Happy Birthday Shellbrook!

You're official 100 years old today! 100 years of heart!

Last Week!

We've reached the last week!

For the 13th of November you readers have added 4,689 more pages. (And with a total like that, it most definitely was not an unlucky day for me!) With last week being 63,744 kilometers travelled, the new total is 68,433!

As I'm not quite home yet, just floating in the Gulf of Alaska at 53 N 153 W, the library will be accepting reading logs until the library closes by 8:00 p.m. on November 18th. That means a lot of pages will have to be read to get me back onto Canadian soil or will the Canadian Coast Guard have to come rescue me?

You readers decide!

Five more days to go!

One Week to Go!

This twenty-second week with November just beginning, you readers added 5,737 pages to last weeks distance of 58,007 making the new total 63,744 kilometers! Wonderful!

I hopped over the Kamchatka Peninsula into the North Pacific Ocean so my new location is 53 N 161 E. I'm currently floating over the continental shelf and the view looks very, very cool when checked out at Google Maps using the "Satellite" choice.

Some more information about the Pacific Ocean:

Along the Pacific Ocean's irregular western margins lie many seas, the largest of which are the Celebes Sea, Coral Sea, East China Sea, Philippine Sea, Sea of Japan, South China Sea, Sulu Sea, Tasman Sea, and Yellow Sea. The Strait of Malacca joins the Pacific and the Indian Oceans on the west, and Drake Passage and the Straits of Magellan link the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean on the east. To the north, the Bering Strait connects the Pacific with the Arctic Ocean. (Can you find all those places on a map or globe?)

The largest landmass entirely within the Pacific Ocean is the island of New Guinea— the second largest island in the world. Almost all of the smaller islands of the Pacific lie between 30°N and 30°S, extending from Southeast Asia to Easter Island; the rest of the Pacific Basin is almost entirely submerged. During the Last glacial period, New Guinea was part of Australia so the largest landmass would have been Borneo–Palawan. (Do you know where New Guinea is?)

The third and fourth types of islands are both the result of coralline island building. Coral reefs are low-lying structures that have built up on basaltic lava flows under the ocean's surface. One of the most dramatic is the Great Barrier Reef off northeastern Australia. A second island type formed of coral is the uplifted coral platform, which is usually slightly larger than the low coral islands. Examples include Banaba (formerly Ocean Island) and Makatea in the Tuamotu group of French Polynesia. (I wish I had time to learn how to sucba dive to see the Great Barrier Reef, though I'm sure that there would be lots of fish who'd think a little centipede like me would look very tasty!)

Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times, most notably those of the Polynesians from the Asian edge of the ocean to Tahiti and then to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island. (But as a centipede, I was already here!)

Also, marine pollution is a generic term for the harmful entry into the ocean of chemicals or particles. The biggest culprits are people who use the rivers for disposing of their waste. So keep litter out of the water and in recycle bins!

Twelve days until Shellbrook's birthday! We're almost home again, so read, read, read!