Coastal & Marine Conservation

Rafe Sagarin has been working the last several months at Biosphere 2, which is now owned by the University of Arizona. We have been working to find the right balance of scientific research, STEM education, and visitor outreach for this strange and rather amazing facility with a history to match.

The 2014 World Ocean Summit was held last week at the chic Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California. Together, global leaders discussed the current international dimensions of the global blue economy. The Switzer Environmental Network, namely Jessica Switzer and the folks at Blue Practice, provided the basically-unparalleled opportunity to attend the Ocean Summit.

Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are known for the variety and complexity of their feeding behaviors. Here we report on the use of synchronous motion and acoustic recording tags (DTAGs) to provide the first detailed kinematic descriptions of humpback whales using bottom side-rolls (BSRs) to feed along the seafloor. Download the article

Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) announced the completion of its first project in Mexico in alignment with its technical-scientific agreement signed in December 2012 with Mexico's federal environmental agency, the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC). The three-week survey of beach contaminants for the State of Guerrero, an area that encompasses several major resorts including Acapulco, found strong evidence of environmental pollutants including plastics, mercury, and petroleum pollution along the coastline.

This reference resource, in atlas format, is an online-only compendium of maps and data sets accompanied by multimedia elements designed to illustrate key concepts in green issues and environmentalism graphically and interactively. Topics for the maps presented in this work were selected from articles in the 12-volume SAGE Reference Series on Green Society: Toward a Sustainable Future. Each map includes links to one or more of the series articles. Maps include interactive components, with clickable icons to deliver the data and statistics that make up each map.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to sneak a peek at a coral pathogen’s behavior in real time, as it responds to the chemical cues leaking into the seawater from its host,” says postdoc Melissa Garren of MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), first author on a paper about this work that appears Dec. 12 in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal. Professor Roman Stocker of CEE is lead researcher on the project.

It has been more than two years since the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster hammered the Gulf of Mexico with an unprecedented 200 million gallons of crude oil, but we are still seeing the effects today. Coast Guard officials have confirmed that an oil slick found in the Gulf last week matched oil from the spill two years ago.

A group of students from the University of Maine-Machias made a bittersweet discovery this week. They found an Asian shore crab on Great Wass Island in Beals, the northernmost point where the crab has been sighted. The excitement of their discovery was tinged with disappointment, however, because the Asian shore crab is an invasive species that threatens Maine’s coastal ecosystem.

New NOAA-led research on tagged humpback whales in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary reveals a variety of previously unknown feeding techniques along the seafloor. Rather than a single bottom feeding behavior, the whales show three distinct feeding approaches: simple side-rolls, side-roll inversions, and repetitive scooping.