Page 47 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2
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and starving sea lion babes landing like a flood on the Pacific coast long before any stranded babes
would typically be seen. Even at the peak of the rescue season, the Marine Mammal Center has never
experienced anything near to this record number of orphaned sea lions. I am a mother. To see these
starving sea lion babes strikes a chord of sacred rage in me so real and deep it is ludicrous to describe
this feeling in words. My hand, the hand that wrote Pacific, is fueled by this sacred rage rooted in the
awareness that human negligence drives the famine.
The Pacific Ocean is near death, starved of oxygen and highly acidic, as close to death as any person
gets who may have hope of revival. Summer 2013 saw millions of North Pacific krill washed up along
the shores of Northern California and Oregon in the largest death event ever recorded in the region for
this species of tiny crustacean, a crucial piece in the ocean's food cycle. Sardines, a major source of
sustenance for many animals, are frighteningly scarce. The population assessment of Pacific sardines
(released in March 2014) revealed a 74% decline in the last seven years; the population is now at its
lowest biomass in twenty years, and there are no signs of recovery. (http://oceana.org/news-‐
media/press-‐center/press-‐releases/federal-‐fishery-‐managers-‐vote-‐to-‐increase-‐sardine-‐harvest-‐
despite-‐fishery-‐collapse). In addition to sea lion babes, families of whales are washing ashore along
with seabirds. The loss is not merely a consequence of global human population increase, but of mass
extraction and production activity that sustains the lives of only a segment of the human population.
The loss is a consequence of lifestyle, my own included.
What is left but an immediate response as if this matters, as if I am responsible, as if there is just
enough time in this moment of no-‐ time-‐ left? Because I am swept away by the grief of the whole
world, my devotion, beyond keeping check on my own consumption, is my work for ex·∙tinc·∙tion
wit·∙ness, http://www.extinctionwitness.org . The revolving monthly witness keeps me as close as
possible to the pain experienced by starving sea lion babes and by their mothers forced to abandon
them because they are also hungry; as close as possible to the hunger of human refugees now counted
in the tens of millions; and as close as possible to the grief of elephants who witness their beloveds’
faces hacked off for ivory. The witness allows me to remember what it means to be remembered in a
time of need, so that I may truly love.
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