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Yearly Archives: 2014
Rigs to Reefs

Rigs to Reefs: addressing the future of offshore oil platforms in California
California’s horizon has been speckled by oil and gas platforms since the 1950’s. Although these towering, distant objects bring in over 2 billion dollars in annual oil revenue to the state of California, many local residents complain that their very existence is an eyesore and an extreme liability should there be an oil spill. These legitimate grievances may soon receive retribution as the oil wells dry up and offshore production slows to a halt.
With many rigs facing the potential of being decommissioned in the next decade, California stands at an important policy crossroads: safely eliminating the eye sore and liability of the oil and gas platforms while still protecting the valuable and fragile ecosystems that have formed on and around these structures.
 
After 30 years of observing and monitoring the marine ecosystems on oil platforms, research suggests that these structures have evolved into economically and ecologically valuable ecosystems.…

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Whales win one: Will Japan abide by ban?

Op Ed at CNN by Mission Blue partner, Carl Safina. 
CNN Editor’s note: Carl Safina is an award-winning scientist and author, founding president of Blue Ocean Institute at Stony Brook University, and host of the PBS television series “Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina.” 
(CNN) — On Monday the World Court in the Hague ruled that Japan’s “scientific” whale-hunting was baloney. It ordered Japan to revoke its “scientific research” permits to all its ships, effectively tying Japan’s fleet to the dock and silencing the cannons and exploding bombs that are the way whales die nowadays.
Japan says it will abide. I wish it would take this opportunity to bow gracefully out of something so dishonest and unfit for modernity. But I expect a fragile truce, and only a partial one.…

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Open Seas Teem with Life, Invisible and Invincible

Too often, we see the open ocean like the space between stars.
We imagine a void, vast and hollow, characterized by emptiness and populated by ghosts. Water becomes a medium, a barrier, something crossed en route to something of substance. To the sea we consign the ashes of our dead, symbolically releasing them from this world as though the watery realm weren’t part of it.
It is, of course, very much part of our world, and it is far from empty. In fact, the open ocean comprises planet Earth’s most powerful bio-engine. Though its inhabitants can barely be seen and have only recently come to science’s attention, they form an integral part of the marine biosphere. They undergird the valuable resources human beings extract from the ocean—resources we’ve come to depend on.…

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Photo of the Day ~ Harbor Seal off Cortes Bank

Spotted at Cortes Bank near San Diego, California, a harbor seal (Phoco vitulina) swims through an underwater kelp forest.
Captured by Kyle McBurnie, the photo is the overall winner of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science’s Underwater Photography Contest, which recognizes amateur photography. 
 …

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No Dumping. Drains to Ocean.

“No Dumping, Drains to Ocean.” We have all read this on sidewalk storm drains. You may wonder, what exactly is draining into our oceans? The answer is, lots of pollutants, including one of the biggest environmental offenders: used motor oil.
Made from the same toxic substance as gasoline, 2.5 billion gallons of petroleum-based lubricants and motor oils are sold in the United States each year. Of that, 385 million gallons are disposed of every year – 35 times more oil than was spilled in the Exxon Valdez spill!
Next time you are idling at a stoplight or pulling into a parking spot, take notice of all those dark, greasy spots left behind from the motor oil leaking out of cars. When it rains, storm water carries that greasy oil from the roadways into our ocean, polluting our rivers, watershed and drinking water sources, along the way.…

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Navigating the Starpaths toward a Sustainable Planet

This May, Master Navigator and Ocean Elder Nainoa Thompson will launch Hokule’a’s worldwide voyage from the island of Hawai’i. The theme is malama honua, which means to take care of each other and this island in the universe called earth, the only home we have.
There is a scientific aspect to the voyage as well. As nature guides Hokule’a and Hikianalia across the world, much focus will be on what lies beneath them.
“It’s a great voyage of peace, not just among ourselves, but making peace with nature,” said Sylvia Earle. Mission Blue and Dr. Earle are proud to be among the  scientists and agencies partnering on Hokulea’s worldwide voyage.
The voyage will include visits to marine areas that are being cared for and seeing progress and areas that need help. …

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Why Water is Important to You

This question is posed by Mission Blue as part of the Clean Water Tour launching this weekend in Austin, Texas in conjunction with many partners. In this post, there are links to answers to that question, but with something that is as vital to our existence as water, there are many answers.
One of the most compelling and beautiful cases for the importance of water is found in a short film written and narrated by Mission Blue’s Dr. Sylvia Earle and produced by National Geographic.  This film is a superb overview of the importance of water and the ubiquity of it in our world.
The film is also the introduction to our Explore the Ocean layer in Google Earth. You can search thousands of stories from the Google Earth on this website from the menu tab above.…

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Marine diversity is as fragile as glass

by Courtney Mattison
After Leopold Blaschka – a glass flame worker from the Czech Republic – lost his wife and father in the early 1850’s, he took time off to grieve and sail to America. Without a steam engine to speed their journey, Leopold and his shipmates found themselves becalmed for two weeks in the Azores off the coast of Portugal in a twist of fate that is still making ripples today. Leopold had never before witnessed the glasslike transparency of living marine invertebrates and began collecting and drawing the fragile jellyfish and other creatures that populated the surrounding waters.
Ten years later, as a successful botanical glass artisan living in Dresden, Leopold was commissioned to create a dozen glass sea anemones for the local museum of zoology, giving him the opportunity to put his inspiration from that auspicious voyage to work.…

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We’ve been all over fighting for the ocean: United Nations, Bermuda, Costa Rica and — Hollywood?!

What better way to raise awareness about the state of our oceans than putting it on the silver screen? And, no less, under the direction of Academy Award winning Fisher Stevens (of The Cove fame) and Bob Nixon (Academy Award nominee and MB Board Member). The film is on the festival circuit and, as it happens, is being shown today at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington DC.
The film Mission Blue — shot during a 3-year period around the world — traces Sylvia Earle’s remarkable personal journey, from her earliest memories exploring the ocean to her rise to prominence as the world’s leading oceanographer. Spectacular underwater video reveals the breathtaking vibrancy of marine life as well as manmade devastation of these pristine environments.…

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