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What’s the role of factory farming in ocean degradation?

By Brett Garling
We often forget that our actions on land always affect the ocean. The effects can be positive; for example, by banning plastic bags, municipalities are helping reduce the roughly 20 billion pounds of plastic that enter the ocean every year. That’s great news and the deplastification movement is thankfully picking up steam. Yet, we also continue practices on land that greatly harm the ocean. The destruction, however, largely happens out of sight and out of mind. For example, industrial animal agriculture is seriously impacting our waterways and ocean yet few people know it. Yes the treatment of the animals is ghastly – and that is reason enough to avoid purchasing factory farmed meat – but there is also an impact on the ocean.…

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Exploring Antarctica

Until well into the 20th Century, getting to Antarctica – and returning – was a really big deal. It still is, but thanks to new technologies and operations such as the National Geographic Lindblad Expeditions, adventurous souls from around the globe are able to experience Earth’s southernmost continent and appreciate the importance of the whales, seabirds, fish and seals that live there like never before. Mission Blue founder Dr. Sylvia Earle is grateful that “the value of exploiting Antarctic wildlife as commodities is giving way to appreciating them as vital elements of systems that maintain Earth as a planet that works in our favor.” The urgency of exploring and protecting the Southern Ocean has never been greater.
The following photo journal illustrates Gale Mead’s recent visit to Antarctica, South Georgia and the Falklands.…

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UN Meeting Offers Hope for High Seas Protection

Things are looking up for the high seas after last week’s deliberations at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and President of the United Nations General Assembly Sam Kahamba Kutesa convened a meeting with States Members of the United Nations, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and parties to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) for four days of negotiations concerning the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction (BBNJ). The meeting concluded early Saturday morning with a formal recommendation for the UN General Assembly to develop a legally binding agreement to protect ocean life in the high seas.
The high seas make up approximately 64% of the global ocean (nearly half of Earth’s surface) – a huge patchwork of regions lying outside of any country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).…

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Bring Balance to the Bering Sea

By Jackie Dragon (Originally published January 16, 2015 on Greenpeaceblogs.org)
This week in Seattle billboards and posters are popping up with a message for companies that profit from the sale of our ocean wildlife. Greenpeace, Mission Blue, and Marine Conservation Institute — three organizations committed to protecting important ocean places — have joined up to tell supermarkets that we need their help to protect special ocean places, like America’s Grand Canyons in the Sea.
An American gem is hidden from sight beneath the chilly waters of Alaska in the Bering Sea. Zhemchug and Pribilof canyons — designated a Hope Spot by “Her Deepness,” Dr. Sylvia Earle in 2013 — are the world’s largest underwater canyons, both more massive than the Grand Canyon.…

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BREAKING: Dr. Sylvia Earle Boldly Addresses the UN To Urge Legal Protection for High Seas

Dr. Sylvia Earle addressed the United Nations Tuesday afternoon, urging the body to take action and implement an agreement that would bring law and order to the High Seas — an area half the size of our planet that is currently plundered and polluted with abandon.
Read Dr. Sylvie Earle’s bold remarks below. She’s right: the ten year olds are watching!
Thank you,  Co-Chairs, for the privilege of speaking officially on behalf of Mission Blue, and unofficially, for those who cannot speak for themselves – the children of today and for  all of those in the future – our descendants who will from their place in the future either applaud or condemn our actions – or lack of actions – concerning establishing governance – a strong and meaningful implementing agreement under UNCLOS for biodiversity of half the world, the high seas – the ocean beyond national jurisdiction. …

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Biotherm to Help Restore Coral Lagoon in French Polynesia

In Paris on Monday, French luxury skincare company Biotherm held a joint press conference with Mission Blue to announce that part of proceeds from three products of its Aquasource range (Aquasource Gel, Aquasource Crème and Aquasource Crème Riche) would support the Tetiaroa Society and CRIOBE (The Insular Research Center and Environment Observatory of French Polynesia) to research and replenish fish and crustacean stocks in the lagoon of Tetiaroa – an exquisite coral atoll located 33 miles north of Tahiti in French Polynesia.
Stan Rowland, chairman of Tetiaroa Society, said:
“We are thrilled to be working with Biotherm and Mission Blue in a collaborative effort to protect our oceans and marine environments. This funding from Biotherm will support an important effort to demonstrate an economic and environmentally sustainable method of replenishing marine life in coral lagoons.…

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South Africans Unite Around Hope Spots

While 12 percent of the land on Earth is protected, less than 3% of the ocean has meaningful protection from fishing, pollution and resource extraction. Dr. Sylvia Earle, founder of global initiative Mission Blue, visited South Africa last month in a whirlwind tour of that ravishing marine environment to help generate community support for more ocean protection. And what a success it was. In partnership with the Sustainable Seas Trust, Dr. Sylvia Earle and the Mission Blue team visited six different communities along the South African coast and engaged local ocean lovers, community leaders and citizens to declare their waters a Hope Spot, special conservation areas that are critical to the health of the ocean — Earth’s blue heart.
And what began as an idea of conservation, was quickly embraced by the communities.…

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Pope to Urge Action on Climate Change

The words Pope and Catholic Church may not often occur in the same sentence as climate change, but that is all about to change. This year is set to be a major milestone in humanity’s acceptance of our impacts on global warming as Pope Francis embarks on a mission to protect the planet.
Pope Francis has already stated that the greatest “sin” is destroying God’s Creation, and humanity’s contributions to climate change are doing just that.[i] Early last year, Pope Francis told a crowd in Rome, “if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us!” According to the Associated Press and The Guardian, these statements may soon grow into an official Church document called an “encyclical,” instructing the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to acknowledge human-caused climate change and act to fight it because doing so is essential to their faith.[ii]…

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Oil Spill in Bangladesh! (Why Do Mangroves Matter?)

by Brett Garling
A month ago, an oil tanker spilled hundreds of thousands of liters of oil into the largest mangrove forest in the world, called The Sundarbans. This immense brackish estuary on the border of India and Bangladesh is also a bengal tiger sanctuary and home to countless other flora and fauna. While the story hasn’t gotten much media attention, what coverage it did receive focused more on the area’s status as an endangered dolphin sanctuary. (Yes unfortunately it’s one of those, too. It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.) However, a disaster like this should also alarm us with regards to climate change: healthy mangroves play a crucial role in the delicate dance of carbon into and out of our atmosphere.…

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Microplastics Causing Macro-Danger

They’re in your clothes, working their way through the washing machine, traveling through drains and out sewage outfalls. Then before you know it, they accumulate in the ocean at incomprehensible levels! Who are these perpetrators, you ask? They are tiny bits of imperishable material developed by our own ingenuity, adorning almost every human on this planet. They are microplastics and microfibers, and they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
Microplastic fragments are often so small that they are measured by the mere micrometer. Unfortunately, these tiny synthetic particles appear in massive quantities all over the world, especially near coastal communities and dense human populations. Researchers have begun examining potential sources, and recently one ecologist named Dr. Mark Browne was recognized for his remarkable finding: microplastics could be the biggest source of plastic pollution in the ocean.…

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