Coastal & Marine Conservation

While PCR-based diagnostic tests have been used in medicine for decades, they have never been used as they being used now, for broad screening of the general public, with a single positive result accepted as proof of infection without regard to clinical signs or symptoms or epidemiological exposure. Andrew Cohen had the opportunity in the environmental setting—unlike anyone in the medical profession—to observe the disaster that unfolds when these tests are used in this way. His research is now informing medicine, as many scientists who usually have nothing to do with viruses or infectious disease are turning their attention to COVID-19.

Current marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean need to be at least doubled to adequately safeguard the biodiversity of the Antarctic, according to a new CU Boulder study published in April on Earth Day, in the journal PLOS ONE.

Here, we articulate the ecological, social and economic potential of investing in integrated terrestrial‐ocean climate solutions and identify the specific steps needed to promote more comprehensive and integrated climate policies that leverage contemporary ocean science.

There is a big blue gap in the Green New Deal, writes Ayana Elizabeth Johnson in The Washington Post. That’s why she helped advise Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in developing a Blue New Deal for our oceans, to expand the vision of the Green New Deal.

With confident strides, Stuart Siegel leads me along the muddy shore of China Camp State Park’s expansive wetlands.

Across the world, researchers are collecting loads of observational data about marine life, from population estimates to the expanse of marine habitats, but they are doing so largely independently from each other, using their own methods and institutional protocols, and relying solely on their own data. Fellow Erin Satterthwaite is part of a team working to connect the data and the people who are tracking marine life by building a worldwide network.

Few things are as embedded in Maine's culture — or its mud — as clams, and an environmental group thinks the key to saving the shellfish might be growing a different kind of bivalve along the state's coast. Manomet, based in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is proposing the shellfish shift as a way to beat predators that plague Maine's clam diggers. Seafood lovers have sought Maine's softshell clams in chowders and clam rolls for decades, but wild harvesters are collecting fewer of those clams, in part because of the spread of crabs and worms that prey on them.