I’ve been out of the blog mood for many months now, and only recently have I gotten my inspiration back for writing. I’m planning on keeping this blog up to date (in both Spanish and English) so please bare with me while I get this blog started again… :o)

I just finished re-reading “Twenty thousand Legues Under the Sea” by the great French writer, Jules Verne. There are very few books that I could read over and over again, but this marine masterpiece definately tops the list. (In fact, I’m thinking of reading this book in other languages since I love it so much.) It’s in this latest reading, however, that I noticed myself more focused on the “green” (or environmental) aspect of 20TLUS…maybe it’s just the ecocritic in me now, but I think that Verne was onto something that we are now, in the 21st century, looking on as new and trendy.

The first time I read 20TLUS, I was in a marine biology course with one of the greatest teachers ever. Mr. Nelson really inspired in me a love for marine science and I have never let that love go, even though now my primary focus is in Hispanic literatures. In any case, Verne’s book was a required reading in this science course and while I have never been opposed to reading literature for science classes, at the time it seemed to me that the purpose of reading it in class was to read about classification and underwater worlds and terminology. However, that’s not all that’s buried in the pages of this enthralling book…

Within the many exciting chapters of the journey of Dr. Aronnax, Captain Nemo, Conseil, and Ned Land, there is a true fascination with the critical state in which several of the marine animals (and even the marine ecosystems) find themselves. Many times, Dr. Aronnax points out the struggle that creatures like the manatee, several scpecies of fish, and many cetaceans had to endure in the second half of the 19th Century. There is even a particular reference to the “green” movement in one of the last chapters of the novel.

Since I have read a modern translation of the book, I cannot tell if the original intent of Verne was to make this book eco-friendly in nature and it would be fascinating to see if he did in fact originally make it a point to underline the importance of animal and habitat conservation. however, regardless of his original intent, this is a novel that deserves a reading by all interested in adventure, marine science, and mostly, the ecocritical perspective.

We have all had moments of bad luck in our lives. Maybe you were bitten by a snake while you were working in your yard, maybe someone was rude to you at the grocery store, or maybe someone cut you off in traffic. We don’t like it when these things happen and, in most cases, we get mad and/or frustrated. However, what if you could do something productive with your situation? It doesn’t have to be something big or cost you money. I have tried to live a life where I take the positive out of the negative and use it for good. Last night, while I was watching Anderson Cooper on CNN, I was very interested in the story about the shark attack victims advocating for shark conservation.

It’s hard to find stories on the news these days about the environment or animals that don’t have some negative connotation. This story was refreshing as well as inspiring. There was an interview of two of the seven people that presented themselves in front of Congress to advocate against shark finning. That’s when sharks are caught and their fins sliced off and then their bodies dumped – alive – back into the ocean. The sharks then live out the rest of their short lives in pain as they sink and die in the ocean from which they were fished. Sound awful? Well it is; especially when one thinks about the millions and millions of sharks that are killed every year as opposed to the few that actually die from “shark attacks”.

We are used to the image of the human-hungry shark that is just looking for its next meal near the shores of our beautiful beaches. It is true that there are several, sometimes fatal, encounters between humans and sharks, but, is it their fault that we go into their home to work and play? How would you react if you were to have one of these encounters? You would probably be scared and maybe even angry, a natural reaction. However, what if you could take this negative experience into something positive? That is exactly what these few shark attack victims are doing. They are trying to defend the same animals that almost cost them their lives.

It was nice to see shark conservation on the news (a topic I hope to explore further in the future), but it was especially refreshing to see people that turned lemons into lemonade. And you know, we don’t have to wait to be bitten by a shark to do something similar. Next time you are treated rudely by a stranger or someone you know, be nice to as many people as you can that day. When you get bitten by a bug, think twice before you step on another bug or find a creative way of getting rid of the bug instead of just spraying it with the Raid. Think of all the great things we could do…we could make gallons and gallons of lemonade.

This is the video from CNN with the story: