Coastal & Marine Conservation

As global lead scientist for oceans, Linwood works across the WWF network and with external partners to direct research that can strengthen conservation strategies and to integrate science into oceans initiatives and programs. Linwood will also continue to pursue high level academic research, both as the international chair of excellence at the European Institute for Marine Studies, part of the Laboratory of Excellence in Brest, France where he is based and a senior fellow at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions (NIEPS).

Fellow Ayana Johnson says after a natural disaster (strengthened by our warmer planet) is exactly the time to talk about environmental conservation. It protects lives and property, and makes places like Puerto Rico far more self-reliant when disaster strikes.

Hurricane Harvey has unleashed heart-breaking devastation in South Texas. But the troubling truth is that even more damage is in store in the years ahead as climate change worsens — and our federal government is now on track to be less prepared, writes Fellow Shaye Wolf.

With tens of thousands of people displaced and many billions of dollars in estimated damages from the impacts of Hurricane Harvey, an environmental group on Tuesday filed a formal request on Tuesday to discover why the Trump administration recently decided to lift flood zone restrictions designed to mitigate these kinds of costly disasters.

The health of dolphin populations worldwide depends on sustained access to robust food sources. A new report by UC Santa Barbara researchers and colleagues at UC San Diego and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looks at three different dolphin species, studying what they eat and how they divide ocean resources and space — important information for conservation and management. The team’s findings appear in the journal PLOS ONE.

Healthy oceans are essential to human survival and prosperity, yet oceans are severely impacted worldwide by anthropogenic threats including overfishing, climate change, industrialization, pollution, and habitat destruction. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been implemented around the world and are effective conservation tools that can mitigate some of these threats and build resilience when designed and managed well.

A notification system that alerts authorities when fishing vessels that are believed to be operating illegally arrive in port is being developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Australia’s national science agency explained that the web-based reporting tool identifies and ranks vessels across the globe based on a list of behaviors associated with illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing. It uses data collected by satellites to monitor and report vessels behaving suspiciously.