To the Arctic is the first 3D IMAX documentary ever produced about the Arctic and is coming to theaters April 20.  The MacGillivray Freeman Films crew spent a total of 8 months in the field over 4 years, shooting in remote locations in Canada, Norway and Alaska.  The film was produced particularly to build awareness and inspire greater protection for the Arctic Wilderness, which is changing faster than any place on Earth and is in danger of vanishing completely.

The film features the plight of a mother polar bear and her two cubs, and is the first time a polar bear family has been tracked—and filmed—for 5 consecutive days, 24 hours a day. To avoid losing track of the family in the ice floe, the filmmakers, who were stationed on an icebreaker, had someone on 24-hour watch, day and night.  Polar…

Mission Blue spoke with marine biologist and TED Fellow Asha de Vos to get her perspective on blue whale research and conservation in her native Sri Lanka. 

How did you get into whale research? 
My dream as a child was to become an adventurer scientist. In addition, I had this immense love for animals and the ocean. Water was always my primary element. At the age of 6, I made my first attempt to save sea mammals through a poster I drew of whales with red lips and sharp teeth. All of these things played on my mind subconsciously for as long as I can remember. When it was time to begin my undergraduate studies, I enrolled at St. Andrews University in Scotland where I studied under some of the most incredible marine mammal researchers.…

While strolling near a stream in the winter of 1999, Todd Steiner came across a worrying site. Trapped in the shallow water, adult coho salmon were frantically trying to navigate a golf course’s dilapidated dam. “The fish kept slamming into the dam, then falling back down only to try and jump up again,” he said.
Shaken by the experience, Steiner worked with the National Marine Fisheries Service to get the fish moved over the barrier. And he didn’t stop there. Steiner also engaged the community in converting the broken down dam into a series of jump pools that allowed the fish to continue their upstream migration. From this project, a conservation organization called the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network—or SPAWN—was born.…

Leatherback sea turtles connect cultures, seas and continents on their epic trans-ocean migrations. For 100 million years they have populated the world’s oceans. Societies around the planet revere them as symbols of good luck, prosperity and fecundity. Yet, these timeless and unique animals are in danger of extinction.
Now, a conservation organization called the Turtle Island Restoration Network hopes to make this iconic animal California’s official state marine reptile in a push to raise awareness about the leatherback’s plight.
“People protect what they love,” said Chris Pincetich, a marine biologist at Turtle Island’s Sea Turtle Restoration Project. He said he was surprised to find how few Californians know that leatherbacks occupy waters just off their coast. Elevating them to the status of state marine reptile will draw attention to their presence, Pincetich hopes, and raise interest in protecting them.…

By Rachel Nuwer
The ongoing battle to outlaw Bisphenol-A—a chemical found in products ranging from baby bottles to shower curtains to food cans—comes to a head this week.
Since 2008, the Natural Resources Defense Council has pushed the Food and Drug Administration to ban BPA in any container that holds or comes in contact with food. When the FDA failed to respond within its allotted 180 days as required by law, the NRDC sued the administration. Now, the FDA is required to respond to the NRDC’s petition no later than March 31.
“There is no doubt that BPA is dangerous for human health,” said Daniella Russo, the executive director and co-founder of the non-governmental organization Plastic Pollution Coalition. “The question is, why are we not moving to do something when this is a well known fact?”…

By Rachel Nuwer
Parents face a difficult decision when it comes to serving seafood at the dinner table: does the risk that fish contains toxic contaminants outweigh its nutritional benefits? TheEnvironmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration sometimes provide contradictory information about what quantities of seafood are safe to consume, and the extent of contamination for many populations and species of fish remains unknown.
Fish become contaminated in a variety of ways. Mercury, for example, can makes its way into an aquatic ecosystem from power plant runoff,. Rivers feed into the ocean, and so the contaminant finds its way into the marine ecosystem as well. Microbes change the element into methyl mercury, which travels up the food chain and bioconcentrates in larger and larger fish.…

After 160 years of competition, the battle for the world’s oldest sporting trophy will be fought for in a dramatically different way this time around. The history and the tradition of this great competition—which exceeds even that of the Olympics—remain, but the 34th America’s Cup is a brand new game with a brand new message: saving the ocean.
In 2013, San Francisco will welcome the America’s Cup race to her waters.  For the first time ever, stadium-style racing will put over 7 million spectators at the heart of the America’s Cup action. Coverage of the event will allow more people in more places around the world to tune in than ever before.
But beyond the appeal of fast boats and extreme sports, the America’s Cup team has vowed to deliver the next race as a model sustainable sporting event.…

We asked Daniel Pauly, a fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia, to expand upon his recently posted TED talk. He delivered the presentation on the 2010 Mission Blue voyage to the Galapagos and spoke about the concept of shifting baselines.

Why did you decide to speak about shifting baselines as the topic of your TED talk?
Because the other things that I could talk about were covered by the other speakers at the conference. That’s one thing. The other thing is the state of the world’s resources and the ocean fisheries and the reduction of biodiversity. By speaking about shifting baselines I added the dimension that explains why we do not perceive this shift. The conference, then, as a package presented the decline of marine biodiversity and explained it.…

Coiba National Park, located off the southwest coast of Panama, is made up of Coiba Island, 38 smaller islands and the surrounding marine areas within the Gulf of Chiriqui. Coiba Island is the biggest island in Central America and is also the largest uninhabited island in all of Latin America.
Protected from the cold winds and effects of El Niño, Coiba hosts exceptional diversity both on the land and in the ocean. The island is a critical part of the Eastern Pacific Seascape, a broad ocean area within the waters of Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador.
Coiba was declared a World Heritage site in 2005 because of its role as a key ecological link for the transit and survival of surface-dwelling fishes and marine mammals.…

Syliva Earle has been busy down in Coiba this week. Here, an excerpt from her adventures, courteosy the Sylvia Earle Alliance, by Jennifer Austin Foulkes. Stay tuned for more to come!
The Minister of Science and Technology (SENACYT), for the country of Panama, Ruben Berrocal joined us to learn more about our underwater observations in Coiba National Park and shared with us his scientific vision and plans for developing a research station on Coiba. He was interested in learning more about the Hannibal bank expedition, and Smithsonian Director Biff Bermingham and Sylvia Earle described the life they’d seen.
We also toured Jean Pigozzi’s Liquid Jungle Lab (http://www.liquidjunglelab.com/) and heard about some of the research that has been done by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.…