Ocean Stories

his past weekend, the Colorado Ocean Coalition hosted its second annual Making WAVES in Colorado – a two-day public ocean film festival

By Mera McGrew
The Smithsonian Institution has announced a new global long-term project to monitor the ocean’s coastal ecosystems and biodiversity. The project being dubbed the Tennenbaum Marine Observatories, is being made possible by a generous $10 million donation from Suzanne and Michael Tennenbaum who have expressed that a comprehensive study like this is past due. The first project of its kind, the Tennenbaum Marine Observatories initiative will offer long-term data and understanding that promise to be critical in addressing both current and future challenges to sustaining healthy marine ecosystems.
“As our coasts undergo accelerating change due to human activity and the effects of climate change, it is more important than ever to monitor and understand the ocean’s biodiversity,” explained Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough.…

Flags from countries across the globe are flying on Macquarie Street in Hobart, Tasmania. The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is meeting and over 200 marine scientists...

Mention Antarctica and the Southern Ocean and images of remoteness, vast ice sheets, and large glaciers immediately come to mind. But despite the area’s harsh wind and severe cold, the Antarctic is bursting with marine life.

The oceans around Antarctica are the only oceans on this earth still relatively untouched by human activity. They are home to almost 10,000 unique and diverse species, many of which cannot be found anywhere else on the planet. But today the

University of Delaware researchers are using an underwater robot to find and follow sand tiger sharks that they previously tagged with transmitters. The innovative project is part of a multi-year partnership with Delaware State University

Orange roughy, once called slimehead, is a deep-sea fish that can live to 100 years or more. Since they are slow growing and late to reach reproductive maturity, they are vulnerable to overfishing. Researchers report that their populations are now 10 to 30 percent (or less) of historic levels. Even with proper managment orange roughy populations are expected to take decades to recover.…

An animated bluefin tuna aptly named Toro is asking the public to do a “solid” for the ocean in a new short video. “I am taking a break from the waves to ask if you can take a chill pill on eating my peeps,” the animated tuna says. Watch the video below to see what else Toro has to say.

The language and animation make the short video light-hearted, but the underlying message is quite serious — bluefin tuna are in trouble and populations around the world are being run into the ground in order to meet human demand. 
This short video is part of a One World One Ocean month-long campaign being called Go Fish! To learn more about this video, the campaign and what you can do click HERE.…

New facts about marine life enable scientists to locate some of the ocean’s most ecologically and biologically significant areas (EBSAs), in the planet’s most remote places. At the 11th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Hyderabad, India, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) calls on the international community to protect them.
This is the first time the world ocean, including its international waters, comes under scientific scrutiny, combining new facts about the distribution, migration routes and reproductive, nesting and nursing grounds of many threatened species, such as tuna, sharks, turtles and whales. The Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative, of which IUCN is a partner, has been engaged in compiling and processing the new data.
“Many of these important areas lie outside of national jurisdiction, and thus remain neglected or poorly protected,” says Kristina Gjerde, IUCN Senior High Seas Advisor.…

By Carlos Manuel Rodriguez
Last spring I was invited by the Secretariat of the CBD to join a panel tasked with the first-ever assessment of the resources needed to achieve the Aichi Targets — the most ambitious set of global targets to protect nature in history — by 2020. This panel was co-sponsored by the governments of the United Kingdom and India and chaired by CI Board Member Pavan Sukhdev, and comprises eight global experts with a range of scientific, technical, policy and socioeconomic expertise.
In order to provide as robust an assessment as possible of the resources needed to fund conservation activities ranging from pollution reduction to invasive species management, the panel first examined what we know about the economic value of biodiversity.…