In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.

They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.

The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.

Full story from BBC News

Note: Newswire stories are provided as a courtesy of OceanDoctor.org. Content of these articles is provided by external sources.

Join TED prize recipient and leading oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle at the Explorers Club for a discussion on how we can and must save the world’s most crucial natural resource — the living ocean — while there is still time.

In early 2009, a panel of top scientists led by marine toxicologist Dr. Susan Shaw and Dr. Earle came together to convey a powerful message about the enormity of the crisis facing the world’s oceans at the first State of the Oceans Forum. Now, these Explorers return for a follow-up forum about the innovative solutions, leadership and resources required to make a difference for future generations. Join them at the Second State of the Oceans Forum: Facing the Crisis: Reasons for Hope on Monday, December 7, 2009, 7:00-9:00pm at the Explorers Club’s World Center for Exploration in New York City.

We need your participation!

The first State of the Oceans Forum resulted in an important dialogue among many of you, and much of your valuable input has been included in the vision for the second Forum. Please continue to participate, by submitting your comments (below in the comment section), letting your voice be heard at the event, and distributing this information through your own networks. It’s critical that the important messages of this forum reach new ears and eyes in order for change to occur.

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PROGRAM: PANEL AND DISCUSSION Forum Chair: Dr. Susan Shaw, FN’07 Moderator: Dr. Sylvia Earle, MED’81 Lecture Series Chair: Anne Doubilet, FR’02 Panelists: Dr. Nancy Knowlton; Dr. David Gallo, FN’90; Dr. David Guggenheim, FN’08; Mr. Jim Fowler, MED’66 The Explorers Club Public Lecture Series: 2nd State of the Oceans Forum The Explorers Club, 46 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021 212-628-8383 December 7, 2009 Reception and ticket sales 6:00 PM, Forum 7:00 – 9:00 PM 7:00 – 7:05 Introductions by Anne Doubilet and Susan Shaw 7:05 – 7:10 Video Clip: Excerpt from Sylvia Earle’s 2009 TED Talk 7:10 – 7:30 Saving the Blue Heart of the Planet — Sylvia Earle Last February, Dr. Earle made a TED wish to create a campaign igniting public support for a global network of Marine Protected Areas – “hope spots” to save and restore the planet. The world is responding. Where are we now? 7:30 – 7:45 Confronting the Invisible Threat: Ocean Pollution — Susan Shaw Huge volumes of toxic chemicals used in consumer products and plastics are polluting our seas, contaminating the ocean food web. Can marine species be saved? Efforts to stop toxics at the source, clean up sea litter, and develop clean technologies give hope. 7:45 – 8:00 Indicators of Change: Ocean Acidification and the Vanishing Reefs — Nancy Knowlton Increased CO2 is radically altering ocean chemistry and taking its toll on all forms of life at sea. Already 50% of the world’s coral reefs have disappeared. Dramatic reduction in carbon emissions and changes in management could help reverse the trend. 8:00 – 8:15 Hope from the Deep: Saving the Ocean Floor — David Gallo At the bottom of the sea, mining, drilling and trawling threaten the very foundation of the ocean ecosystem. Are new technologies and clean energy alternatives the solution? 8:15 – 8:30 Ocean Policy and Education: Time for A Sea Change — David Guggenheim Momentum is mounting in the US and abroad to create the first comprehensive oceans policy, but will it protect the oceans of today? Tomorrow? A new generation of ocean stewards voice their concerns. Are we listening? 8:30 – 8:40 The Wild Sea — Jim Fowler The open ocean has long been a place regarded as free – free to travel without bounds, free to take what is there, and free to dispose of what is no longer wanted. But beneath the surface of the “lawless sea,” basic laws of nature support life on our planet. Now is the time to start obeying them. 8:40 – 9:00 Open Discussion with Panelists

PANEL SPEAKERS Dr. Sylvia Earle, Explorer/ Medalist ’81, Honorary Director of The Explorers Club, Oceanographer, Author, Sea Change 1995; Defying Oceans End: An Agenda for Action 2004; OCEAN, An Illustrated Atlas 2008; The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One 2009 Called “Her Deepness” by the New York Times, Sylvia Earle is a world-renowned oceanographer who has been at the frontier of deep ocean exploration for four decades. Currently the president of the Deep Search Foundation, she has led more than 70 underwater expeditions and set the depth record for solo diving at 3,300 feet. Earle formerly served as chief scientist of NOAA and has played a key role in establishing marine protected areas worldwide. The recipient of 15 honorary degrees and more than 100 national and international awards including the 2009 TED Prize, Earle is the inspiration behind the new Ocean in Google Earth program.. Dr. Susan Shaw, FN ‘07, Doctor of Public Health/ Environmental Scientist, Founder, Marine Environmental Research Institute (MERI) Environmental toxicologist and public health expert Susan Shaw has spent two decades documenting the effects of man-made chemicals in marine mammals along the North American Pacific and Atlantic coasts. She is credited as the first scientist to reveal that brominated flame-retardants—chemicals widely used in consumer products—are biomagnifying in this US coastal marine food web. Named a Gulf of Maine Visionary and honored by the Maine Legislature for her pioneering investigation, Seals as Sentinels, on the effects of chemical contamination in marine mammals and humans, Dr. Shaw’s research has influenced public health and toxics legislation in the US and abroad. Dr. Nancy Knowlton, Coral Reef Biologist, Sant Chair in Marine Sciences, Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History Nancy Knowlton’s research on the ecology and evolution of coral reef organisms in the Caribbean, Central Pacific and Indian Ocean has led to the widespread recognition that past estimates of marine diversity are probably too low by a factor of ten. The founding Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Dr. Knowlton currently chairs the World Bank’s Targeted Research Program for Coral Reefs and is the principle investigator of the Census of Marine Life’s Coral Reef Initiative. She is an elected fellow and member of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. Dr. David Gallo, FN ’90, Oceanographer, Director of Special Projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution One of the first oceanographers to use a combination of submarines and robots to map the undersea world, David Gallo was invited by legendary Titanic-hunter Robert Ballard to join the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1987. As an ambassador of deep-sea exploration, Dr. Gallo works closely with scientists at the forefront of ocean discovery, filmmakers, and media broadcasters including National Geographic and PBS, to reveal the secrets of the deep and communicate the importance of science and engineering to the public. Most recently, Dr. Gallo co-led an exploration of the RMS Titanic and German battleship Bismarck. Dr. David Guggenheim, FN’08, Marine Biologist/ Educator, Founder, 1planet1ocean; Senior Fellow, The Ocean Foundation David Guggenheim is a marine scientist, conservation policy specialist, submarine pilot and ocean explorer who recently piloted the first-ever manned submersible dives into the Bering Sea’s largest underwater canyons as scientific advisor to Greenpeace. Previously the vice president for conservation policy at the Ocean Conservancy, Dr. Guggenheim founded 1planet1ocean – a non-profit organization and project of The Ocean Foundation, dedicated to building international partnerships for marine conservation. Also known as the “Ocean Doctor,” he’s currently engaged in an educational expedition across the country and hosts the podcast series ExpeditionCasts. Jim Fowler, Explorer/Medalist ’66, Honorary Director of The Explorers Club, Zoologist Television legend Jim Fowler hosted the Emmy-Award winning Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom from 1963 to 1988 before becoming NBC’s official wildlife correspondent on the Today Show. In 1997 he joined Discovery Communication’s Animal Planet and later launched Jim Fowler’s Life in the Wild in 2000. He has received numerous awards including the Environmental Media Association’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998, and the 2003 Lindbergh Award for 40 years of dedication to wildlife preservation and education.

As I learn more and more about the diverse group of schools I’ll be visiting, I realize that I’ll be learning as much from them as they will from me. At first I had playfully called this an “expedition,” but in many ways, it really will be a voyage of discovery, in this case, to better understand what students around the country think and understand about our oceans. How many have never seen the oceans? How many are aware of the oceans’ problems? What are their career aspirations? The answers are bound to be different from Honolulu to Bellevue, Nebraska — or are they?

Years ago I taught marine biology at Seacamp/Newfound Harbor Marine Institute in the Florida Keys, and I suppose those roots are resurfacing now. I saw incredible transformations in the students we taught there. I remember teaching a Girl Scout program for five summers. On the first day of class I told the terrified girls that we’d be swimming with the (small) sharks in our holding pond on the last day of class a week later. And I remember well that last day of class when the girls were having so much fun swimming with the sharks that I couldn’t get them out!

I still believe in nature’s magic. Its beauty, wonders and mystery are potent and transformative, especially for a young student. I look forward to sharing my stories and adventures of the ocean with the thousands of students I visit during this project, to bring them a bit closer to that magic. And I eagerly anticipate the inspiration and enlightenment this incredibly diverse group of students — and their teachers — will bring to us.

Please accept my warmest wishes for an unscripted and very happy New Year!

Even in those first minutes face-to-face with a coral reef, the enormity of what I was witnessing was clear to me. I remember thinking, “There’s a whole living world going on down here, and we don’t know anything about it.” While I may have suspected in those moments that I would dedicate my career to something having to do with the oceans, I never would have dreamed that more than three decades later I would be literally immersed in some of the most important work of my life just 90 miles to the south of where I was seated beneath the waves.

Last week, as I departed Ft. Lauderdale and the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium, the world’s largest coral summit held every four years, the news was sobering. One-third of the world’s corals are well on their way to outright extinction, and the rest are threatened with, among other things, the indignant end of simply dissolving away, as increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions enters the oceans, raising their acidity to the point where any ocean creature with a calcium carbonate shell — from corals to clams — succumbs to the acid waters. When my daughter was 15 and floated above that same reef I had experienced, it had become a pale shadow of the miracle of nature I had so delighted in. Nearly half the corals in the Florida Keys have died in my lifetime. Some are bleached bone white, others shackled in diseased bands of black. Many more lie smothered in broad blankets of algal slime which have robbed the reef of its rainbow of colors, leaving a lifeless green-gray skeleton where countless diversity once eeked from every imaginable crack and crevice. As I beheld this tragic image, little did I imagine that important clues to saving this reef and many more like it around the Caribbean and the world, might lie just 90 miles to the south.

I now sort through assorted dive gear, video equipment, and sunscreen preparing for my 37th visit to that magical place 90 miles to the south, to an island larger than all the other Caribbean islands combined, to an island whose coat of arms bears a key — “llave del golfo“, the key to the Gulf of Mexico — a subtropical nexus where the waters of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean intertwine in a sublime undersea cocktail of diversity, color and mystery. Our fourth joint expedition of Proyecto Costa Noroccidental (Project of the Northwest Coast) — a project of the University of Havana’s Center for Marine Research (Centro de Investigaciones Marinas: CIM) and the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi — will continue our ongoing project to explore the most unknown corner of the Gulf of Mexico: Cuba’s northwest coastal waters.

A green sea turtle hatchling at Cuba's westernmost point, Guanahacabibes

It is often said that those 90 miles of open water south of the Florida Keys — the Straits of Florida — separate Cuba and the USA. Like a hand-drawn blue borderline, the Straits are often invoked as a symbol of the 50-year-old Cold War that has frozen our two countries so tantalizingly close, yet so tragically far apart. But to the sea turtles, sharks, lobster, whales and other sea life, those same 90 miles of blue unite our countries with racing blue currents, unseen underwater pathways, and a web of colorful life that defies the perceptions of so many of the Gulf of Mexico, who know it only as a hot, muddy cauldron that spawns hurricanes and oil platforms. Cuba, Mexico and the U.S. share the Gulf of Mexico and have a responsibility to work together to understand and protect it. Thankfully, despite debilitating restrictions, which are ever-changing in the cool winds of Cold War politics, we have worked for a solid eight years now with our Cuban colleagues, advancing our understanding of the Gulf of Mexico and providing research opportunities for Cuba’s next generation of marine scientists — nearly 20 have based their Masters and Ph.D. research on our joint projects.

Cuba's next generation of marine scientists participate in & learn from the project

Cuba’s northwest coast – the verdant Pinar del Rí­o province, home to Cuba’s legendary cigars — is the least-developed coastal region of Cuba. But as Cuba’s tourism trade continues to develop and as Cuba’s fledgling offshore oil development expands into the Gulf, we hope that the insights from our joint research help to guide the hand of such development so that some of Cuba’s most precious assets, its coral reefs, will be spared the all too common fate I’ve seen elsewhere in the Caribbean. And there is much at stake. As we dove during the second expedition, it was as if we had been transported decades backward in time, to the healthy, vibrant, towering reefs I remember from my mid-teens. The reefs I have seen in the Archepélago de Los Colorados, the barrier reef that runs along Cuba’s northwest coast, are the healthiest I have seen in my life. For that reason, and because of its unique history and geography, Cuba may hold important clues for coral reefs elsewhere in the Caribbean and perhaps around the world.

Good friend and colleague, Dr. Gaspar González-Sansón, titular professor at University of Havana, CIM, and co-principal investigator of Proyecto Costa Noroccidental, recently pointed to a number of possible reasons for the health of Cuba’s reefs when we spoke when I was recently in Havana:

• Cuba’s tourism industry did not begin until 1993, necessitated by the demise of the Soviet Union and its aid to the island. Though tourism has proceeded at a rapid pace, it is highly localized at specific resort areas on the coasts.
• The healthiest reefs also happen to be far from shore, such as Los Colorados to the north and Jardines de la Reina to the south, perhaps beyond the reach of harmful concentrations of coastal pollution.
• Cuba does have a commercial fishing fleet, but fishermen principally use hook and line, so unlike nets and trawls which result in catching just about everything, fishing in Cuba is highly selective. In contrast, more than 80 percent of what’s caught in U.S. Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawls is not shrimp — it’s small finfish and other creatures collectively known as “bycatch” that represent the unforgivable waste of this fishing practice. Cuba is now phasing out all bottom trawling on its continental shelf.
  

  Cuban commercial fishing vessel in the Gulf of Mexico

• In the early days of the revolution, President Fidel Castro declared, “Not one drop of water to the sea,” a call to action to dam rivers and streams in order to divert water for use in agriculture and population centers. Reducing fresh water input upset the delicate balance of fresh and salt water in Cuba’s estuaries, resulting in the disappearance of populations intolerant to the saltier waters, such as the white shrimp. In another way, however, this policy may have inadvertently served to help reefs by reducing the transport of fertilizers and pesticides to the reefs.
• Use of fertilizers and pesticides has dropped dramatically since the withdrawal of the Soviet Union. Given that nutrient pollution is a key factor in the growth of coral-smothering algae, this may also be an important factor.

Sunset on Cuba's Gulf of Mexico

In countless ways, the island of Cuba is unique. And when it comes to coral reefs, Cuba is again, unique. Here an island of thriving corals flourishes amid a world of corals dying and disappearing. In this mysterious corner of the Gulf of Mexico where time seems to have stopped, I find hope. Hope that the rich ecosystems of this beautiful island will endure. And I find hope that Cuba’s coral reefs might share some of their tantalizing secrets, secrets that can offer clues to protecting and restoring coral reefs elsewhere, including a special place I still remember in the Florida Keys, just 90 miles to the north.

“This summer, I find myself traveling in the Gulf region of the Middle East. The people here are extraordinarily friendly, warm, and generous. However, I don’t notice this goodness being shown only towards visitors such as myself. As I drive on a bridge over the ocean, I see people fishing, enjoying a stroll by the water, or simply sitting down, marveling at the infinite stretch of blue and turquoise in front of them. In their faces I can see a sense of appreciation. It is in these moments that I find myself realizing that while I may look different from the locals or be accustomed to different traditions than them, we are no different from each other when it comes to loving and protecting that which we are so fortunate to have. The oceans are no exception. The Middle East may still be catching up to my home country, the US, when it comes to anti-pollution measures and other ways to protect our seas. However, it is clear to me that the Middle East is not indifferent. With this in mind, I begin to think that the miles and miles that I flew over here will not succeed at creating a barrier between the hearts of people where I am from and where I find myself now.” — Anna Pavlichenko

May World Oceans Day bring you happiness and fulfillment, wherever your ocean lies.

Thanks to great weather, state-of-the-art equipment and a top-notch crew, it has been a productive weekend for the team aboard Esperanza which arrived on site at Pribilof Canyon Saturday morning (July 28) when David Guggenheim and Michelle Ridgway made the first tandem dive in two DeepWorker submarines into Pribilof canyon to a depth of just over 1,000 feet and began to document a fascinating diversity of life, including a variety of corals, anenomes, sponges and fish. On Sunday, the ship visited a second site in Pribilof Canyon where John Hocevar and Timo Marshall completed a successful tandem dive, documenting more corals and successfully collecting a number of specimens with DeepWorker’s manipulator arm for analysis by scientists around the world.

John Hocevar (Greenpeace Senior Oceans Specialist) pilots DeepWorker at 1,100 feet in Pribilof Canyon (Video still by Timo Marshall – 29 July 2007)

Already, the Greenpeace-led team has accumulated nearly 16 hours of bottom time (8 hours per sub), more than all of the previous research done in this region combined. The subs’ high-definition video cameras have already collected over 120 Gb of data. The subs are performing linear transects which will then be analyzed on the video. Twin lasers spaced 20 cm apart allow accurate analysis of the size of organisms encountered.

The tumbling anenome, Liponema brevicornis, photographed here by David E. Guggenheim on Saturday, July 27 at a depth of 620 feet in Pribilof Canyon (The two red dots are from onboard lasers used to assist in estimating size. The lasers are 20 centimeters apart.)

The Esperanza is carrying two manned submersibles, a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) and an international research team to the Bering Sea for a three week survey of Zhemchug and Pribilof Canyons,to map and document deepwater corals living at depths of more than 1,000 feet. The expedition was conceived of and is being led by Greenpeace.

Track the Bering Sea Expedition: Esperanza’s Current Location, Weather & Live Webcam

1planet1ocean president, David E. Guggenheim was interviewed by The Green Guide about next-generation aquaculture technologies featuring land-based, recirculating, enclosed systems.

“I’m convinced that land-based recirculating systems are the future of aquaculture.,” states Guggenheim, who also consults to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Aquaculture Developments, LLC. “These systems are being rapidly embraced in Asia and Europe as cleaner, more secure, and ultimately more profitable solutions. Unfortunately, these systems have been largely overlooked in the United States and the Americas…until now.” Read the National Geographic Green Guide Article…

The Americas are now taking notice of the benefits of next-generation recirculating aquaculture systems, evidenced especially by Canada’s British Columbian legislature committee on sustainable aquaculture which has recommended an end to salmon farming as it is now practiced in Canada’s northwest, requiring that all such facilities convert to land-based, closed recirculating systems within 5 years. Read the CBC Article…

…David