Conservation | Ocean Doctor | Ocean Conservation

The Ocean Foundation Annual Report 2011

December 1, 2011 By Ocean Doctor

The Ocean Foundation now hosts more than 50 ocean-related projects, including all of the work we do, including our Cuba Marine Research and Conservation Program, The Ocean Doctor’s “50 Years – 50 States – 50 Speeches” Expedition, and The Ocean Doctor Radio Show. You can browse or download The Ocean Foundation’s Annual Report 2011 below.

The Ocean Foundation has continued its work to support, strengthen, and promote those organizations dedicated to reversing the trend of destruction of ocean environments around the world. We work with donors who care about our coasts and oceans to add value to marine conservation initiatives by providing conservation grants, hosting projects and funds, and collaborating with important campaigns and opinion leaders. As the community foundation for the oceans, we are fostering best-in-class projects and promoting solutions for healthy oceans and the people who depend upon them. We have been able to adapt to a changing economic climate while maintaining our integrity as honest brokers for marine conservation philanthropy

Dr. David E. Guggenheim — the “Ocean Doctor” — serves as Senior Fellow of The Ocean Foundation and Director of its Cuba Marine Research and Conservation Program.

The Ocean Foundation Annual Report 2010

December 18, 2010 By Ocean Doctor

Dear Friends of The Ocean Foundation,

Once again, it is time to thank all of our donors and partners who have helped make The Ocean Foundation a success.

The past year has been a time of great growth for The Ocean Foundation as we continue our work to support, strengthen, and promote those organizations dedicated to reversing the trend of destruction of ocean environments around the world. We work with donors who care about our coasts and oceans to add value to marine conservation initiatives. We do this by providing conservation grants, hosting projects and funds, and collaborating with important campaigns and opinion leaders. As the community foundation for the oceans, we are fostering best-in-class projects and promoting solutions for healthy oceans and the people who depend upon them. We have been able to adapt to a changing economic climate while maintaining our integrity as honest brokers for marine conservation philanthropy.

The Ocean Foundation is our fiscal sponsor where Dr. David E. Guggenheim — the “Ocean Doctor” — serves as senior fellow.

Download The Ocean Foundation’s Annual Report 2010 or view online below
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Want to Help the Gulf of Mexico? Kill Your Lawn.

June 27, 2010 By Ocean Doctor

The Lawn has Become as much of an American Icon as Baseball and Apple Pie. But at What Cost? (Photo credit: From the cover of “The American Lawn” by Georges Tevssot)

Since 1948, radio station KBMW has been serving as the “Voice of the Southern Red River Valley,” a tri-state area including North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota, boasting some of the “richest farmland in the United States.” So why did they want to interview a city boy who lives for salt water? To update their listeners on the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and most importantly, tell their listeners how they could help. Like so many of us, they feel a deep connection to the Gulf, even from more than 1,200 from water’s edge, and the daily images of oil erupting from the BP well has led to palpable frustration. It’s hard to watch and not be able to help. Truth is, KBMW’s listeners are more connected than they may realize, and they can materially help the Gulf of Mexico — and their own neighborhoods, by just getting outside and doing some gardening.

Rebuilding the Gulf’s Shattered Fishing Industry ? On Land

June 3, 2010 By Ocean Doctor

Today NOAA announced further fishing closures in the Gulf of Mexico due to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Now a total of 37 percent of federal Gulf waters are off limits to fishing, an area of nearly 89,000 square miles where NOAA considers fish and shellfish potentially too toxic for human consumption. For a region where commercial fishing is a vital part of the economy, the future of the region grows increasingly uncertain with each barrel of oil spewed into the deep Gulf waters.

There’s a solution: Rebuild the Gulf of Mexico fishery on land. Investing in “next-generation” sustainable land-based, closed-containment recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) could keep the Gulf region in the seafood business profitably, while creating green jobs and reducing fishing pressure on wild stocks. What is “next-generation” RAS aquaculture? From the outside, many of the systems look like an ordinary warehouse. Inside, they’re a specially-constructed system of pumps and filters that recycle 99 percent of their water and grow healthy and heathful fish without chemicals, antibiotics or genetically-modified anything. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservation, Featured, Gulf of Mexico, Ocean Doctor's Reflections, Places Tagged With: aquaculture, bp deepwater horizon, Gulf of Mexico, oil spill

The Gulf of Mexico: What’s at Stake

May 28, 2010 By Ocean Doctor

This video highlights the vast diversity of marine life throughout the Gulf at risk from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. The video provides an underwater tour of the Gulf by sub and scuba, encompassing the U.S., Cuba and Mexico. Produced for the opening of the first State of the Gulf of Mexico Summit in 2006, it was also shown before Congress on 5/19/2010 as part of the testimony of Dr. Sylvia A. Earle.

Filed Under: Conservation, Cuba, Cuba Research & Conservation, Gulf of Mexico, Ocean Doctor's Reflections, Places, USA & Territories Tagged With: bp deepwater horizon, Cuba, Gulf of Mexico, SCUBA, sea turtle, submarine, video

Waiting for the Oil?

May 17, 2010 By Ocean Doctor

Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys

On July 18, 1975, the tanker Garbis spilled 1,500 to 3,000 barrels of crude oil into the warm, turquoise, coral-rich waters roughly 26 miles south-southwest of the Marquesas Keys, Florida. The oil was blown ashore along a 30-mile stretch of the Florida Keys, east of Key West. I was 16 and enjoying my second summer at Seacamp, a marine science camp on Big Pine Key. Rumors of the spill raced throughout the campus until finally, instructor James Smithson decided to find out for himself what menace might be approaching. He took a small away team aboard his 21-foot Mako, “Isurus,” and made haste south toward the reef tract. We waited impatiently for word back as the sun fell to the horizon and scattered its tranquil orange glow across the water. What I saw next filled me with dread. The Isurus entered the harbor, its white hull stained with enormous swaths of dark brown oil. In that moment the menace was no longer abstract, and to my young mind, everything we treasured — the corals, the mangroves, the fish, the turtles –was on the brink of extermination. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservation, Featured, Gulf of Mexico, Ocean Doctor's Reflections, Places, USA & Territories Tagged With: corals, Cuba, florida, florida keys, oil spill, Seacamp

OMG, I Thought You Were Dead!

September 23, 2009 By Ocean Doctor

You’ve seen it in the faces of infants when they recognize their mother’s smiling face above. You’ve seen it on the face of an old friend across the room when she suddenly recognizes you…after all those years. And Doug Shulz, producer at Partisan Pictures, saw it clearly on my face, when he tapped me on the shoulder and pointed toward an old friend I hadn’t seen in nearly 35 years.

When we humans recognize a friend, our faces convey it with a distinctive widening of the eyes. Combine that with the surprise of seeing someone we aren’t expecting to see, our eyes grow even wider, often accompanied by a cartoon-like jaw drop. Judging from Doug’s expression while observing my face, I can only imagine how wide my eyes were. Since we were 20 feet beneath Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, it must have been difficult for him to discern between an expression of surprise and delight versus a textbook example of wide-eyed diver panic. My eyes were transfixed on my old friend with a funny name whom I hadn’t laid eyes on since I was a teenager. Larger than life, vibrant, and embracing the sun, my friend was very much alive and healthy, clearly enjoying the good life in Cuba.

Cuba Loses its Mother Ocean

May 6, 2009 By Ocean Doctor

Cuba has lost its Mother Ocean. Dr. María Elena Ibarra Martín, director of the University of Havana’s Center for Marine Research (Centro de Investigaciones Marinas, CIM) since 1981, passed away yesterday afternoon after a month-long struggle following heart surgery. CIM is the only academic institution in Cuba where marine biologists are trained, and her loss is mourned by hundreds of her students, many of whom grew up to become her colleagues — and friends. Her selfless, tireless dedication goes far beyond words, and the impact she has made on education, conservation, and her unique model of personal integrity will no doubt endure for centuries to come. When I last saw Doctora in February, she was as busy as ever, wrestling mountains of paperwork on her desk while never letting go of her visionary perspective about conservation and education. Nor did she ever let go of her special fondness for sea turtles and her love for and dedication to her students.

Free Speech(es): 50 Years, 50 States, 50 Speeches

October 6, 2008 By Ocean Doctor

Fresh from the Eisenhower Administration era, your friendly neighborhood Ocean Doctor turned 50 today. In doing so, I outlived my father, William L. Guggenheim, who tragically died at 49 when he was lost at sea. It was my days as a boy, fishing with my dad off of Cape May, New Jersey, that I truly inherited his passion for the sea, and I feel lucky to have been able to spend much of my life near, in, or best of all, under the water.

To celebrate my 50th, I’d like you to send me on a journey this year, a journey to visit our next generation, in their schools, and share with them some of the awe and wonder of my experiences in the sea, including the important lessons that go along with them. So I’ll be donating one speech to one school in every state and U.S. territory (accredited schools, public or private, K through college level). I’m waving my speaking fee and travel expenses. I don’t require anything except an enthusiastic audience and maybe a glass of water. (I would encourage a class project to find creative ways to offset my travel’s carbon footprint to your school.) I’ll show my videos, share my adventures, and my enthusiasm for the wonder of the deep blue part of the planet.

I’ll honor the first request I receive from each state and U.S. territory (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa) and, of course, the District of Columbia. If you or someone you know would like to take me up on this offer, just fill out the Book a Speaker Form on the 1planet1ocean web site and indicate that you’re submitting the request for the “Free Speech” project.

I look forward to this adventure and wish all of you a happy 50th, whenever it arrives, or whenever it was.

Filed Under: 50 States Expedition, Conservation, Featured, Flotsam, USA & Territories, Washington, DC Tagged With: american samoa, cape may new jersey, Conservation, contest, district of columbia, guam, next generation, OceanDoctor, puerto rico, speech, speeches, US, USA, videos

Can Cuba’s Mysteries Help Save the World’s Coral Reefs?

July 13, 2008 By Ocean Doctor

Healthy elkhorn coral in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico (Photo by Abel Valdivia) Until that tranquil morning in late June 1974, the sum total of my SCUBA diving experience had been in a landlocked state, in a stifling, moldy indoor YMCA pool in the Philadelphia suburbs and a Pennsylvania quarry, flooded with icy soup-green water. Barely comprehending the new world of pungent humidity, mountainous afternoon cumulus clouds, and lush tangles of flowering succulents I experienced at water’s edge during my first visit to the Florida Keys, I was wholly unprepared later that morning when I found myself seated in sugar-white sand with 40 feet of warm, clear aquamarine water above my head. As impossibly multi-colored fish passed slowly within reach before my wide 15-year-old eyes, my gaze broadened as I marveled at the towering jetties of coral around us, living layer cakes of corals upon corals, brown and mustard rock-like structures, encrusted with brilliant red, violet and orange coralline fans and branches, swaying in the warm, nourishing current and, like eager spring blossoms, reaching toward the dancing sunlight scattered on the surface above. [Read more...]