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Yearly Archives: 2013
A New Hope Spot! Together we’re keeping HOPE alive.

Nineteen Causes for Hope!
The Bering Sea Canyons were recently named the 19th Mission Blue Hope Spot, an area of critical importance to the ocean’s health: seeds of tomorrow’s healthy ocean. Already, change is happening and hope is growing.
The Bering Sea Canyons Hope Spot supports a near endless variety of precious life, a vital ecosystem which is threatened by industrial fishing. After Mission Blue and Greenpeace jointly announced the 19th Hope Spot, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council decided to expand research in the region to conserve the Bering Sea and its canyons.
By identifying precious ecosystems in the oceans with our scientific minds and human hearts — Hope Spots! — we can create a network of Marine Protected Areas across the globe.…

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Can California save the ocean?

By David Helvarg
California, its economy recovering from the Great Recession, is far from the demise conservative doomsayers predicted just a few years ago, a demise brought on by environmental regulation, graduated income taxes and its sybaritic ways.
In fact when it comes to environmental policy, particularly ocean and coastal protection, California is a national trendsetter and a role model for what kind of blue planet we leave the next generation. “This is the only state where you can get elected or lose your job based on your positions on coastal protection and offshore oil,” Monterey Rep. Sam Farr likes to point out.
One reason is Californians’ sense of entitlement to their 1,100 miles of oceanfront. This grows out of the state’s history as a maritime frontier dependent on access to the Pacific for its economic and social development.…

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Hope Spot Update: Protecting Bahamian Reefs

By Courtney Mattison
With Shark Week in full swing and beach vacation season beginning to wind down in the U.S., it’s time for an update on one of our favorite shark-loving tropical Hope Spots – the Bahamian reefs. Many NGOs, governments and other stakeholders are doing exciting work there and throughout the Caribbean Community that is good for the ocean and good for us.
With over 3,000 low-lying islands covering 1,400 square kilometers off the southeastern tip of Florida, the Bahamas are home to a wealth of marine life and host millions of visitors each year. More visitors mean more people hungry for seafood and eager to explore the reefs. It’s great that tourists want to get wet and explore the ocean both for their own enjoyment and to support the regional economy (tourism accounts for 60% of the Bahamian GDP), but as with any good thing, responsibility and moderation are key.…

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Ahoy Shark Week!

It’s Shark Week! How jawsome is that? We get a full week to celebrate and learn the full 360 on these toothy fellows. Get involved in the conversation! Check out the cheat sheet below, provided by our friends at Upwell.

On the menu for the week is a close look at the gargantuan megalodon, which had 7 inch teeth and the most powerful bite of any creature ever. Its chomp packed between 10 – 18 tons of pressure, compared to today’s lion which does about 600 pounds. What a wimpy cat! Check the graphic…these guys were huge!

Viewers can also look forward to 11 hours of new material, a profile of freshwater bull sharks near New Orleans, a peek at extremely rare deep sea sharks and the top ten sharkdown of the world’s most deadly species.…

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Big Things Come from Small Beginnings: The Mystery of the Sick Sea Lions

By Shari Sant Plummer, Mission Blue Board Director, President, Code Blue Foundation
On a cold, foggy morning along the Malibu coast, a small brown lump emerges from the sea and waddles ashore. I spot it from 100 yards away, but already my dog, Cooper, is at a full run toward the baby sea lion. I scream at him to stop, but it’s too late: The thin, frightened sea lion pup is heading back into the ocean. I finally catch up to Coop and pull him back, and we watch as the pup swims out through the waves. Though Cooper hadn’t touched him, the timid pup was easily threatened; animal lovers with cameras approaching other pups have been met with the same result.…

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Photo of the Day – King Penguins Cozy up in South Georgia

King Penguins, Aptenodytes patagonica, are one of the key iconic Antarctic species that we are working hard to protect as we continue to fight for the Antarctic Ocean.  King penguins have been equipped with depth recorders and have been found to regularly dive to 500m (1600ft).  Deep dives tend only to occur during the daytime with only shallow dives being recorded at night.
Photo Courtesy of David Neilson…

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Marie Tharp’s Big Map for a Big Ocean

What’s the tallest mountain in the world? Without the seminal work of Marie Tharp, this question may have remained unanswered. In the first half of the 20th century, Tharp worked together with Bruce Heezen to bring definition to the world of the deep blue, a topographic map of the world ocean. At a time when acoustical mapping techniques were extremely basic, Tharp brought the seafloor to life by illustrating the dramatic geographic features of the ocean for all to see.
The tallest mountain in the world is, of course, Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which beats Everest’s height when you consider that the mountain extends from the ocean floor. And speaking of revelations about ocean topography — known as bathymetry — we can’t discount the amazing work of Google in creating Google Ocean.…

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A Few Words from Google Earth founder John Hanke on Sylvia Earle

“I first met Sylvia in Spain when she publicly goaded me at a press conference for not giving the ocean fair treatment in Google Earth. From the moment I met her I was inspired by her conviction and energy. I have met very few people who can compare to Sylvia in terms of her velocity of work, travel, and speaking. She can move from an underwater dive to an international red-eye to a stage on the other side of the world in front of thousands of people without batting an eye. In fact she does this dozens of times per year. And she’s always perfectly composed and passionately articulate about saving the world’s oceans from environmental destruction. She’s remarkable and is truly one of my heroes.”…

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Stakeholders Gather in Panama to Discuss Protections for the Central American Dome

By Lance Morgan, Marine Conservation Institute for Mission Blue
Originally published at National Geographic Ocean Watch
Last week an alliance of conservation organizations took a big step forward towards protecting the Central American Dome. Also referred to as the Costa Rica Dome, this highly productive region of the eastern tropical Pacific is home to abundant marine life including critically endangered leatherback sea turtles and blue whales.
The term Dome refers to an oceanographic feature that results from cold, deep ocean water rising near the surface. The water itself doesn’t dome, but a cold water band shaped like a dome comes up from the bottom. As this nutrient rich water enters depths where sunlight can penetrate it unleashes enormous plankton blooms, fueling the entire ecosystem. …

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DOER’s Sub-Ice Rover Tested in Tahoe

It almost feels like science fiction: a 28-foot long, 2,200-pound robotic submarine that can fit through a 30-inch ice borehole. But observers in Tahoe this past week can attest to the realness — and world-class engineering — of the Sub-Ice Rover (SIR) created by DOER Marine of Alameda for North Illinois University. The craft is designed to explore the ocean underneath the half mile of frozen water known as the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. To clear the borehole, SIR is designed to collapse to a diameter less than 30 inches. 

Once beneath the ice, SIR expands and produces an array of high tech sensors and cameras which blast terabytes of data up the 2-mile cable to the control center. These instruments will ultimately seek to collect data about ice melt beneath the Ross Ice Shelf to better understand conditions at the interface between seawater and the base of the glacial ice, as well as investigate the sea floor and layers of sediment beneath. …

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