In 2016, 33 countries agreed to establish a global network of scientifically supported Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that will increase the amount of ocean area protected from the current 2 percent to 10 percent by the year 2020. MPAs either restrict human activity such as fishing, or they prohibit it all together. But the question
New research published in the journal Biological Conservation sheds light on the contentious debate surrounding large Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that restrict or prohibit fishing and other activities. By combining established shark tracking methods with the publicly available Global Fishing Watch platform that allows anyone to track fishing activity anywhere in the world, scientists have demonstrated that
Tracking fishing vessels and sharks reveals protection for large mobile animals Read More »
Are whaling vessels that operate without using aids to avoid vessel collision putting the safety of biodiversity and people at risk? This week the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has convened in Slovenia. The gathering marks the 30th anniversary of the commission’s moratorium on commercial whaling.
Usually when you want to protect something, you have to know where it is. That sounds like common sense, but when it comes to protecting highly migratory species in the oceans, scientists, conservationists and resource managers are often flying blind. Marine animals such as sharks, turtles, whales and large mid-ocean fish like tuna often traverse
Dr. Michael Hirshfield oversees Oceana’s new offices in the Philippines, Canada and Brazil, and ensures that Oceana’s policy advocacy is solidly based on the latest scientific information. Throughout his long career, Dr. Hirshfield has worked on issues related to fisheries and aquatic ecosystems from a variety of viewpoints.
Interview with Michael Hirshfield: Chief Scientist and Strategy Officer, Oceana Read More »
A 2016 recipient of the prestigious Peter Benchley Ocean Award, Dr. Christopher Costello is a professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, UC Santa Barbara. His work focuses on natural resource management, and in particular, the issues surrounding resources that cannot be claimed by an individual or
Interview with Chris Costello: Environmental Economist Read More »
Last week we reported on an expedition to survey diversity in the deep sea off the coast of Southern California. The goal of the expedition was to document on video the diversity of deep sea diversity in the area and demonstrate the need to close the waters of the Southern California Bight to bottom trawl fishing which destroys
Last year, Dr. Doug McCauley told the New York Times that humanity may be on the verge of creating a mass extinction in the seas unless we can rapidly change our course. McCauley and his colleagues had just published a paper in Science magazine on the health of the oceans that drew a lot of
Interview with Marine Ecologist Dr. Doug McCauley Read More »
On dry land, ecologists and conservationists can map our human footprints on the landscape. We can see deforestation, mountaintop removal, river damming and development, and it is relatively easy to recognize our impacts on an ecosystem and the plants and animals that live there. In the ocean, our impacts are less tangible. Water covers more
Dr. Boris Worm is a world renowned marine ecologist and professor of marine conservation biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Co-author or primary author of more than 100 articles in leading science journals, he has made a significant contribution to the scientific understanding of marine biodiversity and conservation,
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