By Jessica Perelman, PhD Student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa “95% of our oceans have never been explored.” This is a statistic that I hear regularly, and it holds a pretty strong message. What’s out there beneath the surface? How is the ocean changing? One of the greatest challenges in conveying the significance...
By Jessica Perelman, Guest Blogger When Assistant Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, Anela Choy first conducted doctoral research on the feeding habits of large midwater fish predators, it quickly became clear to her that prey items found in the stomachs of longnose lancetfish (Alepisaurus ferox) were hardly digested and fairly easy to identify....
Thalia, it’s called, this upscale neighborhood in Virginia Beach that’s lined with red brick ranches shaded by tall loblolly pines. The community is a few short miles from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Bounded on the west by Thalia Creek and on the north by the eastern branch of the...
By Safina Center Staff Last week an international team of marine scientists published a paper in Scientific Reports that heeds a strong warning to the world: Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are heating up the oceans and making them more acidic, killing coral reefs, kelp forests and countless marine animals. Digging deeper into their...
Imagine a coral reef, bone white as far as the eye can see, lacking in fish and other marine life. Now imagine spending three years diving around the world, seeing virtually nothing but reefs like this. You start to think to yourself, where do we find hope for coral reefs? Imagine after those years of...
By Safina Center Staff It took the United States decades to develop and perfect an effective fisheries management plan that helps keep enough fish to feed both the nation’s people and its animals. The landmark legislation that turned around the country’s widespread overfishing problem was called the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, passed in...
Returning to sea for the first time in nearly a decade brought back memories of the wildest three weeks of my life — when we sailed Mir down the Red Sea in July 2010 during her maiden voyage from Malta to Singapore and were faced with suffocating heat, sun-blotting dust, grumpy sharks, and the very...
By Safina Center Staff Pebble Limited Partnership is the mineral exploration corporation behind a proposed project to build a gold and copper mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska, imperiling the world’s last great sockeye salmon run. Environmentalists, scientists and local residents have criticized the project as a wish for certain destruction of this...
By Carl Safina and Sylvia Earle When the first World Oceans Day was held in 1992, the oceans were very different than today. The oceans were less acidic because less carbon dioxide had dissolved into them. They were a little cooler because the atmosphere was cooler. More large predatory fish like tunas and sharks existed,...
By Rachel Downey (Australia National University & British Antarctic Survey) and Claire Christian (ASOC) Sponges may historically be one of world’s greatest survivors, but on our planet, we have a number of new human-made challenges that sponges have not come up against before. The deployment of fishing gear that smash seabed habitats, the laying...
By Rachel Downey (Australia National University & British Antarctic Survey) and Claire Christian (ASOC) In our last post, we introduced you to one of nature’s underappreciated animals, the sea sponge. Sponges have been around for over 600 million years, by developing some fascinating adaptations that make them one of our greatest global survivors. Long existence...
Within a few short decades, we are faced for the first time with losing an entire ecosystem on which we depend. Humanity’s pivotal challenge to save coral reefs will be a test of our will, ingenuity and ability to collaborate globally. If we succeed, we will not only save up to a million species that...
By Rachel Downey (Australia National University & British Antarctic Survey) and Claire Christian (ASOC) Every so often, conservationists make a concerted effort to get the public to care about some humble or overlooked species. Cephalopod Awareness Day, anyone? Photos of unusual species lacking the fur or feathers typically required for cuteness, might even...
By Erica Cirino It’s been nearly 9 years since The Cove brought the story of dolphin massacres in Taiji, Japan, and the issue of captive cetaceans before the eyes of millions of people around the world. The film shows viewers the images of fishers corralling dozens of thrashing and squealing dolphins into nets set up...
Shortly after sunrise on April 2nd we successfully navigated Mir back to her mooring in Banyuwedang Bay in northwestern Bali after over three months at sea — a three months that brought us clear across the Indonesian archipelago and back, covering over 2,500 nautical miles along the way, all in the name of adventure and...