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Ocean conservation has too long marginalized the very people best placed to lead the most powerful change: traditional fishing communities. Alasdair Harris, founder of Blue Ventures, talks to Ashoka’s Pip Wheaton, about how empowering the people who know the ecosystems best provides a myriad of benefits – to their communities, to food systems, and to our fight against climate change.

Philippa Wheaton: What role do traditional fishers play in climate adaptation and mitigation?

Alasdair Harris: If we look at the issue of climate break down and mass extinction, we quickly see that we’re changing our environment, on land and in the water, in ways that our species have never experienced...

During 2020, no North Atlantic right whales were observed to have died off Canada’s coast, but this endangered species’ overall population numbers are still down by 11 percent over the past decade. For the last several years, Canada has changed fisheries management to protect right whales by halting fishing if whales are present and introducing ropeless technologies—fishing gear that doesn’t snare whales accidentally—in an effort to save right whales and increase their chance of survival in Canadian waters.

Peter Baker, director of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Northern Oceans Conservation project, spoke with Tonya Wimmer, executive director of the Marine Animal Response Society in Nova Scotia, who works for the conservation of marine species through education, research, and res...

“In the wee hours of the morning … we weren’t too excited to be spooning poo,” reef ecologist Dr Vincent Raulot says. But that’s exactly what he and a team of researchers did to calculate out how much poop was excreted by an estimated 3 million sea cucumbers on the 20 sq km Heron Island coral reef in Queensland. The answer? Some 64,000 metric tonnes a year – slightly more than the mass of five Eiffel Towers.

Vincent, from the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, has been studying the “burnt-sausage-looking animals” – that in other parts of the world are being fished to towards extinction – to better understand the vital role they play in the health of coral reefs.

“Sea cucumbers are not a charismatic animal,” he told Guardian Australia...

Humans and their ships, seismic surveys, air guns, pile drivers, dynamite fishing, drilling platforms, speedboats and even surfing – have made the ocean an unbearably noisy place for marine life, according to a sweeping review of the prevalence and intensity of the impacts of anthropogenic ocean noise published on Thursday in the journal Science. 

The paper, a collaboration among 25 authors from across the globe and various fields of marine acoustics, is the largest synthesis of evidence on the effects of oceanic noise pollution.

Anthropogenic noise often drowns out the natural soundscapes, putting marine life under immense stress. In the case of baby clown fish, the noise can even doom them to wander the seas without direction, unable to find their way home.

In the ocean, vis...

Next week, scientists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and artists will gather at Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands – both in-person and virtually – to kick-off the annual Ultramarine Ocean Summit. The event boasts an impressive line-up, including Mission Blue founder Sylvia Earle, ocean explorer Fabien Cousteau, conservationist and world-renowned wildlife photographer Cristina Mittermeier, and actress and environmental activist Jane Fonda. 

The virtual portion of the event, put on by nonprofits Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA) and Oceanic Global, is available for the public to enjoy. Each of the three-days of virtual programming will include a theme: plastic pollution, protecting marine life, and the regenerative ocean economy.

Day 1 – February 3, 2021: Tackling Plastic ...

Many household products contain ingredients to protect them against sun damage. These UV filters are found in plastics, paints and textiles, as well as personal care products such as sunscreens and moisturizers. UV filters are entering the aquatic environment in rivers, lakes and oceans.

Consider for a moment a beach goer swimming in the ocean or rain washing over plastic playground equipment and running into a stormwater drain – either directly or indirectly, UV filters end up making their way to a waterway.

UV filters are chemicals that work by either physically blocking or absorbing UV rays. There are two main types of UV filters: inorganic forms, which contain metal particles, such as titanium dioxide (TiO₂) or zinc oxide (ZnO) and physically block sunrays like little mirrors; ...

Climate change is causing oceans to rise quicker than scientists’ most pessimistic forecasts, resulting in earlier flood risks to coastal economies already struggling to adapt.  The revised estimates published Tuesday in Ocean Science impact the two-fifths of the Earth’s population who live near coastlines. Insured property worth trillions of dollars could face even greater danger from floods, superstorms and tidal surges.

The research suggests that countries will have to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions even more than expected to keep sea levels in check. 

“It means our carbon budget is even more depleted,” said Aslak Grinsted, a geophysicist at the University of Copenhagen who co-authored the research...

Seeing a whale stranded on a beach often provokes a strong reaction. It can make people curious – beached whales can do strange things, like explode. It can also be upsetting to witness a creature so magnificent in water reduced to lifeless blubber on land. What rarely registers, however, is the lost opportunity for carbon sequestration.

Whales, particularly baleen and sperm whales, are among the largest creatures on Earth. Their bodies are enormous stores of carbon, and their presence in the ocean shapes the ecosystems around them. 

From the depths of the ocean, these creatures are also helping to determine the temperature of the planet – and it’s something that we’ve only recently started to appreciate.

“On land, humans directly influence the carbon stored in terrestrial ec...

Scientists say sharks and rays are disappearing from the world’s oceans at an “alarming” rate. The number of sharks found in the open oceans has plunged by 71% over half a century, mainly due to over-fishing, according to a new study. Three-quarters of the species studied are now threated with extinction.

And the researchers say immediate action is needed to secure a brighter future for these “extraordinary, irreplaceable animals”.

They are calling on governments to implement science-based fishing limits.

Study researcher, Dr Richard Sherley of the University of Exeter, said the declines appear to be driven very much by fishing pressures. 

He told BBC News: “That’s the driver for the 70% reduction in the last 50 years...

This year, the 196 parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will meet to agree to an ambitious new plan to safeguard life on Earth by 2050. If all goes as expected, the plan will be adopted at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the CBD in Kunming, China; precisely when that meeting will happen is uncertain because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These global talks are a critical opportunity for world leaders to advance policies to halt the decline of biodiversity on our planet and ensure the long-term sustainability of Earth’s ecosystems on which human life depends. The plan would establish a “post-2020 biodiversity framework” for conserving and restoring nature that integrates many objectives included in the U.N...