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Yearly Archives: 2012
The State of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef: The Smithsonian’s Chair of Marine Science Discusses

A new study finds that over the past 27 years, half of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef coral has died. In a recent PBS NewsHour, Gwen Ifill talks to Dr. Nancy Knowlton, a coral reef biologist and chair of Marine Science at the Smithsonian Institution, about ecological and economical consequences of the collapse, as well as measures to help mediate the decline.
Watch and learn more about the state of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.…

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Mission Blue Asks: What is the Largest Animal on Earth?

Mission Blue hits the streets of New York City to ask people in Times Square, what is the largest animal on Earth? Watch below to see what happened!

This is the first video in a new online video series titled, “Mission Blue Asks.” This one and a half minute video premiered last week at the 2012 BLUE Ocean Film Festival in Monterey, CA.
Please watch and share!…

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Marine Ecologist Receives MacArthur Genius Award

Marine Ecologist Nancy Rabalais was announced as one of the 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellows. The Fellowship is a $500,000, no-strings-attached grant for individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the promise to do more.
Dr. Rabalis is the director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and carries out research documenting the environmental and economic consequences of hypoxic zones in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Rabalis’s work is critical to the creation of strategies for restoring the degraded waters of the Gulf and the Mississippi River basin.

The MacArthur Fellowship is an annual grant program, which recognizes a broad spectrum of high-achieving individuals in fields such as science, medicine, literature, art, journalism, music, economics, filmmaking, mathematics and entrepreneurship. Each of the 23 fellows is bestowed $500,000 without conditions over five years to pursue their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world.…

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Securing the Future for Sawfishes

There was a time when so many sawfishes were caught in areas of Pakistan that people made fences with the rostrums, the saw-like beak of the sawfish. Today, however, some people in the region might catch a sawfish just once or twice a year.
Earlier this month at the IUCN 2012 World Conservation Congress the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group took the opportunity to promote sawfish conservation and use networking opportunities to connect and build awareness with people who may be able to help stop sawfishes disappearing from our waters forever. One person had not even realized that sawfishes were a species present in her country and that she could help to protect them – a new supporter for sawfish conservation!…

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Bob Ballard Virtually Explores in Google’s Liquid Galaxy

Iconic explorer and visionary oceanographer, Robert (Bob) Ballard, stepped inside Google’s liquid galaxy at the BLUE Ocean Film Festival to join a Google+ Hangout with others located across the globe.  In the liquid galaxy, Ballard took viewers on a virtual tour. In the galaxy, Ballard explored some of his most famed dive sites, zoomed-in on the University of Rhode Island’s Inner Space Center, and even traveled to his own house. To hear Ballard talk about his discovery of the Titanic, meet his horse and more watch the hangout below.…

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Google Street View Goes Underwater

By Mera McGrew
Today, Google Street View splashes into the world’s ocean allowing people to dive in and explore coral reefs from behind their computer screens, tablets and smartphones. In the same way you have long been able to virtually walk around a busy New York City block using Street View, you can now also splash underwater and “swim” through a coral reef off the coast of Australia.
“With Street View in Google Maps we have gone to seven continents, including Antarctica where you can go into Scott’s Hut, you can go down the Amazon River and to the Arctic,” the manager of Google Ocean, Jenifer Foulkes, told Mission Blue.  “And now we are taking you underwater to 6 locations in the world with Caitlin Seaview Survey.”…

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Live Underwater Hangout at the Launch of Google’s Underwater Street View

By Mera McGrew
Today, millions around the world were able to dive into the ocean and explore the Great Barrier Reef  without even getting wet.
In a Google+ Hangout live from the launch of Google’s Underwater Street View, a packed room in Monterey California video chatted with James Cook University marine biologist Richard Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick, was underwater on a reef off the coast of Australia. He swam through the darkened reef in the middle of the night, stopping to show viewers a giant clam and the feeding mechanisms of a starfish. As a juvenile green sea turtle swam by, the audience watching live in Monterey gasped and applauded loudly. Fitzpatrick talked about green turtle nesting sites located near where he was diving before signing off.…

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The Former Professional Rugby Player Behind the Cook Islands Marine Park

Earlier this month the Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna officially launched a marine park that will cover half of the islands exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Recently, Kevin Iro, a former professional rugby player who first came up with the idea for this park sat down with Molly Bergen to discuss how the idea for the Marine Park came about, his own experience in sports, and his hopes for the park and the Cook Islands going forward.
Q: How did your idea for the Cook Islands Marine Park come about?
A: I first came up with the concept in 2009 while I was on the board for Cook Islands Tourism; I thought our massive EEZ was a resource that was seriously under-utilized.…

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Featured Underwater Comic Strip

Sherman’s Lagoon is a syndicated daily comic strip set underwater in a cartoon lagoon. It features a dimwitted great white shark named Sherman and his sea turtle sidekick named Fillmore.

Related features:
Featured Underwater Comic Strip (1)
5 Questions with Cartoonist Jim Toomey…

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Shell Agrees Not to Drill For Oil in the Arctic in 2012

By Andrew Hartsig
This week, Shell admitted what we’ve known all along: the company is just not ready to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean.
This past weekend, a failed test of Shell’s oil spill containment system resulted in damage to the dome designed to contain oil in the event of a spill. In light of the damage to the containment dome, Shell announced that it was abandoning its plans to drill into oil-bearing layers in the Arctic Ocean this summer. The company said its drilling operations in the Arctic Ocean this summer would be limited to “top holes”—initial sections of wells that do not penetrate into known oil-bearing layers.
According to one media report, trouble with the containment dome started when one of the dome’s winches failed to operate correctly.…

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