Coastal & Marine Conservation

Brenda Zollitsch recently completed her report, Status and Trends Report on State Wetland Programs in the United States, which provides a comprehensive look at how states are approaching each of the four core elements for state wetland programs, including state summary documents, comparative data analysis and maps, descriptive text on status and trends and documentation of potential models.

Jennifer O'Leary has been appointed an Honorary Warden of the Kenya Wildlife Service for her work there.

Countries are loosely interpreting the legal meaning of “rational use” of natural resources to escalate fishing efforts in Antarctic waters and hinder efforts to establish marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean, scientists and legal scholars say.

We are pleased to have in residence the recipients of the inaugural Future of Ice post-doctoral fellowships below.

As the management adage goes, "you can't manage what you can't measure." At Yale's Environmental Performance Index they are all about integrating data and indicators into environmental policy and decision-making. This summer, Ariana Spawn was fortunate to receive an on-the-ground lesson in how the United States government is putting this concept into practice for ocean and coastal management.

Black-footed and Laysan albatrosses are charismatic, long-lived, pelagic seabirds that are considered important indicators of North Pacific ecosystem health. New information indicated that the most recent official government status assessment for these species might have underestimated population threats and overestimated population health. Thus, the main purpose of our project was to re-assess the conservation status of these albatrosses and share our results with a broad group of stakeholders to ensure these species are adequately protected. We assembled an expert adviso

Marissa McMahan spent that notoriously warm summer of 2012 lobstering with her father out of Georgetown and encountered a different visitor, a large, stout gray-and-black fish she’d never seen before. The fish, which began turning up in lobster traps up and down the coast, was the black sea bass, a succulent mid-Atlantic species normally unable to tolerate Maine’s cold sea.

Pascal Yaa is a small-scale octopus fisherman who has been fishing the coral reefs off Mombasa, Kenya since 1968. As a spear-fisher, Pascal swims the reefs daily with a mask and snorkel. Recently, he has been disturbed by what he is seeing. Increasingly, fishing nets and boats are damaging and killing large, old corals. From Pascal’s perspective, reef protection and restoration are critical to ensure long-term, sustainable fishing. In his own words, Pascal says, “Corals are the homes of fish and other animals like the octopus.

From April 23rd through April 28th, 2015, I attended and presented at the 20th International Pectinid Workshop in Galway, Ireland with support from the Switzer Foundation Professional Development Grants program. From a professional development perspective, this workshop provided me with my first opportunity to give a presentation in front of a scientific audience beyond my thesis defense in graduate school.