The Washington Post

November 2, 2021
Whales, sea turtles and hammerhead sharks will be able to swim more safely through the Eastern Pacific, thanks to a chain of new marine protected areas announced Tuesday by Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama.

The newly established “ocean highway” will stretch from the Galapagos to the Pacific coast of Central America, officials said, encompassing waters used by many species for hunting, mating and giving birth. This stretch of the tropical Pacific Ocean harbors some of the most productive fisheries on the planet. But it is also threatened by overfishing and the steady warming of the world’s seas.

“This is an unprecedented collaboration,” said conservationist Enric Sala, an explorer-in-residence at National Geographic. “Protection of these waters will not only protect marine life, but it will also help to replenish the waters around them.”

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Mongabay

March 26, 2021
From the eye of a satellite, the ocean is streaked with smoky white lines that flow and twist like scribbled handwriting across the surface. But these lines aren’t naturally occurring features — they’re sediment plumes from large trawling vessels that scrape the seafloor with nets and heavy equipment, trying to catch bottom-dwelling species like shrimp and whiting.

The environmental consequences of trawling are still being investigated since the plumes were first noticed in satellite imagery in 2008. But a new study in Nature suggests that it churns up and releases carbon that’s been locked up inside sediment at the bottom of the ocean — between about 600 million and 1,500 million tons, according to the study’s initial estimates, which is about the same amount as the global aviation industry.

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The Washington Post

March 18, 2021
Humanity has no better friend on this planet than the ocean. It provides more than half the oxygen we need to breathe. It supplies food that helps sustain more than 3 billion people. It absorbs many of the pollutants we keep pumping into the atmosphere: carbon dioxide, ozone-depleting chemicals.

The ocean is the kind of unwaveringly supportive friend who tolerates our toxicity and shields us from the worst consequences of our actions. It’s the friend that people have taken for granted for far too long. By overfishing and mining and drilling the sea floor, humanity is risking not just the ocean’s health but our own.

But new research suggests a strategic, globally coordinated effort to protect more of the world’s waters could not only bolster marine biodiversity but dramatically increase the number of fish available for harvest and boost the amount of carbon taken up by the ocean, aiding the fight against climate change.

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Project Syndicate

March 18, 2021
The world must protect at least 30% of the global ocean in order to restore marine life, increase seafood supply, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Meeting this goal would generate annual benefits – in terms of increased economic output and improved ecosystem services – that far exceed the investment required.

Last November, something happened in the middle of the South Atlantic that was unusual enough to make a local northern rockhopper penguin raise one of its long spiky yellow eyebrows. The tiny archipelago of Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory, set aside more than 687,000 square kilometers (265,000 square miles, an area larger than France) of ocean to establish the world’s fourth-largest marine protected area (MPA).

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WEF

March 18, 2021
2021 ought to be the “super year” for nature, where we collectively agree on how to deal with the greatest risk to humanity: we have become totally out of balance with nature. But there is a solution that is scientifically proven and cost-effective, and new research has found a way forward.

We’ve already lost 60% of terrestrial wildlife and 90% of the big ocean fish. Approximately 96% of all mammals on earth are humans and our domesticated livestock. Only 4% is everything else, from bears to elephants to tigers. We now risk the extinction of 1 million species during this century. Losing these species and all the goods and services they give us would mean the collapse of our life support system and everything we care about and need to survive: our food, our health, our economy, our security – everything.

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BBC News

March 17, 2021
A global map compiled by international scientists pinpoints priority places for action to maximise benefits for people and nature.

Currently, only 7% of the ocean is protected.

A pledge to protect at least 30% by 2030 is gathering momentum ahead of this year's key UN biodiversity summit.

The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, sets a framework for prioritising areas of the ocean for protection.

The ocean covers 70% of the Earth, yet its importance for solving the challenges of our time has been overlooked, said study researcher Prof Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

"The benefits are clear," he said. "If we want to solve the three most pressing challenges of our century - biodiversity loss, climate change and food shortages - we must protect our ocean."

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The New York Times

March 17, 2021
For the first time, scientists have calculated how much planet-warming carbon dioxide is released into the ocean by bottom trawling, the practice of dragging enormous nets along the ocean floor to catch shrimp, whiting, cod and other fish. The answer: As much as global aviation releases into the air.

While preliminary, that was one of the most surprising findings of a groundbreaking new study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study offers what is essentially a peer-reviewed, interactive road map for how nations can confront the interconnected crises of climate change and wildlife collapse at sea.

It follows similar recent research focused on protecting land, all with a goal of informing a global agreement on biodiversity to be negotiated this autumn in Kunming, China.

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Time Magazine

March 17, 2021
It’s been well established by now that the agricultural systems producing our food contribute at least one fifth of global anthropogenic carbon emissions—and up to a third if waste and transportation are factored in. A troubling new report points to a previously overlooked source: an industrial fishing process practiced by dozens of countries around the world, including the United States, China, and the E.U.

The study, published today in the scientific journal Nature, is the first to calculate the carbon cost of bottom trawling, in which fishing fleets drag immense weighted nets along the ocean floor, scraping up fish, shellfish and crustaceans along with significant portions of their habitats.

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National Geographic

March 17, 2021
The campaign to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030, supported by more than 70 nations, is known mostly for soaring ambition and scant achievement so far. Just 7 percent of the seas are protected and only 2.7 percent are highly protected.

“It is very optimistic to think we’ll reach ‘30 by 30,’” says Patricia Majluf, a Peruvian fisheries scientist who has worked to create a deep-sea protected area off Peru in the face of strong resistance from the fishing industry. Peru has protected less than half a percent of its offshore waters. The proposed Nazca Ridge Marine Protected Area, on an undersea mountain range that stretches out into the Pacific from the Peru coast, is expected to be finalized this spring. It would boost Peru’s protected waters to 8 percent.

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Nature

March 17, 2021
After a year of pandemic-induced delays, 2021 is set to be a big year for biodiversity, climate and the ocean. Later this year, world leaders are expected to gather for meetings of the United Nations conventions on biological diversity and climate to set future agendas. Ocean policies will be a priority for both.

Momentum is building for what is called the 30 × 30 campaign — a goal to protect 30% of the planet (both land and sea) by 2030. Last December, the 30% ocean goal was backed by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, which comprises the heads of state of 14 coastal nations, including some of the largest countries, such as Indonesia, and the smallest, like Palau. This is an important step.

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CFN

March 17, 2021

A new study published in the prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature today offers a combined solution to several of humanity’s most pressing challenges. It is the most comprehensive assessment to date of where strict ocean protection can contribute to a more abundant supply of healthy seafood and provide a cheap, natural solution to address climate change—in addition to protecting embattled species and habitats.

An international team of 26 authors identified specific areas that, if protected, would safeguard over 80% of the habitats for endangered marine species, and increase fishing catches by more than eight million metric tons. The study is also the first to quantify the potential release of carbon dioxide into the ocean from trawling, a widespread fishing practice—and finds that trawling is pumping hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the ocean every year, a volume of emissions similar to those of aviation.

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Our Daily Planet

December 20, 2020
In November of 2020, the government of Tristan da Cunha, a four-island archipelago in the South Atlantic, announced that it is creating the fourth-largest marine “no-take” reserve in the world. The new marine reserve will encompass 265,347 square miles, making it almost three times larger than the United Kingdom. Tristan da Cunha, a British territory, will protect 90% of the waters around the island chain by banning fishing, mining, and other extractive activities. What makes it so special? “This is a place that has a unique ecosystem that is found nowhere else,” National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala remarked, ant is notable for its kelp forests and as a critical nursery for blue sharks.

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NPR

December 8, 2020
President-elect Joe Biden wants to conserve 30% of U.S. land and water by 2030. It's part of a global push to avoid the worst effects of climate change and the decline of the natural world.

The Hill

October 23, 2020
On October 7, California Governor Gavin Newsom took the bold step of committing the state to a goal of protecting 30 percent of California’s land and coastal waters by 2030. 

The move makes a lot of sense for California. It is a global biodiversity hotspot because of its unique plant diversity, and harbors rich and productive marine ecosystems. But this bounty is threatened by the confluence of the climate crisis, overexploitation and development. Its latest manifestation has been the apocalyptic fires that have burned more than four million acres. 

California has very old trees, including the giant sequoias that are over 3,000 years old. There’s been a lot of fires in those 3,000 years, but the ancient forests survived, because fire was part of the ecology of the system. But the forests could not survive the human assault. Logging these natural treasures started a chain of events that led to the present fires, exacerbated by the heat waves caused by global warming.

The solution to the current crisis is protecting the wild, and restoring and rewilding degraded lands and coasts, in partnership with Indigenous Peoples. A commitment to 30 percent by 2030 — ‘30x30’ — is a great way to start.

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HuffPost

February 14, 2020
An irradiated nuclear zone is hardly the most obvious animal sanctuary. But in January, almost a decade after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, scientists using remote cameras in the area around the abandoned power station discovered an abundance of wildlife.

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