Coastal & Marine Conservation

Great white sharks eat fish when they are young, but after the first few years they grow new teeth and start eating marine mammals, notably fatty seals and sea lions. The sharks need the rich calories from the mammals' blubber to keep their bodies warm. Sea otters are mostly muscle, skin, bones, and luxurious fur.

Coastal gray infrastructure – roads, bridges, buildings, ports, and everything else we build along coastlines – is clearly critical for keeping our society functioning, and we invest significantly in it. Coastal green infrastructure, such as wetlands and reefs, is critical to us too as it provides many services and benefits including coastal defense. But just how much money do we ‘allocate’ to gray and green infrastructure? Just like any good investor, we should occasionally assess our portfolio and think about our allocations.

Earlier this spring, COMPASS led a policy communications training for the Switzer Fellows in Washington, D.C. that included practicing communication skills and learning about the world of policymakers, and was capped by meetings with policymakers on Capitol Hill. Marissa McMahan, a graduate student at Northeastern University who is studying the northern range expansion of black sea bass and how that affects both human and ecological systems in the Gulf of Maine, talks more about her experience in D.C.

The realities of climate change are literally sinking in with weekly images of flooding, discussions of the next big storm or sophisticated maps outlining the new edges of the coast. Climate change is happening and its impacts could be devastating. But even with sobering stories about warmer waters and rising seas, we should not be paralyzed or abandon our current course of action for the Chesapeake Bay.

IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) is meeting for its 69th session this week, and one paper submitted for discussion relates to bioinvasions in Arctic waters.