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Editor’s note: Artificial light at night (ALAN) – whose undesirable effects are more colloquially referred to as light pollution – has long been known to affect sea turtles. Numerous studies document that adult sea turtles avoid nesting on artificially-lit beaches and artificial lights on land draw newly-hatched sea turtles away from the ocean, leading to increased mortality due to increased predation, dehydration and energy expenditure. But what about other marine organisms? In this article, we explore (Skimmer-style) recent research about how light pollution may be affecting many marine organisms and ultimately marine ecosystems.

Natural light cues structure a lot of behaviors and processes in marine ecosystems

• Most marine organisms in the surface ocean (from surface to 200 m depth) are adapted to natural light from the sun, moon, and stars. Cues from natural light – including its cycles, colors, intensities, and spatial orientation – help structure many organismal behaviors and ecological processes in marine ecosystems.
   
  • These behaviors and processes include migrations (e.g., lunar compasses for long distance migration, daily vertical migrations cued by moonlight), foraging, predation, rest, and reproduction (e.g., timing of broadcast spawning) for marine reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, mammals, and invertebrates.
     
  • In addition to light being a source of information, light is also a resource for photosynthesis and primary production.
     
• Artificial light at night (ALAN) interferes with natural light patterns and the biological processes they help control and can dramatically affect the behavior of marine organisms, species interactions, distributions of marine organisms, and food webs and can potentially restructure coastal marine ecosystems.

Coastal light pollution is global and getting worse

• ALAN in marine environments comes from coastal development (e.g., buildings, streetlights, billboards, ports, piers, docks) as well as vessels (e.g., fishing and merchant marine vessels) and offshore infrastructure such as oil rigs. It has increased exponentially over the past 150 years and has become a significant issue for the marine environment in the last 60-90 years.

• Artificial skyglow is one of the most common forms of ALAN. It refers to the diffuse luminance of the night sky from artificial lighting – both upward-directed light as well as light reflected from the ground or water or other surfaces. Artificial skyglow often forms a dome of light over cities and towns and is visible from great distances.
   
  • Artificial skyglow can now be detected above 22 percent of the world’s coasts nightly – with Europe, Asia and Africa having the highest percentages of their coastlines affected. Coastal populations are expected to double by 2060, with an attendant increase in coastal ALAN intensity and spread.
     
  • A recent global mapping effort (2020) found the coastal areas most threatened by ALAN to be in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the eastern Caribbean, and the western Pacific regions. In the Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat, some areas are 60 times brighter than under a natural night sky, and even relatively unaffected areas of the gulfs are nearly 50 percent brighter.
     
• Another recent study (2020) examined the extent to which artificial light from coastal cities reaches the nearby seafloor. Researchers shined artificial lights that mimicked city skyglow and measured exposure at the surface of the water column, in the water column, and on the seafloor of a local estuary. They found that on cloudy nights (which have more light reflected back to the ground than clear nights) green and blue wavelengths of light-emitting diode (LED) light reach 70 percent or more of the three-dimensional space around seafloor habitats whereas less than 1 percent of the seafloor is exposed to “biologically important” levels of red wavelengths. In addition since estuaries generally have higher levels of sediment and less light penetration than many other coastal habitats, researchers estimate that ALAN could reach 100 percent of the seabed in clearer coral reef systems. These findings suggest that marine habitats near all coastal cities could be exposed to ALAN.

• Study shows few downsides to incorporating climate change in ocean planning
• Researchers map ocean areas that can protect biodiversity, help fisheries, AND provide carbon benefits
• Most ocean use revenues go to small number of corporations
• New satellites will track global carbon and methane emissions
• Climate change already making equator too warm for many marine species
• In ~2025, lunar cycle will start accelerating sea level rise
• Scientists using dynamic modeling to forecast marine heatwaves
• Carbon emissions from bottom trawling similar to those of aviation industry
• Special issue of Parks Journal on protected area and COVID-19 pandemic
• Lack of thiamine disrupting some marine ecosystems
• Darkening of coastal waters could alter ecosystems
• Surface slicks provide critical nursery habitat for marine invertebrates and fish
• IUCN reclassifies additional 39 shark and ray species as threatened
• US NOAA launching model to predict rip currents up to six days in advance
• Scotland’s floating wind farm outperforming wind farms closer to shore
• US approves first large-scale offshore wind project; other major US projects in the works
• Ocean data coalition launches “ocean avatar” for research and management
• UN releases integrated assessment of global ocean environment, economy, society
• Coral atlases for Central Indian Ocean, Great Barrier Reef, Torres Strait, Western Australia, Southeastern Asia, the Philippines, South China Sea available

Editor’s notes: OCTO, the parent organization for The Skimmer and the EBM Tools Network, is currently working with the UN Environment Programme, the University of Queensland, The Nature Conservancy, WWF, and other partners to develop practical guidance on challenges in MPA practice, including effectiveness, sustainable financing, and climate change. Project partners recently surveyed marine conservation and management practitioners about tools and resources that they would recommend to help with these challenges. In this EBM Toolbox, we present some preliminary results from this survey, specifically tools and resources to assist with MPA financing, including the related work of business planning and benefit sharing.

By Jon Hare, NOAA Fisheries

Editor’s note: Jon Hare is the Science and Research Director of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in the US. He oversees science related to NOAA Fisheries mission in the Northeast region (Maine to North Carolina) including marine fisheries, aquaculture, protected species, habitat, and ecosystem science. NOAA Fisheries is also actively engaged in managing multiple ocean use and deploying climate ready science and management.

In 2016 I made a career change from scientist to scientific administrator in NOAA Fisheries. Our mission is to provide advice supporting fisheries, aquaculture, marine mammals, endangered species, and habitats “backed by sound science and an ecosystem-based approach to management”. I brought a natural scientist's perspective to ecosystem-based management, emphasizing understanding the components of an ecosystem and then providing this understanding to managers as scientific advice.

The year after my career change, DeFries and Nagendra (2017) described ecosystem management as a ‘wicked problem’. What they described felt like my day-to-day: working with fishers to reduce the risk of entanglement to North Atlantic Right Whales; providing advice on how to balance the needs of offshore wind-energy development, commercial and recreational fishing, and wildlife conservation; and working to bring climate and ecosystem information into fisheries management.

By reading about and discussing the role of science in informing management, I came to realize that my perspective represented an assimilated culture, rooted in a policy making paradigm termed the “rational comprehensive” approach. Using this approach, institutions and trained professionals oversee and conduct comprehensive planning and decision-making to address complex problems (aka “command-and-control” as described by Holling and Meffe (1996)).

The “wicked-problem” concept calls for a different approach to management and decision-making, termed incrementalism. The idea recognizes that many problems are too complex for full understanding, let alone allowing clearly defined steps and comprehensive decision-making to develop and implement one-time solutions. Incrementalism holds that each stakeholder (including scientists) has a different perspective of the issues and that decision-making represents a compromise among these different perspectives. The approach provides for continued work on a problem and implements decisions stepwise with the participation of all stakeholders.

Editor’s note: Anthropogenic noise in the ocean – from ships, sonar, construction, oil wells, windfarms, seismic surveys, and other activities – harms marine animals ranging from marine mammals to fish to invertebrates. Ocean noise has been documented to:

• Increase egg and larval mortality, cause developmental delays, slow growth rates, and increase bodily malformations
• Cause temporary or permanent hearing loss
• Increase stress, change metabolic rates and oxygen consumption, decrease immune responses, reduce energy reserves, and decrease reproductive rates
• Cause alarm responses, decrease predator avoidance responses, compromise reproductive and offspring rearing activities, and interfere with feeding
• Inhibit intraspecies communication and more.

As the Skimmer is covering various way that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted marine ecosystems and communities, a likely reduction in ocean noise is one possible bright spot. As we collected news and research articles on this topic, however, almost all reports that we found related to ocean noise and marine mammals off the West Coasts of the U.S. and Canada in the first half of 2020. To help broaden our understanding, we asked scientists from Applied Ocean Sciences, a collective of ocean consultants with expertise in ocean acoustics, to share what they have learned about noise trajectories over a longer timescale and in other areas of the world. Below is our Skimmer-style summary of news and research articles and an interview with Chris Verlinden, a senior scientist and chief technology officer at Applied Ocean Solutions.

Editor’s note: Climate change is the greatest threat to the health of marine ecosystems worldwide, and the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to alter the world’s climate change trajectory, for better or for worse. Numerous, diverse relationships between the two crises have arisen. These relationships have proven enormously changeable over the course of the pandemic and by location, and the net impact of the pandemic on climate change and society remains to be seen. This article briefly characterizes a number of the diverse intersections and parallels between the two crises.

#1: Greenhouse gas emissions went down in 2020, but not by as much as initially expected, not for all that long, and not for the “right” reasons. Without systemic changes, the COVID-19 pandemic is unlikely to have a significant long-term impact on global emission trajectories.

• New marine planning and management trainings added to Skimmer database
• More than 50 countries commit to protecting 30% of land and oceans by 2030
• Japan and Russia take measures to reduce sale of IUU catch
• Ten largest seafood companies commit to eliminating IUU from supply chains
• New WTO head makes ending fishing subsidies top priority
• Effects of oceanic noise pollution synthesized in new paper
• New reports assess strengths, weaknesses, best practices for plastic standards, certifications, and credit and advise caution on plastic crediting and neutrality [Read short summary of key points from two reports/assessments]
• Study provides comprehensive review of impacts of ocean pollution on human health
• Evidence increases for weakening of Atlantic Ocean currents
• New observations show sea levels rising faster than expected
• Report overviews current methods and knowledge for coral reef restoration
• New report projects timing of severe coral bleaching conditions and potential refugia
• New framework helps plan ocean use in 3D
• World’s first solar and seaweed farm created in the North Sea
• EU releases plan for boosting offshore wind capacity
• Finland approves national marine spatial plan
• Timor-Leste analyses how Blue Economy fits national ocean governance
• New resource help practitioners plan behavior change interventions for conservation
• US President Biden issues executive orders rejoining Paris Climate Agreement, pausing new federal oil and gas leasing in US offshore waters, authorizing doubling of offshore wind energy by 2030, setting goal of protecting 30% of ocean by 2030, and more
• First analysis of corporate high seas fishing finds 36% effort from 100 companies
• Oceanic shark, ray populations down 70+% since 1970 due largely to overfishing
• Coalition of European NGOs call for 10 steps to protect ocean biodiversity
• Coral atlases for Southeast Asian Archipelago and Coral Sea available

Editor’s Note: From the Archives calls attention to past Skimmer/MEAM articles whose perspectives and insight remain relevant.

As professionals in the marine conservation and management field, Skimmer readers are hyperaware of large scale and global changes to marine ecosystems. Research is now examining the emotional and psychological toll that these changes are having on people. This article synthesizes the seminal research on “ecological grief” and how society can address it at both policy and personal levels.

It has been a long four years for those in the environmental field here in the US – four years filled with rampant attempts by the Trump administration to remove, weaken, or circumvent environmental protections; promotion of climate science denialism; and obstruction of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This amplified the relentless, global march of climate change and its associated natural disasters and was all topped off by a worldwide pandemic and recession.

The incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris promises a significant shift in policies in many areas, including ocean management – but what exactly needs to be done and how likely are changes to occur? We hear from eight US ocean policy experts about what they expect and/or hope for in terms of US ocean management under the incoming Biden-Harris administration.

In 2017, MEAM (now The Skimmer on Marine Ecosystems and Management) interviewed 17 social science and interdisciplinary researchers from around the world to learn how their work could improve marine conservation and management practice. We updated this coverage in our previous issue. More examples of social science and interdisciplinary researchers doing innovative social science work to advance marine conservation and management practice are below.