Saving Kkuchamama

SAVING KKUCHAMAMA

Uniting North and South to save the Pacific Ocean

ORCA, a Peruvian environmental NGO, and Turning the Tides, an Alaska based non profit organization, are inviting all groups concerned with the rapid decline of the ocean to join as equal partners in a giant musical event on the beaches of Peru and North America to dramatize the crises of the ocean, its affect on planetary and human life, and call for an end to the manufacture of PCBìs and other poisonous molecules. Titled “Saving Kkuchamama” (a Quechua Andean word for ocean mother) led by indigenous leaders and rock bands, this is a wake-up call about the rapid decline of the ocean, its connection to all life, the contribution of plastic bags and bottles to its decline and a plea to honor the ocean by minimizing and eventually stopping their use.

Saving Kkuchamama is envisioned as the beginning of an annual music event that celebrates the ocean, raises awareness about her importance to humans and the earth, and suggests lifestyle changes ordinary people can make to help return her to health. It proclaims that we are all part of the problem and calls for everyone to be part of the solution. It is envisioned, in ensuing years, to eventually include all Pacific Rim countries. Fifty percent of the planet’s surface consists of the Pacific Ocean.

Anyone, professional and amateur – high school and college rock bands – on the eastern Pacific Rim is invited to participate in this effort.

Organizers hope to dramatically decrease the use of plastic bags and bottles in Pacific countries, states and provinces – helping to reverse the rapid decline of the ocean.

BACKGROUND

The ocean is dying. Marine scientists have diagnosed the ocean and its inhabitants as suffering from immune suppression syndrome (similar to AIDS) and call their work “documenting the decline.” Eighty-five percent of the world’s nitrogen that sustains plants, and most of the world’s oxygen that sustains animals are produced by the ocean. 75% of the planet’s surface is ocean. Without the ocean, nothing can live.

We are learning that everything on earth recycles through everything else – oxygen, water, food and chemicals, natural and manmade, life supporting or poisonous. Millions of animals die every year from eating plastic – their digestive systems clogged – birds try to dislodge it to feed their young. In huge parts of the ocean, there are six times more plastic bits than plankton. Eventually this reduces to tiny plastic particles that are consumed by fish and shell fish which are eaten by larger animals, including humans. When the animals die, their bodies decompose, leaving these particles to be consumed again and again.

PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, are artificial molecules created by humans in the 1970s that do not metabolize or break down and are now everywhere – in air, water, food. They are used in all industries – including plastics, soaps, oils and detergents. Because the ocean is used as a giant toxic dump, they are especially prevalent there.

They store in tissues – kidney, brain, heart, liver, fat – suppress immune function, trigger cancer and organ failure. They mimic estrogen and cause massive sexual organ dysfunction, infertility and deformities in frogs, birds, mammals and humans. Eagle egg shells are often as thin as rice paper.

Humans can hold 0.5 to 3 parts per million (ppm). Orcas, the most polluted animal on the planet, hold 200 to 300 ppm. A deceased whale found in Washington had 10,000 ppm – technically classified as a toxic dump. Eight out of the ten most polluted animals are sea mammals (the other two are eagles and sea turtles). Marine animals, like humans, are on top of the food chain. Both breathe poisoned air, eat poisoned food and drink poisoned water. Both are getting cancer and new lethal viruses. Humans are the fifteenth most polluted animal on the planet.

El NiZo, the cause of freakish and violent weather around the world – hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, floods – arguably the biggest environmental event on the planet – begins on the Peruvian coast. The cold Humboldt current that runs from Antarctica, bringing fish, plankton, krill and other food up the South American coast, is pushed down by a warm (100 degrees) current, that kills everything in its path and causes the weather that kills tens of thousands of people, animals and crops around the world. Krill, millions of little animals on which whales feed, die, and the algae that normally live in balance with these tiny animals, has toxic overblooms, traveling to the North Pacific, leaving dead animals and plants in its wake. Hungry sea mammals are heard crying in the ocean off the Peruvian coast during an El NiZo. The phenomena is currently accelerated and more aggressive due to global warming. .

What happens on the Peruvian coast has immediate effects on the health and well being of the entire planet. Everyone feels the effects.

The state of the environment in Peru is one of overwhelming crisis and emergency. The Peruvian coast is desert with blowing sand and dust. Lima, a noisy, polluted, gray city of about 7 million, is a coastal city, with little thought about the health of the ocean or its connection to it. Factories dump tons of poison and a natural gas line and processing plant is due to open on the coast (according to local media, financed by the U.S. president’s family).

Camai is now Turning The Tides