Ocean Stories

Convinced that the time has come for historians to take the living ocean seriously, University of New Hampshire history professor Jeffrey Bolster has written a new book—The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail. In the book, Bolster takes readers through a millennium-long environmental history of human impact on the ocean.
Recently, Mission Blue caught up with Professor Bolster. Read the Q&A below to find out about the inspiration behind the story, what interesting things didn’t make it into the volume, and how writing this book changed Professor Bolster’s own view of the ocean.

Can you briefly describe what inspired you to write The Mortal Sea?
I’ve spent a lifetime messing around in boats, and as a young man I was a commercial seaman for ten years.…

By Richard Branson
We’re in Costa Rica today with very exciting news from the OceanElders‘ efforts to stop shark finning.
I saw the film Sharkwater a few years ago and it shook me to the core. Here we were decimating 1.5 million sharks per week – all for a bowl of soup. Like anyone who has seen the film, I was determined to do anything I could to see if I could help.
Sharkwater was largely based around the slaughter of sharks off Costa Rica, where you also have the beautiful Coco Islands. It was sickening to see the tens of thousands of shark fins drying out on the roofs and to see live sharks being thrown back into the water to die after their fins were cut off.…

By Mera McGrew
Blue whales, which are listed as endangered on the International Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List, are the gentle giants of the ocean.
Scientifically knows as Balaenoptera musculus, they are the largest animals known to have ever lived on Earth. At birth, a calf can measure about 23 feet (7 meters) in length. Fully grown, they can reach up to 108 feet (33 meters) and weigh upwards of 200 tons (181 metric tons). Reaching sizes comparable to a Boeing 737—and with hearts that weigh as much as a Volkswagen Beetle—the blue whale is even larger than the biggest dinosaurs that roamed the Earth during the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras.
These giant marine mammals reach such massive sizes by eating tiny shrimp-like animals known as krill (euphausiids).…

As part of the America’s Cup Healthy Oceans Project, participating sailors and skippers pledge their commitment to protect the ocean they compete on.
In a recent video, some of the world’s best sailors, assembled in San Francisco for the America’s Cup, pledged to specific actions to protect the world’s ocean. While, some committed to dispose of their trash responsibly, others said they would drive more fuel efficient cars and still others vowed to say “no” to single-use plastic bottles.
Watch the full video:

Also last week, Dr. Sylvia Earle, an ambassador of the America’s Cup Healthy Oceans Project, traveled to San Francisco, to highlight some of the issues threatening our ocean.
The videos and lectures supporting the America’s Cup Healthy Oceans Project have a clear message: we can make a difference.…

By Michael Keller
There’s a wide world of seemingly alien, gelatinous animals living in the world’s oceans, and not one of them is a jellyfish. Ease into the workweek with this short trip through the diversity of Scyphozoa, Anthozoans, Cubozoans and their ilk with this video, which got an honorable mention at last year’s International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. The video was made by Steven Haddock, Susan Von Thun, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and jellywatch.org.

Before your mind floats too far into the ocean deep, take a look at these two Cnidarian-inspired creations.

You’re looking at an artificial “jellyfish” created by Caltech and Harvard bioengineers, who put a layer of rat heart cells on a silicone form. When the creation is hit with an external electrical field, it contracts and swims like its namesake.…

A new study finds that over the past 27 years, half of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef coral has died. In a recent PBS NewsHour, Gwen Ifill talks to Dr. Nancy Knowlton, a coral reef biologist and chair of Marine Science at the Smithsonian Institution, about ecological and economical consequences of the collapse, as well as measures to help mediate the decline.
Watch and learn more about the state of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.…

Mission Blue hits the streets of New York City to ask people in Times Square, what is the largest animal on Earth? Watch below to see what happened!

This is the first video in a new online video series titled, “Mission Blue Asks.” This one and a half minute video premiered last week at the 2012 BLUE Ocean Film Festival in Monterey, CA.
Please watch and share!…

Marine Ecologist Nancy Rabalais was announced as one of the 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellows. The Fellowship is a $500,000, no-strings-attached grant for individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the promise to do more.
Dr. Rabalis is the director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and carries out research documenting the environmental and economic consequences of hypoxic zones in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Rabalis’s work is critical to the creation of strategies for restoring the degraded waters of the Gulf and the Mississippi River basin.

The MacArthur Fellowship is an annual grant program, which recognizes a broad spectrum of high-achieving individuals in fields such as science, medicine, literature, art, journalism, music, economics, filmmaking, mathematics and entrepreneurship. Each of the 23 fellows is bestowed $500,000 without conditions over five years to pursue their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world.…

There was a time when so many sawfishes were caught in areas of Pakistan that people made fences with the rostrums, the saw-like beak of the sawfish. Today, however, some people in the region might catch a sawfish just once or twice a year.
Earlier this month at the IUCN 2012 World Conservation Congress the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group took the opportunity to promote sawfish conservation and use networking opportunities to connect and build awareness with people who may be able to help stop sawfishes disappearing from our waters forever. One person had not even realized that sawfishes were a species present in her country and that she could help to protect them – a new supporter for sawfish conservation!…

Iconic explorer and visionary oceanographer, Robert (Bob) Ballard, stepped inside Google’s liquid galaxy at the BLUE Ocean Film Festival to join a Google+ Hangout with others located across the globe.  In the liquid galaxy, Ballard took viewers on a virtual tour. In the galaxy, Ballard explored some of his most famed dive sites, zoomed-in on the University of Rhode Island’s Inner Space Center, and even traveled to his own house. To hear Ballard talk about his discovery of the Titanic, meet his horse and more watch the hangout below.…