As a result of the travel writers who visited from the United Kingdom back in April, we have received the final version of their New Smyrna Beach Area editorial feature that will be published in the International Travel Writers Alliance's Allways traveller in August. AllWays traveller combines a travel feature and a travel guide to a particular destination or travel pursuit and is unique through a genuine partnership publication by providing key supporting information. The feature will be emailed to AllWays travellers (subscribers) and other potential visitors to the destination before being archived on their website.

 

Ashley Gibbins and Ann Mealor are the individuals who visited our area and developed this amazing feature on New Smyrna Beach. 

Emerging from their sea turtle nest, these tiny babies face a host of life and death obstacles to their survival. Predators such as raccoons, crabs and ants raid eggs and hatchlings still in the nest. Once they emerge, hatchlings make bite-sized meals for birds, crabs and a host of predators in the ocean. Holes dug in the beach can cause them to become trapped and easy prey.

 Lighting near the shore also can cause hatchlings to become disoriented and wander inland, where they often die of dehydration or predation. Hatchlings, scientists believe, have an innate instinct that leads them in the brightest direction, which is normally moonlight reflecting off of the ocean. Excess lighting from the nearshore buildings and streets draw hatchlings toward land, where they may be eaten, run over, or drown swimming pools. 

Water takes around 1000 years 

to travel all the way around the whole globe

 

The oceans not only have waves, tides and surface currents - they also have a constantly moving system of deep-ocean circulation driven by temperature and salinity.

Known as the global ocean conveyor belt or thermohaline current (thermo = temperature, haline = salinity), this deep ocean current gets one of its "starts" in the polar region near Norway.

As sea ice forms, the water left behind becomes saltier and denser and begins to sink, making room for warmer and less dense incoming surface water, which in turn eventually becomes cold and salty enough to sink.

The cold dense water flows along the ocean bottom all the way from the northern hemisphere to the Southern Ocean where it merges with more cold dense water from Antarctica and is swept into the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Eventually it mixes with warmer water and rises to the surface before finding its way back to the Atlantic. It can take 1000 years to complete this cycle.

Gold

• Southern Trends
• Clancy's Cantina
• Cafe Verde