Coastal & Marine Conservation

The prime culprit in all this is the green crab. And as Brian Beal explains, green crab populations can be hard to control. He's professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine in Machias. "Nobody really eats them and that's the problem," Beal says. "They're just so highly fecund, they have lots of eggs, there's no real predator that can keep them in check." Listen to the full story

The necessity of a top-down National Ocean Policy is that it instructs managers to work in collaboration across managerial boundaries. The wonder of the National Ocean Policy was for leadership of the Interior (the National Park Service), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Coast Guard and the Navy to announce that they would work together across institutional boundaries, share resources, reduce redundancies, and develop more robust solutions for responsible ocean stewardship.

Come in closer. Turn your eyes from the sweeping beauty of the New England tidal flat, from its rushing grasses, wading heron, and stooping clammers. We’re looking deep into the muddy silt for a sticky mucus of microscopic particles that researchers believe is binding this precariously beautiful vista together.

We are pleased to let you know about a new report, Monitoring Climate Effects in Temperate Marine Ecosystems: A Test Case Using California’s MPAs, which outlines a new and innovative framework for measuring climate change effects and informing adaptive MPA management.

Coral reefs are one of the most threatened ecosystems world wide. This project collects critical data for the Kenya Wildlife Service to promote effective coral reef conservation and management of marine protected areas.