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World Oceans Day--The Deepwater Disaster should help us all to see the fragility of the oceans and that our oceans everywhere are in peril from our environmental decisions.  The petrochemical civilization we have created is not just destroying the oceans with crude oil spills and ocean acidification through global warming, but also as a result of chemical pollution throughout the entire marine food web.  Killer whales off the coast of California have incredibly high concentrations of fire retardant chemicals and beluga whales in the remote Hudson Bay are so filled with industrial chemicals that when there bodies wash up dead they must be treated like toxic waste.  It is no surprise that we are finding these same chemicals in women's breast milk and in our newborn children.  We are the sea.  We are all dependent on the 70% of the world that is water and our bodies are made of water--66%.  What we do to water, what we do to the oceans we ultimately do to ourselves.  The oil spill will work its way into all life on the planet because the currents and tides spread pollution everywhere.  What we so often forget is that despite our maps, there really is only one ocean.  What happened in the Gulf of Mexico is coming to water near you.  We must heal our worldwide ocean and its collapsing ecosystems now to preserve the future of life on our planet.

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Maria is a dear friend and colleague, so I was inclined to like her book, but I had no idea how powerful and important it would be.  Maria's family helped pioneer organic farming in America and have done as much as anyone to develop sustainable agriculture through the research farm as well as their book and magazine company.  So it's no surprise that she is an avid gardener and lover of the land, but Maria has taken the struggle to develop a life-sustaining relationship with the land to a whole new level by showing us how organic farming not only stops us from poisoning ourselves to death but also helps to reduce global warming.  Truly this book shows us how our extraordinary discovery and wanton use of petrochemicals are threatening our existence at both the micro and macro level.  Read this book for yourself, for you children, and for the future.

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I wrote Eye of the Whale because several of my friends children were being born with birth defects and being diagnosed with cancer.  I wanted to know what was happening to our children and why there was such an increase in childhood cancer (a 26% increase between 1973 and 1999 and a 61% in crease in acute childhood lymphocytic leukemia).  One of the children that inspired this book and that was a constant companion as I was writing was Devan Tatlow.  Devan was diagnosed with leukemia and has recently relapsed.  He needs to have a bone marrow transplant and because of his unusual Indian and Caucasian heritage, he is very hard to match.  You could be the one to save Devan's life or know someone who could.  Please go to www.matchdevan.com and register for the bone marrow bank to save Devan's life and that of so many others.

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What does garbage in whales have to do with our children's health?

A gray whale that washed up in Seattle had garbage in its stomach ranging from sweat pants to plastic bags to surgical gloves to a golf ball.  Is this just a bizarre symptom of a dirty planet?  It is bizarre but unfortunately not uncommon, and it actually speaks to a much more serious problem in our oceans and in all life, including our children.  Pollution is the new harpoon that is increasingly killing whales as well as other ocean-dependent life.  Many seabirds are literally starving because their stomachs are so full of plastic.  But it's not really the sweat pants, the plastic bags, and golf balls showing up in stomachs that is the greatest danger.  It is really what they represent: a world awash with "persistant organic pollutants."  In short, it's not the big stuff, it's the little stuff, the microscopic stuff.  Beluga whales in the remote Hudson Bay are so filled with industrial chemicals, including plasticizers, that they must be treated like toxic waste when their dead bodies wash up on shore.  The Canadian government requires a special permit to transport their bodies across provincial lines.  But these problems are not just affecting whales and other marine life.  They are also affecting our children.  A recent study of newborn babies' cord blood discovered 413 toxic industrial chemicals in their bodies and on average over 200 chemicals per child.  This is before the first breath or the first sip or their first bite of food.  Our children, in short, are being born pre-polluted.  Pollution is the new harpoon, but this harpoon does not just threaten whales.

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I will be reading/speaking in April at the Wetsus Conference in the The Netherlands about Eye of the Whale.  The conference is a gathering of about 120 people from fourteen universities and eighty companies in Europe who are all working on ensuring sustainable water for our world.  It is a great privilege to speak to this extraordinary group of scientists.  Next stop is Cancun, Mexico to address a conference being held by the great international non-profit, The Ocean Conservancy.  I'll be speaking to there international coordinators who are organizing the cleaning up of the beaches all around the world and preventing an enormous about of waste and pollution from ending up in the ocean.  

 These trips will be even more fun because one of my twin daughters, Kayla, will be coming with me to Europe and my wife, Rachel, will be coming to Mexico.  

 All work and no play makes Doug... 

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It's probably one of the most thrilling experiences as a writer: to see ones words translated into a foreign language.  So far Eye of the Whale has been translated into Swedish, Greek, Chinese, Arabic, and now Dutch.  Thank you to all my foreign publishers and to readers around the world!

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I was honored to win the reader award for best author in Santa Cruz by the Santa Cruz Metro.  While I appreciate the votes by readers, I must say that there are many great writers in our fair city (Laurie King and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston among others).  In truth, it's probably not possible to pick best writers and best books, since what people enjoy reading is so deeply personal and varied.  So thank you all and let's celebrate all writers who pour their heart into their work.

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There was a great piece in Time Magazine this week on the Perils of Plastic and the pervasiveness of endocrine disruption/environmental toxins in our lives, in our homes, and in our bodies.

http://snipurl.com/va3fs  

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Nicholas Kristoff strikes again with another great piece about the danger of endocrine disruptors, and uses some of the same science that is in my novel, Eye of the Whale.  Check it out at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06kristof.html?_r=1 .  Even tells you what plastics to throw away. 

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