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Saving our Seas – Tapping into the Wisdom of OceanElders

By Martha Shaw
For 10,000 years, the ocean has been the life support system that has generously supplied us with air, food, and shelter in the embrace of a livable climate. In a perfect world, human beings might have fit nicely into the Earth’s ecosystem, in balance with the rest of nature. Over the last half-century however, that’s not been the case. Since the industrial revolution, man’s effect on the ocean has been likened to an invasive species. Man’s greatest predator has quickly become man himself.
As a species, who will save the day?
One thing working against the ocean is that problems are out of sight, out of mind. Its wounds lie beyond and below our line of vision. Many people have never even seen it except on television, in books and movies, on menus, or in pictures on the packaging of ‘seafood.’…

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Leaders in Ocean Conservation Gather for Retreat

Last weekend, HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco convened a summit on sea level rise and ocean acidification – two of the most pressing environmental issues caused by our carbon dioxide emissions – alongside partners from The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. The three-day retreat had a special focus on catalyzing leadership strategies to adapt to these ecological changes, with a special focus on the Pacific.
“The focus [of the retreat] is on solutions,” said Margaret Leinen, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “We already see acidification taking place. We already see sea level rising. So how are we going to adapt to that? I think it’s really a question of putting good science together with good strategies.”…

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Exploring the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

By Dr. Richard Pyle

September 27, 2014: Back to French Frigate Shoals
After leaving Pearl and Hermes, we had scheduled two and a half transit days to get back to French Frigate Shoals, which would have allowed us one and a half days of diving. However, the crew of the Hi’ialakai made better-than-expected headway in transit, arriving early enough at French Frigate Shoals that we were able to get in two full days of diving. Even before the bubbles cleared after plunging into the clear blue water for my first deep dive yesterday, I was startled when I turned around and saw a Galapagos Shark bearing down on me. I managed to turn my video camera on just in time to capture its closest pass, and from that point onward, we were obviously the subject of much interest among about seven or eight larger-than-usual Galapagos Sharks.…

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Innovators turn ‘Ocean Plastic into Something Fantastic’

Last weekend in New York City, iconic denim brand G-Star RAW unveiled RAW for the Oceans – the much-anticipated collection for Spring/Summer 2015 made from “Bionic Yarn,” an “eco-thread of fibers” created from recycled plastic bottles gathered from the ocean. This eco-fashionable clothing line sprung from a collaboration between Bionic Yarn, the Vortex Project, Parley for the Oceans and the curatorial expertise of musician and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams.
G-Star RAW, Bionic Yarn and Parley for the Oceans hosted a star-studded guest list for Ocean Night during New York Fashion Week on Friday at 23 Wall Street. Guests appeared on the blue carpet before entering a dim and surreal environment reminiscent of a moonlit scuba dive. Pharrell Williams, creative director of Bionic Yarn and curator for the collection, donned a cobalt blue hat and led a dozen models on stage clad in hip ensembles made from the first-ever denims woven from Bionic Yarn as Frank Ocean and Jay Z’s “Water” played in the background.…

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A Story of Poachers, Corruption, Compassion, Community and Conservation

By Joseph Ierna Jr. / Ocean CREST Alliance
Today a global struggle effecting the health of our communities, our economy, and the very life-sustaining health of our oceans is the ugly reality of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities or, as called in the Bahamas, poaching. Since our encounter with hundreds of poachers on Cay Sal Island Bahamas on July 2nd, crawfish season opened August 1st and the legal Bahamian fishermen are just returning from their first month of trips. The numbers of poachers they are seeing are astounding, while the numbers of crawfish they are catching are the worst in a decade. Our oceans are dying. 
“If tings don’t change soon Joe, I’ll be changing my occupation,” says Scott Harding, a 35-year veteran craw fisherman based on Long Island, Bahamas.…

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Summits for Science: Young Explorer Invites You to Seamounts of Anegada Passage

By Megan Cook
The ocean is home to many of the wonders of our planet – 72% of them to be exact. The deepest valleys, highest peaks, largest plains, and largest animal to ever live are all in our salty blue backyard right now. There are also mountains underwater – lots of mountains! Vast ridgelines peel around the world like zippers closing the boundaries of our ocean plates, and tens of thousands of seamounts dot the seafloor. Seamounts are isolated mountains, either active or extinct volcanoes jutting up from the seafloor, building some of the most unique and poorly understood ecosystems on our planet.
Rising sometimes miles off the seafloor, seamounts are hotspots for biodiversity in our oceans.  In the same way the world’s largest ball of yarn becomes a worthy detour to disrupt the monotony of a Midwestern road trip, the variation in topography and habitat structure of a seamount attracts life.…

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You are invited to a benchmark expedition with Sylvia Earle that redefines art, exploration and the conservation of our planet!

From our friends at the Ocean Geographic Society:
Join an elite team of explorers comprised of Dr. Sylvia Earle, David Doubilet, Jennifer Hayes, Ernie Brooks, Wyland, Michael AW, Göran Ehlmé, Amos Nachoum, Johan Ernst Nilson, Emory Kristof, Stuart Ireland and Leandro Blanco in an expedition to the High Arctic to produce a book, exhibition and a video documentary.  
The mission of Elysium – Artists for the Arctic is to capture the panorama, flora and fauna of the northern polar region in a perspective no one has seen before.  The Arctic region is regarded as one of the most enchanting wilderness regions of our planet, yet volatile and under severe threat from the warming of the world’s climate. This expedition promises the most awe-inspiring and stunning visual interpretation ever seen of the Arctic.…

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Gills Club Connects Shark Girls and Women Researchers

The Gills Club is proud to be onboard as new partners at Mission Blue! We were founded in January 2014 when folks at The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, a non-profit based on Cape Cod, Massachusetts realized how many young girls were fascinated by sharks, but were lacking strong female role models in the arena.  They saw that by putting these young girls together with women shark scientists, they could be inspired and empowered to act on their interest in sharks by becoming marine biologists, or even take up a different STEM field of their choice.

Each month, The Gills Club publishes a newsletter featuring two female shark biologists, who tell why they’re interested in sharks, what institutions or organizations they’ve found helpful to them personally, and what particular area of shark research they’re working on now.…

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A Prolific Whaling Ship is Reborn in the Name of Ocean Conservation

The ship on the US commemorative stamp pictured above is the Charles W. Morgan, a whaling vessel that was built in 1841 and sailed the global ocean for 80 years hunting giant cetaceans. The ship is the world’s oldest surviving commercial vessel and had been under restoration for 6 years until it was re-launched in 2013. Only the USS Constitution, the 1797 Navy frigate afloat at Pier 1 in Charlestown, is older.
This past weekend, the Charles W. Morgan sailed around Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off of Massachusetts — not as a commercial interest to plunder the ocean, but as a beacon of ocean conservation. The ship held a lively crew of historians, scientists, authors and artists who were aboard to draw attention to the sanctuary’s efforts to study, understand and protect endangered whales.…

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Is education the key to saving our oceans?

by Olivia and Carter Ries 
There’s nothing quite as inspiring as young people with a mission, and Olivia and Carter are always in motion – fighting the good fight. So listen up, these kids have some things they want us to know.
First, we’ll hear Olivia’s reflections after having attended John Kerry’s historic ‘Our Ocean 2014’ Conference this month.
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As we attended the ‘Our Oceans’ conference at the State Department recently, it became apparent that there are a whole lot of people and countries who care for the future of our oceans.  We heard experts from around the globe way-in on such issues as Ocean Acidification, Overfishing/Illegal Fishing and even about the issue of Marine Debris and Plastic Pollution. 
We were all so excited to see the level of participation from so many countries and the sincere compassion participants demonstrated as they mapped out their plans to help our oceans.  …

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