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Ocean Force One

Mission Blue is proud to partner with Heirs to Our Oceans!
By: Arjun Subramanian, Heirs To Our Oceans

On Oct 3rd, Heirs To Our Oceans were invited to a closed press conference by the Ocean Cleanup team at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California.  Eleven of us proudly attended.  The purpose of this press conference was for the Ocean Cleanup team to share their initial impressions of the first flight by the Aerial Expedition Team. The objective of the mission is to accurately quantify the ocean’s biggest and most harmful debris – discarded fishing gear, called ghost nets. 
The Ocean Cleanup is an organization where CEO, 22 year old Boyan Slat designed a passive system which uses ocean currents to concentrate plastic in the garbage patches.  …

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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.…

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Journey Across The Arctic

Mission Blue is proud to partner with 5 Gyres! 
By: Carolynn Box and Lia Colabello, The 5 Gyres Institute

 5 Gyres was founded on the belief that citizen science can change the world. In 2009, we began raising awareness about marine plastic pollution when Dr. Marcus Ericksen and Anna Cummins collected 15,000 plastic water bottles to create the JUNK RAFT, which Marcus sailed for 2,600 miles for 88 day from California to Hawaii. Since then, the organization has embarked on 17 research expeditions, covering 50,000 miles and engaging scientists around the globe. 

 
In 2014, 5 Gyres convened eight international scientists to publish the first global estimate of plastic pollution in our oceans: 5.25 trillion particles weighing in at 269,000 tons of “plastic smog” worldwide. 
 

For our 17th research expedition this past August, The 5 Gyres Institute traveled 1687 miles through the Canadian Arctic to collect microplastics to better understand the global distribution of the smog of plastic that plagues our seas.…

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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.…

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Taking the Pledge for One Less Straw

Mission Blue is proud to partner with One More Generation!

Did you know that in America, we are using an estimated 500,000,000 plastic straws every single day?  That is like 1.6 straws for every man, woman and child living in this country… every single day.  If you were to take an entire day’s worth of plastic straws we use in one day, it would fill up over 127 school busses.  That is like over 46,400 school buses full of one-time use plastic straws that are ending up in our landfills and waterways.  Sick isn’t it?
This inspired 13-year-old Olivia and her 15-year-old brother Carter to  launch the global “OneLessStraw Pledge Campaign” this fall.  Olivia and Carter realized reducing our plastic footprint could be very easy to do; we just need to say ‘NO‘ to single-use plastics such as straws.  …

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The devil in the deep blue sea

With the ocean covering approximately 71% of the world’s surface, it is extremely hard not to notice what pollution is doing to our blue planet. The sea is the lifeblood of our planet and provides over 70% of the oxygen that we breathe and over 96% of the planet’s water supply; Without the ocean we would not exist today.
Pollution is bringing our ocean to the point of disaster and we must act fast to ensure that it remains healthy for the good of our generation and generations to come.
There are many ways in which you can make a difference to the pollution of the ocean such as:

Reduce your energy consumption and be aware of your carbon footprint. You can do this by leaving your car at home and either walking to work or riding a bike.…

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Skeletons Enmeshed in Plastic Pollution Descend on Barcelona

Mission Blue is proud to join the Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC) in sponsoring a plastic art exhibit in Barcelona’s metro and airport. The name of the remarkable installation is Vida Tóxica (Toxic Life) and it was created by Catalan artist Alvaro Soler Arpa to present the issue of global plastic pollution to the millions of travelers who pass through Barcelona. With a total of fourteen sculptures created with bones and plastic waste, Mr. Arpa emphasizes the human impact of runaway plastic pollution on ecosystems and individual animals. Approximately eight million tons of plastic are dumped in the ocean each year, making marine plastic pollution a major issue that impacts animals across the food chain, from whales to zooplankton.
The sculptures are the result of a painstaking process.…

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Exploring Toxics in our Bodies & the Ocean with eXXpedition

Here’s a word from eXXpedition—a new Mission Blue partner:

eXXpedition is a series of all-women voyages to make the unseen seen, from the toxics in our bodies to the toxics in our seas.
We question the impact and scale of plastic and toxic pollution in our bodies and in our oceans using a unique and adventurous approach, tackling the questions from all angles—using science, communications, media, and education to get the answers. 
We have designed a series of global expeditions where we take novice sailors, who are highly skilled professionals from a range of disciplines, out into an extreme environment to explore the problem and develop solutions. Our primary aim is to connect people with the ocean, and the issues of plastic and toxic pollution.…

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Microplastics Causing Macro-Danger

They’re in your clothes, working their way through the washing machine, traveling through drains and out sewage outfalls. Then before you know it, they accumulate in the ocean at incomprehensible levels! Who are these perpetrators, you ask? They are tiny bits of imperishable material developed by our own ingenuity, adorning almost every human on this planet. They are microplastics and microfibers, and they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
Microplastic fragments are often so small that they are measured by the mere micrometer. Unfortunately, these tiny synthetic particles appear in massive quantities all over the world, especially near coastal communities and dense human populations. Researchers have begun examining potential sources, and recently one ecologist named Dr. Mark Browne was recognized for his remarkable finding: microplastics could be the biggest source of plastic pollution in the ocean.…

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