Category: Environment
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Taking the pulse of ocean life
We tend to keep track of things we think are important—blood pressure, how many calories are in that muffin, hurricane tracks, stock prices, celebrity rehab details. But sometime we don’t know what’s important until it’s too late, and that ignorance can come back to bite us. Hence the annual physical exams that are standard in…
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Chagos expedition 2013
A year ago here on Seamonster, we heard from a team of scientists who were studying the coral islands of the remote Chagos archipelago (go back and check out parts one and two of our interview to find out just how dangerous ‘Danger Island’ is and to see more photographs from that expedition). I’m delighted…
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Sharks on CITES
It’s a big week for sharks. The latest round of talks on international wildlife trade are being held in Bangkok right now. In the coming days delegates will consider proposals to protect hammerhead sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks, and porbeagles. Manta rays and some freshwater stingrays are also on the list. The proposals are to…
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My village, my lobster
Check out the trailer to this documentary from Nomading Films about commercial lobster diving in Nicaragua. According to their website, a new law will be passed later this year banning commercial diving in the country in an attempt to curb the human cost of the industry. 90% of the lobsters caught in Nicaragua end up…
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The ZEN of seagrass
David Williard of The College of William and Mary has done a nice video featuring our work in the Zostera Experimental Network (ZEN): NOTE: The dude abides.
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Marine Protected Areas: “It’s evidence and the economy, stupid”
Tom Hooper ran ‘Finding Sanctuary’ one of four regional stakeholder-led projects to set up a new generation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) around the English coasts and offshore waters. In a guest post for Seamonster, Tom explains how England nearly got an ecologically coherent MPA network in 2013 and the emerging challenges of scientific evidence…
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What’s new in climate change science
There has been a lot going on with climate change science recently. And Iv’e been writing a review paper on climate change and marine communities and have been impressed with how rapidly the field is developing. Just a hint of what is out there: The Australian heat wave This is one of the big stories…
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5 things everyone should know about lionfish
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/54441445[/vimeo] Shot on location in Abaco, Bahamas, July 2012.
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How to make fish-friendly trawl nets
Dan Watson has just won this year’s James Dyson award, a student competition with the simple brief “Design something that solves a problem”. The problem Dan chose was bycatch – the capture of types of sealife that fishermen don’t want and throw back either because there’s no market for them or they have no quota for them.…
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Illegal fishing in Sierra Leone stamped out by locals
Local fishing communities in Sierra Leone have been policing their own waters and stamping out illegal fishing. EJF raised money to equip a surveillance boat with gps and camera gear to allow communities to record and report the boats, mainly trawlers, that operate illegally in protected inshore waters. So far the project has been a huge…