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Hurricanes are Making History this Year

Did you know that the 2015 tropical cyclone season in the Northern Hemisphere is already the most active on record? It’s a fact. Check out the graph below published by The Weather Channel and created by Colorado State University tropical scientist Dr. Phil Klotzbach and National Hurricane Center specialist Eric Blake. The take away: we are breaking records this year with the frequency of large weather events in the Northern Hemisphere.

The effects of this intensifying trend were more than evident on Mission Blue’s recent Gulf of California Hope Spot expedition. For starters, the original expedition was slated to launch in September of 2014. Those plans, however, were scuttled in the face of Hurricane Odile, a major category 4 hurricane that is known as the most powerful landfalling tropical cyclone ever recorded.…

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Explore Life Beneath the Waves

Covering more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean remains one of the most uncharted and undiscovered ecosystems on the planet. Home to the majority of life on Earth, the ocean acts as its life support system, controlling everything from our weather and rainfall to the oxygen we breathe. Yet despite the ocean’s vital importance, the ocean is changing at a rapid rate due to climate change, pollution, and overfishing, making it one of the most serious environmental issues we face today.

Google is committed to exploring and preserving the ocean. Today, in time for World Oceans Day on June 8, and in partnership with XL Catlin Seaview Survey, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the Chagos Conservation Trust, you can explore brand new Street View imagery of more than 40 locations around the world, including the American Samoa and Chagos Islands and underwater dives in Bali, the Bahamas and the Great Barrier Reef.…

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Reality Check: Five Years After Deepwater Horizon

By Courtney Mattison & Rachel Devorah
It’s a heartbreaking yet familiar scene. Oil disasters of catastrophic proportions, seeping and sludging all over marine and coastal habitats; hundreds of dead seabirds and dolphins; sick residents and failing coastal economies. The same irrevocable accidents continue to occur. It’s easy to see history repeating itself, posing the inevitable question: will we ever learn from our mistakes?
As the five-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster approaches on April 20, the effects of this devastating accident are still raw throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The 2010 catastrophe spewed approximately 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in America’s worst environmental crisis to date and the second largest oil disaster in world history next to the 1991 Gulf War spill, during which Iraqi forces intentionally released 252-336 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf.…

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Northern California National Marine Sanctuaries Double in Size

Mission Blue commends the tremendous efforts of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, which recently announced greatly expanded reach for ocean conservation in the coastal waters surrounding San Francisco, the home of Mission Blue headquarters. This near doubling in geographic protection comes at a time when the Obama administrator is pursuing a more aggressive ocean conservation agenda, most notably with massive tracts ocean set aside in the US Pacific to be off-limits to fishing, energy extraction and other activities.
Mission Blue and Dr. Sylvia Earle look forward to working with the National Marine Sanctuaries and NOAA in calling public attention to the positive impact the federal government is making on increasing the geographic area of Marine Protected Areas within US jurisdiction.…

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Sea Lion Pups Starving Along California Coast

By Courtney Mattison
Sea lion pups are starving and washing up on California beaches for the third consecutive year. Every winter since January 2013, throngs of sickly young sea lions have stranded themselves on beaches and in seaside backyards and parking lots in California coastal communities, often weighing less than half of their ideal body weight. “They’re extremely emaciated, basically starving to death,” says veterinarian Shawn Johnson of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito.
Over 2,000 emaciated, dehydrated and diseased sea lion pups have washed up on California’s shores from San Diego to San Francisco since the beginning of 2015. For the two-month period of January and February this year, California sea lion strandings were almost 20 times the average stranding rate.[i]…

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New Habitats and Human Impacts Discovered in the Deep Sea Surrounding West Coast Marine Sanctuaries

By Courtney Mattison
The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) recently teamed up with Deep Ocean Exploration and Research and other partners to explore the depths of the proposed expansion areas of the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries. With the goal of gaining a basic understanding of new species and habitats that may soon be included in the sanctuaries, this team of scientists and remotely operated vehicle (ROV) technicians explored depths up to 300 meters (984 feet) in Bodega Canyon and surrounding areas.
The ROV was equipped with a video camera that allowed researchers to observe a variety of interesting invertebrates and fish including sea whip corals, rock prawns and flatfish. Among the team’s exciting discoveries was a catshark and skate nursery near Bodega Canyon that consisted of several clusters of eggs on the seafloor.…

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Exploring the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands

By Dr. Richard Pyle

September 27, 2014: Back to French Frigate Shoals
After leaving Pearl and Hermes, we had scheduled two and a half transit days to get back to French Frigate Shoals, which would have allowed us one and a half days of diving. However, the crew of the Hi’ialakai made better-than-expected headway in transit, arriving early enough at French Frigate Shoals that we were able to get in two full days of diving. Even before the bubbles cleared after plunging into the clear blue water for my first deep dive yesterday, I was startled when I turned around and saw a Galapagos Shark bearing down on me. I managed to turn my video camera on just in time to capture its closest pass, and from that point onward, we were obviously the subject of much interest among about seven or eight larger-than-usual Galapagos Sharks.…

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YOU can nominate new national marine sanctuaries!

Last month, the U.S. Government implemented a novel way to establish new national marine sanctuaries – exceptionally valuable areas in the ocean and Great Lakes that are protected as marine parks – and you can get involved! Folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is in charge of designating new sanctuaries, have worked tirelessly over the last few years to come up with a locally-driven nomination process that incorporates ideas from over 18,000 public comments, replacing a now defunct “site evaluation list” that was less community-driven. This innovative new approach allows groups of people across the nation to put together proposals for NOAA to designate their favorite watery regions (within U.S. jurisdiction of course) as official national marine sanctuaries.…

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The SMART way to view wild dolphins

New Mission Blue partner, Dolphin SMART began when a number of conservation agencies, including NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and National Marine Fisheries Service, the Dolphin Ecology Project, and Whale and Dolphin Conservation, as well as local businesses and members of the public, teamed up and developed a unique, multifaceted program encouraging responsible viewing of wild dolphins and recognizing businesses that participated. By joining this exciting conservation program, Dolphin SMART recognized businesses to encourage responsible wildlife viewing and to help aid in dolphin conservation. ~ Ed.
Here is their story, straight from the team at Dolphin SMART!
Dolphins, like many other marine mammals, are beloved by humans around the world. These popular mammals, whose energetic behaviors tend to fascinate us all, conjure lasting positive images of themselves for people.…

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