Ocean Stories

Earth, the name of our planet, comes from Old English meaning “ground, soil, dry land”. Since humans are terrestrial creatures by nature, it’s no surprise we chose to name our planet by the feature we knew best. Yet, only 29% of the planet surface is the greens, greys, browns, clays of earth; the remaining 71% is our shimmering ocean, representing 139 million square miles of planet surface and billions of tons of biomass.
Vital water gives us the blues, azures, cobalts, teals, grays of the ocean. Back to etymology, the word water comes, in part, from Sanskrit meaning “to animate.” Indeed, the dynamism and vitality of all life on Earth owes itself to the ocean. We often hear about how many millions of years ago, the first creatures emerged from the ocean to populate the land.…

“No ocean means no life, no blue means no green,” said ocean conservation champion, Dr. Sylvia Earle at a public talk at the Lawhill Maritime Centre in Simonstown held on April 14. Apart from being an esteemed oceanographer, explorer, author, lecturer, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, founder of numerous research foundations and chairperson of the Advisory Council for the Ocean in Google Earth, Dr. Earle is also the patron of Grahamstown based charity, the Sustainable Seas Trust (SST). The SST along with the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) are currently on the SAMSA SEA Pledge Saldanha to Sodwana Tour.
For four weeks the team will be touring South Africa’s coastline and spreading the word of coastal conservation to everyone from young school children to the various mayors and dignitaries along the way.…

By now most of us have seen those feel-good television spots featuring a Louisianan, an Alabaman, a Mississippian and a Floridian, all smiling and boasting good-naturedly about the relative advantages of their home state as a tourist destination. With a clear emphasis on the many pleasures of the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico shared by all.
The object is to draw visitors to spotless beaches and crystal waters, along with historical attractions, golf courses and, of course, food! Endless buffets of mouth-watering dishes served fresh from the bounty of the Gulf.
The message to prospective tourists is that the widely publicized miseries brought by the April 2010 BP spill are a thing of the distant past. A homegrown BP spokesman proclaims that things are better than ever, and urges one and all to come on down!…

Today’s Photo of the Day serves as a stark reminder of the largest scale environmental disaster that has yet to befall the United States, the Deepwater Horizon Disaster.  Now, at the third anniversary of the disaster, how much have we learned? And how far have we come in terms of avoiding future disasters?
Skimmer ships, floating containment booms, anchored barriers, sand-filled barricades along shorelines and dispersants were used in an attempt to protect hundreds of miles of beaches, wetlands, and estuaries from the spreading oil from the Deepwater Horizon.
Photo (c) Daniel Beltra
Daniel Beltra Photography…

Today we bring you a new video, called “The True Value of Our Oceans” as part of the “Two Minutes on Oceans with Jim Toomey” ocean video series. The video is a collaboration between The United Nations Environment Programme’s Regional Office for North America (UNEP RONA) and Mission Blue Executive Director, Jim Toomey, who is also one of North America’s premier syndicated cartoonists and whose comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon entertains and educates readers  about ocean issues every week.
The video, “Two Minutes on Oceans with Jim Toomey” is part of a series that was launched in June of 2012.  Using animation and humor, the videos provide, in clear and simple language, information about cutting-edge science and policies governing our ocean, the importance of the ocean to human well-being and the challenges facing our environment.…

We just received some amazing news – A hope story from Australia! After years of hard work, one of the most pristine areas on the planet and it’s critters have won protection!
So today we will take a minute to raise a glass to everyone who worked on the Kimberly project as we look forward to a better future where common sense and good science guides energy policy and development! ~ Ed.
Mission Blue partners at SeaTurtles.org have succeeded in helping Australian activists to win a major victory in the fight to save sea turtles on the pristine Kimberley coast from a massive natural gas plant!
After three years of non-stop opposition from around the world, late last week oil giant Woodside Petroleum scrapped its controversial and unpopular Browse Basin natural gas refinery at James Price Point near the town of Broome in Northwest Australia.…

More than a hundred prominent scientists are urging federal officials to prevent the return of damaging, bottom trawl fishing to waters that have protected fish habitat and spawning areas in New England for nearly two decades.
Some five thousand square miles of protected seabed—an area equal to the size of Connecticut—could be at risk under the proposal that officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries service are now considering. The scientists warn that such a move would likely “damage the marine ecosystem upon which all of our fisheries and other sectors in the coastal economy totally depend.”

These closed areas were put in place following the collapse of fish populations in the 1990s and protect juvenile fish, spawning areas and seafloor habitat.…

Intensely orange and aggressive to intruders, the clownfish lives upon the sea anemone, whose otherwise deadly sting has no effect on the clownfish thanks to a slimy mucus on its body. In a clever symbiotic ruse, the clownfish swims away from the anemone, attracts a hungry predator, lures it back to the anemone, who stuns and kills it. The anemone and the clownfish then feast on this predator-turned-prey. High fives all around. Clownfish are peculiar in that they adhere to a strict hierarchy of dominance. The largest and most aggressive female is found at the top. As many other fish, the female lays eggs — usually on flat surfaces close to their host anemone — and males fertilize them. Gender, however, is a slippery subject with clownfish, since they are what’s known as sequential hermaphrodites, meaning they first develop into males and then mature into females.…

Lake Baikal, in the southern part of eastern Siberia, is an incredible natural wonder of the world that one can only hope to visit at least once in their lifetime. Mission Blue founder Sylvia Earle had the opportunity to dive there with James Cameron in a Russian Academy of Science sub in August of 2010. It’s not just the oldest freshwater lake on Earth, at 20 to 25 million years old, it’s also one of the largest and deepest, holding an astounding one-fifth of the world’s freshwater.
The images from this March are astounding! Photo (c) Jeffersons Opinion
Learn more here: http://bit.ly/10MkgSY…

This past weekend in San Francisco a group of 20 students from San Francisco’s Downtown High School and Stockton Collegiate International Secondary School in Stockton learned to use photography to document their journey from the Delta to the San Francisco Bay, learning about environmental issues related to the students’ water supply and the ocean, during a National Geographic Photo Camp. The project is a collaboration between National Geographic Mission Programs, Full Circle Fund, Restore the Delta and America’s Cup Healthy Ocean Project.
NGS Lead Instructor Kip Evans commented, “We spent four incredible days with these teens and I hope that we inspired them to use their cameras as a way to experience and see the world around them in a new way.”…