A Special Mom's Way of Recycling

Mother Ocean...she embraces 72% of our home's surface and has a profound effect on the life of every living creature on this planet. Within her waters live a staggering number of varieties of life - from microscopic bacteria to the blue whale, earth's largest known living species of animal. Our ocean mother plays a critical role in removing carbon from the atmosphere and providing oxygen and regulating our planet's climate. Her life blood - her waters - are an increasingly important source of biomedical organisms with enormous potential for fighting disease.

She is one of Earth's most valuable natural resources: providing food in the form of fish and shellfish; providing a means of transportation for both travel and shipping; providing a source of recreation treasured by humans; giving us her wealth as we mine for minerals (salt, sand, gravel, and some manganese, copper, nickel, iron, and cobalt can be found in the deep sea) and drill for crude oil.

And like every good mother, she does her best to not be wasteful - even as we continue to dump millions of pounds of waste and pollutants in her waters. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but the video below is a documentary - Toxic Garbage Island by VBS.TV - that illustrates the appalling effect of mankind's modern lifestyle on the oceans.




Luckily for us, one of the ways that we help our Mother Ocean in her recycling efforts is to gather items like sea glass - which is simply broken glass which has been thrown into the ocean as trash, now beautifully worn smooth by the sea. Sharp edges are softened and smoothed as the glass tumbles over rocks and coral and swirls through the sea sand turning those pieces of glass into colorful, frosted gems. This process can take a long time - perhaps even hundreds of years, but the results are amazingly beautiful. A number of jewelry artisans on Etsy have chosen to work with sea glass exclusively, while others include this made-by-nature treasure in composite pieces. Today, in honor of Mother Ocean Day, I wanted to share some of my personal favorites with you!

From palmeras on Etsy, I fell in love with this BRIGHT GREEN SEAHORSE wire wrapped seaglass pendant. This sea glass comes from the Mediterranean and has been wrapped on sterling silver wire with sterling silver beads and gemstones (white topaz, emerald, sapphires and ruby). Simply stunning!



While most sea glass is some shade of blue or green or white, there are some lovely examples of less common colors as well. This gorgeous peach pink opalesence sea glass ring that I found at dadamietz is a perfect example. The colors of the sun seem to glow in this ring created with sea glass that was found on England's shores.



Cobalt blue is an exceptional color in any medium, but in seaglass it evokes an ethereal other-worldly sense of mystery. The term "mermaid's tears" is another name for sea glass, and this particular shade is one that easily conjures up a vision of a mermaid crying for her long lost love beneath a full moon on a balmy summer's night. I love the simplicity of these Azure Perch seaglass earrings available at oceano on Etsy. The simple lines of the sterling silver earwires allows the beauty of this amazing blue sea glass steal the show. How earthy and elegant all at once!



I hope you take some time to learn more about Earth's Mother Ocean and what can be done to keep her healthy. And I also hope you'll take the time to visit the wonderful Etsy shops featured here as well as all of the other shops that feature sea glass jewelry there!