California Ocean and Coastal Ecological Principles Guide

September 2012: California Ocean and Coastal Ecological Principles Guide

Government staff must weigh myriad, sometimes conflicting, considerations before making management decisions that impact California’s iconic coast and ocean. A holistic, ecosystem-based approach to management that uses the best available scientific information can ensure that ocean and coastal management decisions account for the maintenance and restoration of ecosystem health. This month, the Center for Ocean Solutions released a guide, Incorporating Ecological Principles into California Ocean and Coastal Management: Examples from Practice (Guide), which describes how important ecological principles and ecosystem vulnerability characteristics, such as cumulative impacts and climate change, can be applied to existing California management practices.  Read more...

Support the Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs

July 2012: Support the Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs

This month, the Pacific Ocean Library blog focuses on climate change and coral reefs. How is changing climate affecting corals and coral reef ecosystems in the Pacific? What solutions are being used to restore degraded coral reefs? Read more...

New Findings from the Pacific Ocean Library: Fish and Food Security: a viable path?

June 2012: Fish and Food Security: a viable path?

This month, the Pacific Ocean Library blog focuses on fish and food security. How can fish provide a resource to combat world hunger? What steps are taking place locally and globally to ensure fisheries are managed sustainably in order to maintain the supply? Read more...

New Findings from the Pacific Ocean Library: Probing Marine Debris in the North Pacific Ocean

May 2012: Probing Marine Debris in the North Pacific Ocean

Think about the last time you walked along the ocean shore or strolled down the street. Chances are you witnessed trash strewn on the ground. Litter on land and sea seems like a permanent problem.  Read more...

Dive of a lifetime transports COS fellow back in time

Rod Fujita diving near Cuba

Rod Fujita is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Ocean Solutions.  He posted this blog from Cuba.

Managing and Mitigating Ocean Acidification in California and the Pacific

Welcome to our blog! Here you can explore hot ocean topics and find postings that highlight a few of the most interesting new articles added in the Center for Ocean Solution’s Pacific Ocean Library. We hope to inspire you to participate in the ongoing conversation and encourage you to explore the resources of the Pacific Ocean Library.

April 2012: Managing and Mitigating Ocean Acidification in California and the Pacific

In April, we focus on ocean acidification. How is carbon dioxide (CO2) affecting our oceans, what are the consequences of increased levels for marine ecosystems, and what can we do to manage and mitigate rising CO2 in our oceans? As California takes steps to better understand the impacts of ocean acidification and how to develop a response, state leaders recently asked the Center for Ocean Solutions to analyze the issue.  Read more...

Today's Unprecedented Ocean Acidification

by Ryan Kelly   and Meg Caldwell Meg Caldwell thumbnail

When an environmental issue merits a full-scale editorial in The New York Times, it’s a sign that the issue has broken out of the scientific literature and into the popular consciousness. Last Friday, 10 March 2012, The Times ran an editorial highlighting the human-caused change in the world’s ocean chemistry. One consequence of human-released carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is an ocean significantly more acidic than it was just a few generations ago, and this change is accelerating in tandem with our carbon dioxide emissions.

An "acid ocean SOS."  (photo: Lou Dematteis/Spectral Q/Handout)

Pacific Ocean Library Featured in New Blog

The Pacific Ocean Library blog will spotlight new additions to the library’s collection of news articles, academic papers, and other materials useful to both researchers and general readers with an interest in Pacific Ocean issues. This debut post features a paper covering a key concern for marine conservation planning.

Not Your Parents' Water Pollution: Clean Water Act Failures in a New Climate

Photo: MSVG, Flickr Creative Commons

by Ryan P. Kelly and Margaret R. Caldwell

This week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave California some tough love in the form of a ghastly report card on water quality along our coasts and in our rivers and streams: the state’s water pollution seems to have gotten much worse, with the number of polluted water bodies skyrocketing between 2006 and 2010.  Some of this change is due to more aggressive testing; the blame for the rest is solely our own.  And while this news is bad enough on its own, what’s often not discussed is that all of that polluted water ends up downstream in the coastal ocean, already hard hit by decades of abuse.

FishNET Project Semifinalist for 2011 Gulfstream Navigator Award

 

Imagine a system that would utilize stakeholders to report illegal fishing activities via the web, SMS text messaging, phone, and other sources, while simultaneously using observation technologies such as acoustic monitoring, inexpensive radar, and unmanned aircraft to do the same.  The system could help replace expensive  military surveillance currently used to monitor illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing at a fraction of the cost.  The system could also greatly improve our ability to observe and collaborate data on IUU fishing, while taking action to stop its threat to our oceans.  Read more...

FishNET Technology

 

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