Strait of Juan de Fuca. NOAA

NOAA has made sea floor maps and other data on the world’s coasts, continental shelves and deep ocean available for easy viewing online. Anyone with Internet access can now explore undersea features and obtain detailed depictions of the sea floor and coasts, including deep canyons, ripples, landslides and likely fish habitat.

The new online data viewer compiles sea floor data from the near shore to the deep blue, including the latest high-resolution bathymetric (sea bottom) data collected by NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey primarily to support nautical charting.

“NOAA’s ocean bottom data are critical to so many mission requirements, including coastal safety and resiliency, navigation, healthy oceans and more. They are also just plain beautiful,” said Susan McLean, chief of NOAA’s Marine Geology and Geophysics Division in Boulder, Colo.

McLean’s division is part of NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center, responsible for compiling, archiving and distributing Earth system data, including Earth observations from space, marine geology information and international natural hazard data and imagery. NGDC’s sea floor data have long been free and open to the public in original science formatting, but that often required the use of specialized software to convert the data into maps and other products.

The new interface makes exploration easy and intuitive, using a “color-shaded relief” technique to depict bathymetric data and derived maps and models. The sea floor descends steeply from shallow yellows into dark blues and purples.

Click here to launch the Bathymetry and Digital Elevations Viewer or view this entire story at NOAA.

The oceans are among our biggest resource for life on earth, and also our biggest dumping grounds. That kind of paradox could give anyone an identity crisis. We seem to think we can take all the goodies out and put all our garbage in, and then expect them to keep happily ticking away indefinitely. However, while it’s true the oceans can provide us with some amazing eco-solutions like alternative energy, they’re are undergoing some serious stress factors. Here are the some of the biggest problems facing the oceans. Making changes in our daily lives often starts with awareness. Solutions are as simple as eating the right sort of seafood, to ensuring garbage stays out of our waterways and Oceans.

1. Overfishing

2. Irresponsible Fish Farming

3. Ghost Fishing

4. Garbage

5. Acidification

6. Dead Zones

7. Mercury Pollution

8. Offshore Drilling

9. Whaling and Shark Finning

10. Ocean Warming

11. Destruction of Habitat and Coral Reefs

View the complete list and descriptions at the World Oceans Day Canada website.

Coral Sea by Lucy Trippett

The Australian Federal Environment Minister is currently considering protecting this underwater icon in what could become the world’s largest safe haven for marine life. The Minister has proposed to protect nearly 1 million square kilometres from oil and gas development as well as trawling however he plans to leave over 90% of its coral reefs unprotected. As well as other key features such as underwater volcanoes and critical spawning sites.

Urgent action required …

A public consultation period is now underway and citizens around the world are invited to have their say. It’s time we joined together in support of our marine life and urge the Minister to go the extra nautical mile and make sure the Coral Sea is properly protection. We’ve only got until the 24th of February to stand up for our marine life.

Please visit www.protectourcoralsea.org.au/act-now to add your voice to the call urging the Minister to establish the world’s largest safe haven for marine life.

1. Never touch corals; even a slight contact can harm them and some corals can sting or cut you.
2. Carefully select points of entry and exit to avoid areas of reef.
3. Make sure all your equipment is well-secured.
4. Make sure you are neutrally buoyant at all times.
5. Maintain a comfortable distance from the reef.
6. Practice good finning and body control to avoid accidental contact with the reef or stirring up the sediment.
7. Stay off the bottom and never stand or rest on corals.
8. Avoid using gloves and kneepads in coral environments.
9. Take nothing living or dead out of the water, except recent garbage.
10. Minimize contact with marine life.
11. Never chase, harass or try to ride marine life.
12. Do not touch, handle or feed marine life except under expert guidance and following established guidelines.

In addition to the scholarships, the Sobey Fund for Oceans also provides work placement opportunities through Dalhousie’s Marine Affairs Program, and will fund a student conference designed to help tomorrow’s leaders see “beneath the surface” of our oceans’ problems to find sustainable solutions.

The partnership between WWF and Dalhousie was formed in May 2011 with a goal of inspiring a new generation of ocean leadership. Through the Sobey Fund for Oceans, the partnership aims to attract the best and brightest minds across multiple disciplines – from marine biology, law, oceanography, management, journalism and political science – to find solutions that address a range of issues from the threats facing endangered species and habitats, to the impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems, to the future of fishing and our coastal economies.

The student conference, entitled the Sustainable Ocean Management and Development (SO-MaD) Conference will be held March 30- 31st. Centered around the goals and objectives of the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) – also known as Rio+20, the conference will provide participants, through key note speakers, panel discussions, and poster and oral presentations an opportunity to critically assess how well previous commitments, goals and targets related to coasts, oceans and island states have been met by the world’s community, and to identify and address new and emerging challenges.

“I have a long history with both Dalhousie and WWF. It became clear to me that collaboration between our brightest young minds and our leaders in conservation is the key to solving some of the great challenges in our oceans. And that’s the goal that I share with both Dalhousie and WWF.”

- Donald Sobey, The Donald R. Sobey Foundation

Facts

The scholarship competition is open to potential and returning graduate students at Dalhousie University, with the aim to attract the best and brightest minds across multiple disciplines – such as marine biology, law, oceanography, management, journalism, political science, and others— to create new ways for ocean communities to flourish.

Two awards of $10,000 each will be available for the academic year 2012-2013. The deadline for applications is January 31st, 2012 and successful applicants will be notified in early spring, 2012. Details on the application and submission process can be found at www.marineaffairsprogram.dal.ca

The 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as “Rio+20”, will be held in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil June 20-22, 2012, presents the world leaders, with an opportunity to deliver a new, internationally agreed vision for development that catalyses fundamental changes in our economics towards more social and economic equity and environmental sustainability.

The SO-MaD Conference will be held in the Marion McCain Building in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science Administration at Dalhousie University, from 5pm – 9pm on Friday March 30, and 9am – 5pm on Saturday March 31st. Conference admission is free.

The conference is targeted towards participants from multiple disciplines, who will be engaged through paper and posters presentations, panel discussions, debates, key note presentations and other innovated mediums for sharing ideas towards finding sustainable solutions to ocean and coastal problems.

For information on registration and Abstract submission, please contact oceansconf@dal.ca. Abstract submissions are due by February 10, 2012.

Why the Sobey Fund for Oceans is necessary:

• One billion people around the world depend on seafood as their primary source of protein
• 85 per cent of the world’s fisheries are either fully exploited, over exploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion
• Canada is responsible for more coastline than any other country on the planet
• Canada’s Oceans contributes about $28 billion to our economy
• 30 per cent of our oceans must be protected to conserve biodiversity. Less than one per cent of Canada’s ocean space is protected today
• For 400 years, Atlantic Canada’s fisheries were one of the most productive in the world
• The groundfish collapse in the early 1990’s cost Canadian taxpayers $3.9 billion dollars

For more information, please contact:
Stacey McCarthy
902-229-6066
smccarthy@wwfcanada.org

Oceana, the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the world’s oceans, filed a complaint today about the United States government’s decision in October of 2010 to allow eight New England and Mid-Atlantic fisheries to harm 14 times more (from 42 to 610) threatened loggerhead sea turtles. Specifically, Oceana is disputing the U.S. government’s decision to allow these fisheries to injure and kill more loggerhead sea turtles without adequately assessing the aggregate impacts of the fisheries on this species. The fisheries harm leatherback, Kemp’s ridley, and green sea turtles as well, and those species also would benefit from proper assessments of the fisheries’ impacts.

“The U.S. needs to ensure that fisheries kill fewer sea turtles, not more,” said Beth Lowell, campaign director at Oceana. “These decisions should not be made without considering all of the impacts affecting these sea turtle populations.”

Loggerhead Sea Turtle image by ukanda CC BY 2.0

Oceana’s complaint addresses biological opinions for eight federal fisheries, including those for monkfish and for summer flounder, scup and black sea bass, which are responsible for the highest levels of sea turtle bycatch in the region. Biological opinions are part of the consultation and review process when a federal agency authorizes commercial activities that are expected to harm or kill a species protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Although these decisions came on the same day and were even announced in the same press release, the analysis for each fishery did not adequately account for the increased number of sea turtles harmed by the other seven fisheries.

“It is absurd to pretend that each fishery operates in a vacuum,” said Beth Lowell, campaign director at Oceana. “This is like saying that if each of the eight fisheries kills five sea turtles, then only five were killed, not 40. What the U.S. government is doing simply does not add up.”

Oceana is calling on the U.S. to implement simple solutions to protect and restore sea turtle populations in the Atlantic, including the requirement of turtle excluder devices (TEDs) in trawls that allow sea turtles to escape after being unintentionally caught, adopting adequate monitoring of fisheries that catch sea turtles, capping the allowable catch of sea turtles and where necessary closing areas for fishing when and where sea turtles are present.

Oceana is represented in this litigation by Hogan Lovells US LLP.

For more information about U.S. sea turtles, please click here.

Ocean changes include reduced sea ice and freshening of the upper ocean, and impacts such as increased biological productivity at the base of the food chain and loss of habit for walrus and polar bears.

Arctic Report Card: Update for 2011

Also: Arctic settles into new phase – warmer, greener, and less ice

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) issued a call at the UN climate talks in Durban for countries to urgently address the issue of ocean acidification, caused by greater levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The oceans absorb around a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere each year, the IUCN said, but the gas dissolving into the seas causes the water to become more acidic.

The IUCN said the acidity of the world’s oceans had increased by 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and could continue at an unprecedented rate in the coming decades.

But while ocean acidification has the same cause as climate change – increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere – not all the solutions for global warming will help the situation faced by the seas, the International Ocean Acidification Reference User Group warned.

View the entire Press Association article: Warning over ocean acidity levels.

From the website, “The Cousteau Divers participative science program makes YOU an active agent of the study and protection of the oceans. Using simple methods, divers are asked to record their observations of marine life during their dives and then upload them to the site.”

“This survey changes the way you dive: as you open your mind to the surrounding ecosystem, you realize just how everything down there is interconnected. You are hunting for indicator species like a detective searching for clues of the health of the dive site.”

The Mediterranean Cousteau Diver Survey and Course is currently available on the website. Red Sea and Caribbean courses are to be added soon.

Visit Cousteau Divers at www.cousteaudivers.org

I’m appalled at the failure of the world’s environment leaders to increase trade protections for some of the Earth’s most vulnerable and heavily traded shark species which is why I signed this petition:

http://www.projectaware.org/sharkpetition

Proposals to restrict trade in eight shark species failed at the last Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in 2010 representing victory for, short-term economic interests over science and the myriad long-term benefits of conservation.

Did you know each year tens of millions of sharks are killed by Earth’s most dangerous predator – humans? Populations of sharks are in big trouble but you can take action.

Sign the petition and let’s tell Governments loud and clear: sharks are vital to our ecosystem and deserve better protection.

Thanks for joining me.