fbpixel Conservation Archives - Page 13 of 15 - Mission Blue

Blog Archives
Protect the California Plastic Bag Ban for the Sake of Ocean Wildlife

Mission Blue is proud to report nearly 50,000 signees joined our petition towards the California plastic bag ban! 

The California plastic bag ban is a critical piece of legislation to control plastic pollution in California’s marine protected areas (MPAs). Single-use plastic bags contribute to the deaths of fish, birds, sea turtles, whales and other wildlife living in California’s MPAs and beyond. We implore you to vigorously fight attempts by commercial interests to dismantle SB270 for the sake of private gain. Their success would be detrimental to the future of our precious ocean environment upon which humankind relies for vital ecosystem services. One such scourge is plastic bag pollution. Luckily, Californians have the chance to deal plastic bag pollution a deathblow on November 8th, 2016.
 
Dr.…

Posted in .Homepage, Featured, mission blue |

3 Comments
Hope On the Horizon: Cayman Islands

By: Laura Butz

 
Recently, the George Town Harbor in the Cayman Islands was named a Mission Blue Hope Spot- one of fourteen newly designated Hope Spots.  This is incredible news for environmentalists both locally and internationally.  A designated Hope Spot is an area considered to be “critical to the health of the ocean”.  These special areas are recognized by Mission Blue and respectively conservationists around the globe as being in need of protection.  Conservation of these valuable areas will allow for the coral reefs, marine life and fragile ecosystems to rejuvenate and strengthen.  Individually, Hope Spots are beneficial to their specific surrounding habitat.  As part of a collective whole, they play a significant role in contributing to restoring the ocean’s ecosystem and marine life on a global scale. …

Posted in .Homepage, Featured, mission blue, Partner Stories |

Leave a comment
NGO’s Unite Against Shark Fin Trade!

Mission Blue is proud to stand with 80 other NGO’s in support of the Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act. On September 22, 2016, the letter below was sent to Congress urging support and passage of this important Act.

Dear Senator/Representative:
We, the undersigned organizations, representing over one million Americans, submit this letter urging Congress to support and pass the Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act (SFTEA) of 2016 (S. 3095/H.R. 5584). Sharks have been swimming in our oceans since before dinosaurs walked the earth. For over 400 million years, they have played a vital role in maintaining healthy oceans, but today, sharks are disappearing as a result of bycatch and overfishing, largely fueled by the shark fin trade. The demand for shark fins has led to the practice of finning – the act of cutting the fins off a shark and discarding its body at sea to drown, bleed to death, or be eaten alive by other fish.…

Posted in .Homepage, Featured, mission blue |

15 Comments
Ocean Health—Sea Lions Sound the Alarm

By: Shilpi Chhotray, Mission Blue Communications Strategist 

We’ve all seen the photos—record numbers of starving young sea lions, little more than skin and bones, that have washed ashore along the Northern California coast. These figures and images, reported by The Marine Mammal Center, weigh heavily on our marine mammal-loving hearts. Sea lions are known for their curiosity and playful banter with human passersby– but what’s happening to their population?
Sea Lions In Trouble
Earlier this year, The Marine Mammal Center was rescuing dozens of sea lion pups at a time for immediate medical attention at their hospital in Sausalito, California. The animals were so dehydrated and emaciated that Center staff described them as ‘fur-covered skeletons’. Before the one year mark, a healthy sea lion pup should weigh between 50-70 lbs.…

Posted in .Homepage, Featured, mission blue |

1 Comment
Hope for Southeast Florida’s Marine Ecosystems

By: Angela Smith, Founder and President of Shark Team One

The Story of the Coastal Southeast Florida Hope Spot!
North of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary exists a critical area of coral reef habitat and other associated marine ecosystems that have been in decline for decades due to overuse and their proximity to the heavily populated cities of Southeast Florida. Although in 1990 the Florida Keys were declared a sanctuary, the reef areas extending from Key Biscayne in the south up to St. Lucie Inlet in the north still remain unprotected.
Southeast Florida marine habitats hold populations of critically endangered species like staghorn and elkhorn coral, and smalltooth sawfish. They are also an important migration route for sperm and humpback whales; a migratory stopover for pelagic shark species such as great white, great hammerhead, tiger, lemon, dusky, bull sharks; a nesting habitat for three species of sea turtles; and a spawning ground for vulnerable fish species such as snook, grouper and snapper.…

Posted in .Homepage, Featured, mission blue, Partner Stories, Uncategorized |

Leave a comment
Hope Spot Hatteras: Lessons Learned

Meet Hope Spot Hatteras, one of the 14 new Hope Spots designated by Mission Blue and the IUCN World Conservation Congress.

 

After months of waiting to hear back about our Hope Spot: Hatteras nomination, we are so happy to announce Dr. Sylvia Earle and Mission Blue have voted to establish a Hope Spot 40 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras! View the most recent updates on our website and the Hope Spot nominations here.     
 
As a small group of community members and students, taking on an idea this big to protect the ocean was intimidating, but the support from our communities and those across the east coast alongside our love of the ocean kept us fighting for Hatteras. This area in the North Atlantic is a unique place full of amazing organisms.…

Posted in .Homepage, Featured, Partner Stories, Uncategorized |

Leave a comment
Coral Reef Recovery in Fiji

By: Victor Bonito, Director, Reef Explorer Fiji

Over the last three years, coral reefs worldwide have suffered unprecedented damage to coral communities from abnormally warm seawater temperatures. When the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the third global coral bleaching event in October 2015, shallow reef areas along Fiji’s Coral Coast had already experienced two back-to-back years of widespread coral bleaching. Before we received the depressing news about our local reefs, we decided to take action and incorporate lessons learned from previous bleaching events and seawater temperature monitoring efforts.
In late 2015, our  Reef Explorer project team and local youth clubs established five new coral nurseries across our local reefs. We stocked the nurseries with a good diversity of coral species propagated from numerous donor colonies that we suspected had good thermal (heat) tolerance due to their size and placement on the reef. …

Posted in Featured, mission blue, Partner Stories |

4 Comments
National Parks Were America’s Best Idea. Let’s Bring Them Underwater

Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument is now the world’s largest marine protected area. We can do more.
 
By Sylvia Earle
and John Bridgeland
 
PUBLISHED AUGUST 26, 2016 on National Geographic 

One hundred years ago, President Woodrow Wilson and Congress created the National Park Service to conserve areas of natural, cultural and historic importance and leave them “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Places like Yellowstone and Yosemite were already in federal protection, but in the next 100 years, America’s “best idea” would include 413 areas and more than 84 million acres of vast wilderness, scenic rivers, military battlefields, presidential homes and more. It was a radical idea to put large tracts of land into federal custody on the heels of the Industrial Age when almost nothing was untouched by development and our manifest destiny.…

Posted in .Homepage, Dr. Sylvia Earle, Featured |

Leave a comment
Second Century Stewardship in US National Parks

David Shaw, the founding chair of the Sargasso Sea Alliance (a Mission Blue partner) and conservation filmmaker, has recently released a documentary titled Second Century Stewardship: Science beyond the Scenery in Acadia National Park. The film has come out on the occasion of the historic 2016 centennial celebrations of Acadia National Park and the US National Park Service. Mr. Shaw serves as a Trustee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Park Foundation.

Second Century Stewardship is a hopeful, forward-looking film that examines what science-based stewardship looks like in Acadia and beyond in this second century of the national parks system. Mr. Shaw remarks, “This collaboration is intended to more powerfully engage science in America’s national parks to benefit park stewardship and to encourage public engagement in science through park experiences.”…

Posted in Featured, mission blue, Uncategorized |

Leave a comment
21st Century Aquariums & Zoos: Windows into the wild

 
by Dr. Sylvia Earle

The first time I met a live fish face-to-face, I was fascinated with the way the little animal came to the edge of its glassed-in world (a thirty gallon home aquarium) and looked at me, meeting my eyes with apparent curiosity. I was not yet old enough to go to school, but thanks to that captive universe of water, I learned at an early age that fish have faces, beautiful eyes, amazing behaviors and—although you would never guess it if you only see fish in a can or chowder or on your plate, swimming in lemon slices and butter—every fish is a unique individual, like every cat, dog, horse and human, like all living beings. Each represents the miracle of life.…

Posted in .Homepage, Featured, mission blue |

Leave a comment