Coastal & Marine Conservation

The Los Angeles Times also ran an excellent story on this subject: "An exquisite Mexico beach, cursed by plastic" (January 27. 2012)

Recent attention has focused on the high rates of annual carbon sequestration in vegetated coastal ecosystems—marshes, mangroves, and seagrasses—that may be lost with habitat destruction (‘conversion’). Relatively unappreciated, however, is that conversion of these coastal ecosystems also impacts very large pools of previously-sequestered carbon. Read more

Using a new comprehensive index designed to assess the benefits to people of healthy oceans, scientists have evaluated the ecological, social, economic, and political conditions for every coastal country in the world. Their findings, published today in the journal Nature, show that the global ocean scores 60 out of 100 overall on the Ocean Health Index. Individual country scores range widely, from 36 to 86. The highest-scoring locations included densely populated, highly developed nations such as Germany, as well as uninhabited islands, such as Jarvis Island in the Pacific.

Editor's Note: Leslie's work with the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is supported with a Leadership Grant from the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation. Whales feeding on abundant krill are crowding the California coast in such unusual numbers that marine sanctuary officials are urging large ships to slow down as they approach San Francisco Bay. The "notice to mariners" was also broadcast Tuesday by the Coast Guard.

"The ocean is going to get higher, so all beaches are going to get smaller, but that's going to have a bigger affect on beaches that are already small," said Dr. Linwood Pendleton of Duke University. "People are going to leave those small beaches and go to beaches that are already fairly large, like Huntington Beach or Will Rogers (State) Beach, Venice Beach." Read the full story

2011 Switzer Fellow Kelsey Jacobsen's research focuses on Chile's Salmon Aquaculture Industry. Hear how she is working with local governments to ensure safe aquaculture practices for years to come.

But Beal says he has come up with a better way to grow lobsters in captivity. Through trial and error over several years, he has learned how to grow lobsters in a protected environment until they are several inches long — not big enough to be sold, but big enough to settle to the bottom when they are released and possibly to improve their survival rate. Read the full story

Though the global economy has accelerated the process in recent decades by the sheer volume of ships, most from Asia, entering West Coast ports, the marine invasion has been in full swing since 1869, when the transcontinental railroad brought the first shipment of East Coast oysters packed in seaweed and mud to San Francisco, said Andrew Cohen, director of the Center for Research on Aquatic Bioinvasions in Richmond, Calif. For nearly a century before then, ships sailing up the coast carried barnacles and seaweeds. Read the full story