a new homeland for his people if the 1,192 low-lying coral islands are submerged. He has promised to make the Maldives, with a population of 350,000, the world's first carbon-neutral nation within a decade.

The underwater Cabinet plans to sign a document calling on all countries to cut down their carbon dioxide emissions ahead of a major U.N. climate change conference in December in Copenhagen, where countries will negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are blamed for causing global warming by trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere.

Wealthy nations want broad emissions cuts from all countries, while poorer ones say industrialized countries should carry most of the burden.

On Friday, the Maldives ministers went diving for rehearsals off the island of Girifushi, about 20 minutes by speedboat from the capital, Male, said Aminath Shauna, an official from the president's office.

Three of the 14 ministers will miss the underwater meeting because two were not given medical permission and another is abroad, Shauna said.

Source: AP

Maldives cabinet to go underwater

The government of the Maldives is to hold a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the threat of global warming.

President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet will sign a document during the 17 October dive, calling for global cuts in carbon emissions.

An adviser to the president told the BBC the dive was "a bit of fun" but the cabinet intended to send a serious message about rising sea levels.

The low-lying island nation says it faces being wiped out if oceans rise.

The adviser, who asked not to be named, said ministers would communicate during the meeting using hand signals and waterproof boards and pens.

"Obviously the hand signals that divers can use are limited, so the amount of work the cabinet are going to get done will be limited," he said.

"But they will call on all nations - rich and poor, developed and developing - to take climate change seriously."

All cabinet members bar one - who has a medical condition that rules out diving - have been in training at a military base on one of the country's many islands.

Mr Nasheed, who is already a qualified diver, will also hold a press conference in the water.

While underwater, the government will sign a document ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, calling on all nations to cut down their carbon emissions.

World leaders at the summit are aiming to create a new agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

'Friendly' sharks

The dive is being held to mark the 350 International Day of Climate Change Action on 24 October.

The day's organisers say they want to highlight the risks of rising carbon in the atmosphere and encourage world leaders to commit to reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.

That is the amount some scientists say is the safe upper limit to avoid irreparable damage to the environment.

Some 80% of the Maldives archipelago is less than a metre above sea level and is extremely vulnerable to any rise in sea levels as a result of global warming melting the polar ice caps.

Officials say that by the time the Maldives feels the full effect of climate change, it will be too late to save other countries.

Mr Nasheed has warned that the entire nation may have to find a new home if the oceans rise as predicted by the UN.

The president's adviser told the BBC that although the country's government was almost all going to be underwater at the same time, there was no real danger.

Each minister will be accompanied by a diving instructor and a military minder and the local sharks were "friendly", he said.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk