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Verde Island Passage Named a Hope Spot Highlighting Community Reef Monitoring Program

Featured image: Coastal community drone © Joal Ascalon
(VERDE ISLAND PASSAGE, CORAL TRIANGLE, PHILIPPINES)

The Verde Island Passage (VIP) is a major waterway that separates southern Luzon Island from northern Mindoro Island in the Philippines, extending from Lubang Island in the west to Tablas Island in the east. Its 1.14 million hectares of coral reef, mangrove, and seagrass habitats possess a remarkable abundance of marine life, provide livelihoods to millions of people through fishing and ecotourism, serve as a major step commercial shipping channel, and houses significant industrial complexes along part of its shoreline.
Dr. Terrence Gosliner, Senior Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, California Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Wilfredo “Al” Licuanan, Distinguished Full Professor in the Department of Biology and a University Fellow at De La Salle University (DLSU) and their partners are seeking the inclusion of the Verde Island Passage as a National Integrated Protected Area System of the Philippines and declaration as a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area of the International Maritime Organization. …

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

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“Art For the Oceans” Inspiring the Next Generation to Advocate for a Plastic – Free Coral Triangle

By: The Coral Triangle Center
The epicenter of marine biodiversity, the Coral Triangle is home for the most diverse coral reefs ecosystem is the world. Over 76% of the planet’s coral species live in this region as well as more than 2,000 species of reef fish. The Coral Triangle benefits millions of people living in coastal communities not only in the six Coral Triangle countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste but also across the world.
 
 
To celebrate the region’s unique marine biodiversity and the benefits it provides to the global community, Coral Triangle Day is celebrated every June 9, in conjunction with World Ocean’s Day, which is celebrated every June 8. Unlike previous celebrations, this year’s Coral Triangle Day activities were all held online, giving us a unique opportunity to connect with more people across the region through social media, art, and storytelling.…

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

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International Recognition of Timor-Leste’s Oceans of ‘Blue Hope’

Timor-Leste (June 8th, 2020, World Oceans Day)

The small island nation of Timor-Leste has been internationally recognized for its exceptional marine life and its commitment to ocean conservation and marine ecotourism. Mission Blue, international marine conservation non-profit, has recognized the northern waters of Timor-Leste in the newly designated Ombai-Wetar Strait Hope Spot. Hope Spots are special places critical to the health of the ocean that recognize, empower and support local communities and governments around the world in their efforts to protect the ocean.
 

 
Dr. Sylvia Earle, Founder of Mission Blue, said the Ombai-Wetar Strait Hope Spot recognizes the global significance of Timor-Leste’s oceans, particularly its coral reefs and marine wildlife – and the island’s potential for sustainable marine ecotourism development.…

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How Can Indonesia’s Coral Reefs Resist Climate Change?

Indonesia’s 17,000 islands are among the richest in the Coral Triangle. Conservationist Drew Harvell plunged into some of its best Marine Protected Areas to check the health and vitality of Indonesian reefs and here’s what she found…
By: Drew Harvell

As I awoke to the sounds of the mullahs’ calls for morning prayer in Makassar, Sulawesi Island,  I pondered barriers being crossed in my research project: cultural, gender and even scientific. Our goal is to save the spectacular biodiversity of Indonesia’s seas, which is threatened by an unholy trinity of coastal pollution, climate change and habitat destruction. We are working on coral reefs, which are the most biodiverse marine habitats. And Indonesia, within the Coral Triangle, is the beating heart of that diversity.…

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Hope in the Coral Triangle

By: Liz Cunningham

“We need to take care of the ocean, because we have no land,” Arman said. “The sea is our home.” Those were the last words the Bajau sea nomad in Sulawesi told me before we parted.
When I researched my book Ocean Country, I asked, “Who more than any other cultural group in the world calls the ocean home?” The answer was the Austronesia sea nomads of Southeast Asia. Nowhere on earth are there a people whose lives are more deeply intertwined with the sea. While they now primarily live in stilt villages, they live in the wake of a 10,000 year old tradition of nomadic life at sea—their ancestors ate, cooked, hunted, slept, and gave birth at sea.…

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Pockets of Hope in the Coral Triangle

By Henley Spiers, Underwater Photographer / Dive Instructor

The Coral Triangle is my favourite place on Earth. I’ve had the privilege of working there for three years as a dive instructor, and I return to it any opportunity I get. I love it there and yet have only seen a fraction of what it has to offer. The Coral Triangle is a massive area which encompasses the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It spans an area 2.2 million square miles big – that’s more than eight times the size of Texas. It is often called the ‘Amazon of the Seas’. This is because it’s the centre of marine biodiversity for planet Earth. Here are a couple of headline facts:

The Coral Triangle holds 76% of the world’s coral species.…

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A Gateway to Discovering Earth’s Underwater Amazon

Mission Blue is excited to announce our new partnership with The Coral Triangle website—a non-profit enterprise supported by the WWF that “tells the story of this million square kilometer marine bioregion in words, pictures and video.”

The global heart of coral reefs, the Coral Triangle, is located in the Pacific and touches the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. Called “the Amazon of the seas,” this global treasure covers 5.7 million square kilometers of ocean, contains 75 percent of all known coral species and sustains the lives of approximately 120 million humans. There are over 3,000 kinds of fish in this area—more than twice the number found anywhere else in the world. Without a doubt, this is a prime global center for precious marine biological diversity.…

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Menjangan Island Coral Reef Conservation

Mission Blue is pleased to announce a new partnership with the Biosphere Foundation! Here’s a word from them on their collaborative work to conserve coral reefs around Indonesia’s Menjangan Island in the Coral Triangle Hope Spot.

Menjangan Island lies off Bali’s northwest shore and is sacred with four Hindu temples and a statue of Ganesha, the god of new beginnings.  People come from all over Bali on holy days to make offerings and prayers at the temples.
Its fringing coral reef is unusual, almost a diversity anomaly for the region, with a wealth of hard corals, sea fans and soft corals.
On paper, the reefs are protected since they lie within Bali Barat National Park (BBNP), but in actuality, they are suffering from an array of negative impacts, such as anchor damage, over-fishing, trash, and climate change.…

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Mission Blue II Voyage: A Resounding Success in Calling for More Ocean Protection

Exploring over 1,500 miles of vibrant ocean in the South Pacific this past month, the Mission Blue II Voyage marked an important milestone for 21st century ocean conservation and underscored support at the highest levels for Hope Spots, Mission Blue’s flagship initiative. Aboard the 340-foot National Geographic Lindblad Expeditions Orion, world leading marine scientists, conservationists, policy makers, researchers, technologists and influencers traveled along the Pacific Equator from Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands and participated in an ocean symposium hosted and filmed by TED. Dr. Sylvia Earle, founder of Mission Blue, was as much a part of the onboard brainstorming as the underwater exploration that led to amazing finds like the ancient, oversized coral above.
In her TED filmed talk aboard the Mission Blue II Voyage, which will be made available at a later date, Dr.…

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Celebrating Coral Triangle Day

The Coral Triangle is an extraordinarily biodiverse marine area of the western Pacific Ocean, and today the world celebrates this globally important Mission Blue Hope Spot! Encompassing waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands, it covers 5.7 million square kilometers of ocean. 
Representing less than 1% of the planet’s marine environment, coral reefs support no less than 25% of its species. The Coral Triangle is a bioregion that’s half the size of the United States and harbors more marine species than anywhere else on the planet. There are single reefs here that contain more species than the entire Caribbean. The Coral Triangle contains 76% of all known coral types, more than 3,000 species of fish and 6 out of 7 of the world’s turtle species.…

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