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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World Economic Forum - OpEd

March 11, 2021
Most MPAs seek to protect critical ocean habitats and species from one or more existential or predicted threats. The vast majority of such threats, such as pollution and exploitation of nature, are human induced. For an MPA to function effectively there must be science-based monitoring of progress, management of human activities and the environment, surveillance, and enforcement of rules and regulations put into place to abate the threat and protect species and ecosystems.

To do this at scale requires significant effort. Achieving 30 percent protection and conservation of the whole ocean—both coastal and high seas—requires that we protect and conserve 109 million square kilometres (42 million square miles), an area more than 11 times the size of the entire United States.

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The Hill

February 25, 2021
One of the most critical ocean circulation patterns that helps the Earth regulate its temperature has recently reached its weakest state in a millennium, making it more difficult to effectively distribute heat on the planet. 

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a series of currents that flow across the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the Nordic and Labrador Seas, helps transport heat from the South Atlantic and North Atlantic to more polar Atlantic waters.

Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, a new study examines evidence pointing to the AMOC’s slowdown due to anthropogenic climate change, or climate change caused by humans. 

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PEW

January 12, 2021
In 2021, the parties to the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are expected to adopt a new 10-year global biodiversity framework with goals and targets for ocean protection.

In support of a growing call to protect and conserve 30% of the ocean by 2030, on Jan. 12 an informal coalition of nongovernmental and other civil society organizations shared with representatives from CBD a statement calling for a robust global biodiversity framework that will safeguard our ocean ecosystems for the long-term benefit of communities, fishers, biodiversity, and Earth’s climate.

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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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National Geographic

December 4, 2020
When the heads of state of 14 nations sat down together in late 2018 to discuss the grim condition of the world’s oceans, there was no certainty that anything consequential would result. The leaders planned 14 gatherings, but met only twice before the pandemic upended their talks.

So when the group announced this week the world’s most far-reaching pact to protect and sustain ocean health, it signaled a bit more than a noteworthy achievement in a complicated time. The agreement, negotiated via the nuance-free tool of video conferencing, also offered hope of a renewed era of global accord on climate, where issues grounded in science might finally trump political posturing.

Overall, the 14 leaders agreed to sustainably manage 100 percent of the oceans under their national jurisdictions by 2025—an area of ocean roughly the size of Africa. Additionally, they vowed to set aside 30 percent of the seas as marine protected areas by 2030, in keeping with the United Nations’ campaign known as “30 by 30.”

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Campaign For Nature

December 2, 2020
Today, the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel), composed of 14 serving world leaders, is putting forward a new ocean action agenda for building a sustainable ocean economy where protection, production and prosperity go hand in hand. In addition to releasing commitments and policy actions designed to transform how the world can protect and use the ocean and ultimately sustainably manage humanity’s impacts on it, the Ocean Panel will also release a new comprehensive report spotlighting ways to accelerate, scale and finance ocean action. 

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Forbes

October 26, 2020
A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that protecting an additional 5% of the ocean can increase future fish catch by 20% or more. Growing up in a fishing community in the Philippines, lead researcher Dr. Reniel Cabral believes that marine protected areas (MPAs) can benefit both conservation and fisheries goals simultaneously. In the past, MPAs have been used as conservation tools, however a focus on fisheries may provide a necessary incentive for many coastal nations to adopt or expand them.

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BBC Future

August 3, 2020
After defaulting on its substantial national debt, the Seychelles was offered an unusual deal.

Located around 1,600 kilometres (994 miles) off the coast of East Africa, the Seychelles is an ecological paradise. The archipelago of 115 lush and rocky islands sits amongst vast swathes of ocean, covering some 1.35 million square kilometres (521,000 square miles). They’re home to some of the world’s last pristine coral reefs and are teeming with endangered species, including the southern fin whale and the Indian Ocean’s only dugongs – large marine mammals also known as “sea cows”.

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WEF Blog

July 1, 2020
The most destructive way to obtain food from the ocean is bottom trawling. Especially egregious are the ships called 'supertrawlers', the largest fishing vessels in the world. Their nets, which are large enough to hold a dozen 747 jets, destroy everything in their paths, including 1,000-year-old deep corals.

Surprisingly, bottom trawling is allowed within some marine protected areas (MPAs) in the UK. Even worse, according to a recent Greenpeace investigation, 25 supertrawlers spent almost 3,000 hours fishing – legally – in 39 different MPAs in the UK in 2019.

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The Revelator

May 7, 2020
Most of us have never been to the world’s immense last wilderness and never will. It’s beyond the horizon and often past the limits of our imaginations. It contains towering underwater mountain ranges, ancient corals, mysterious, unknown forms of life and the largest seagrass meadow in the world.

Yet it begins just 200 nautical miles off our shores. Technically referred to as “areas beyond national jurisdiction,” these remote expanses are known to most people simply as “the high seas.”

Their vast, dark waters encompass roughly two-thirds of the ocean and half the planet and are the last great global commons. Yet just 1% are protected, leaving these vital but relatively lawless expanses open to overfishing, pollution, piracy and other threats.

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Mirage News

May 4, 2020

Researchers from Senckenberg am Meer (Senckenberg by the Sea) and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources developed a new method intended for establishing protection zones for the deep-sea fauna in the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone.

The abyssal plain is earmarked for the potential extraction of manganese nodules. In their study, published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology, the team advocates the timely establishment of preservation zones from which deep-sea species can recolonize destroyed areas.

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CNN

April 2, 2020
Marine life in the world's oceans could recover to healthy levels in the next thirty years if decisive and urgent action is taken, an international review has found.

A team of scientists from around the world found marine life to be "remarkably resilient" despite damage caused by human activity and interference, they said in a review published Wednesday in science journal Nature.

Researchers said ocean populations could be restored as soon as 2050, but warned that there is limited time to achieve this change.

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Forbes

March 16, 2020
[…] At the same time, the race is now on to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, ahead of any second wave of infections later this year.

[…]

Last week among the COVID-19 headlines, David Attenborough made a plea calling for Deep Ocean Seabed Mining to be banned.  One of the reasons he cited was the importance of deep water corals and microscopic microbes at the bottom of the ocean.

It turns out, these are extremely valuable for modern medicine, including addressing coronaviruses.

A protein from an ocean seabed algae found among coral reefs was revealed to show activity against another coronavirus known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS. 

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Oceanographic

March 11, 2020
Sir David Attenborough has urged countries to halt plans to mine the deep sea. This comes in light of a recently published report from scientists at Fauna & Flora International (FFI) warning that deep sea mining is likely to cause significant disruption to the ocean’s life-support systems, its carbon capture and a loss of biodiversity.

The report is the first to comprehensively assess the risks and potential impacts of mining the deep seabed for minerals. Its publication comes ahead of a July meeting of key countries hoping to finalise the rules that will govern deep sea mining.

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