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Whale Tagger Nan Hauser Makes a Big “My Hero” Splash

Nan Hauser, the intrepid whale tagger who works in the Cook Islands, recently had her work documented by Peter Stonier the Conservation International filmmaker for the My Hero International Film Festival. The video — available for viewing here — was selected as for first place in the “Series” category, underscoring public interest and support of whale protection efforts.

Nan Hauser, President and Director of the Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation, is based in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, where she is the Principal Investigator for the Cook Islands Whale Research Project and Director of the Cook Islands Whale & Wildlife Centre. Nan’s research includes population identity, Photo ID, acoustics, genetics, surface & underwater behaviour, navigation and migration of cetaceans. Her satellite tag work includes results on how whales migrate over long distances using linear constant course segments.…

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Benefits of Protecting Nature Far Outweigh Investment Costs

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.…

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In the Field: Pacific Islands Forum Marks New Era in Marine Conservation

By Peter Seligmann
I am on the plane returning from the Pacific Islands Forum in the Cook Islands. All I can say is “Wow.”
Thanks to the inspired leadership of CI’s newest board member, President Anote Tong of Kiribati, and strong support from the Prime Minister Henry Puna of the Cook Islands, the Pacific Oceanscape is gaining traction. In fact, the Oceanscape has been officially adopted by the entire forum as an essential platform of their collaboration with each other and with their outside development partners, including Australia, the European Union, the World Bank, the U.N., China, the U.S., New Zealand, France and Taiwan.
These leaders have appointed one of their most distinguished and senior diplomats, Tuiloma Neroni Slade of Samoa as the commissioner of the Pacific Oceanscape and have created a Regional Ocean Alliance to provide support to the commission.…

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In the Field: Before Pacific Islands Forum, a Memorable Dive in Cook Islands

By Greg Stone
As I gaze at the night sky, the stars are the clearest I have ever seen them. The Milky Way glows from horizon to horizon, and while I see many familiar constellations visible from the Northern Hemisphere, I also see a number of new ones — strange assortments of stars that are only visible south of the equator.
We are here diving in the Cook Islands on the breaking crest of a new wave of marine conservation. This week, 16 nations have gathered at the 43rd Pacific Islands Forum to coordinate their actions across an area so vast it encompasses 40 million square kilometers (15.4 million square miles) — 10% of our planet’s ocean. This area is called the Pacific Oceanscape.…

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