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Hope for Wildlife on Planet Earth

Have you ever wondered what animals think and feel? Dr. Sylvia Earle reflects on Carl Safina’s famous Ted Talk, “What are animals thinking and feeling?”
By: Dr. Sylvia Earle

As I sat aboard the 340-foot National Geographic Lindblad Orion exploration vessel steaming through one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, the Coral Triangle, and listened to Carl Safina deliver his mesmerizing talk, “What are animals thinking and feeling?,” I felt a stirring of hope for wildlife on planet Earth. With such incision, Carl confirmed what I have observed through my decades of diving into the blue: fish have personalities! Eels have intelligence! Whales have empathy! Sharks exhibit rationality! These cognitive faculties that some humans insist make us distinct from the animal kingdom are actually shared by many of the creatures living on this blue speck in the universe.…

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Atlantic coast catch limit leaves 300 million fish in the sea

By Courtney Mattison
The world’s first coast-wide catch limit to protect the Atlantic menhaden fishery – the largest fishery on the U.S. East Coast – is already well into its second year and the numbers are looking good. A recent assessment of fish landing data for the year 2013 suggests that roughly 300 million more menhaden were spared from overfishing (catching fish faster than they can reproduce[i]) thanks to a unique alliance between all 15 Atlantic coastal states from Maine to Florida established by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) in December 2012. The agreement limited the total menhaden catch to 377 million pounds – three quarters the amount caught in previous years. According to the ASMFC, last year’s total fish landings came in well under the allowed maximum.…

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Whales win one: Will Japan abide by ban?

Op Ed at CNN by Mission Blue partner, Carl Safina. 
CNN Editor’s note: Carl Safina is an award-winning scientist and author, founding president of Blue Ocean Institute at Stony Brook University, and host of the PBS television series “Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina.” 
(CNN) — On Monday the World Court in the Hague ruled that Japan’s “scientific” whale-hunting was baloney. It ordered Japan to revoke its “scientific research” permits to all its ships, effectively tying Japan’s fleet to the dock and silencing the cannons and exploding bombs that are the way whales die nowadays.
Japan says it will abide. I wish it would take this opportunity to bow gracefully out of something so dishonest and unfit for modernity. But I expect a fragile truce, and only a partial one.…

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Carl Safina Reports from the Gyre

No Refuge: Tons of Trash Covers The Remote Shores of Alaska
A marine biologist traveled to southwestern Alaska in search of ocean trash that had washed up along a magnificent coast rich in fish, birds, and other wildlife. He and his colleagues found plenty of trash – as much as a ton of garbage per mile on some beaches.
by Carl Safina
I am back ashore after an unusual expedition that brought scientists and artists to witness and respond to beach trash on the shores of southern Alaska. I have good and bad news.
The expedition was called GYRE, partly because much of the trash spins out of the North Pacific Ocean gyre, and partly because of the trip’s message: what goes around comes around.…

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San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival features Mission Blue Partners

Now through Sunday, and in it's 10th year, The San Francisco Ocean Film Festival has added 'International' to it's well respected name. With 50 films created from all corners of the globe, the festival has truly raised the bar. Come by Pier 39 this weekend to catch a glimpse of an exciting lineup of ocean-related documentaries. With French explorer and environmentalist Jean-Michel Cousteau in attendance, the SF International Ocean Film Festival hopes to educate and entertain the public in greater numbers than ever before. We're proud that several of the films are by, or about Mission Blue Partners.

When Walter Marti called Mission Blue partners, Ocean Defenders Alliance to alert them about a huge derelict net at Isla Coronado in Northern Mexico, Kurt Lieber and his team went into action.…

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