Latest Skimmer Articles

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.

By Erik Thulin and Rocky Sanchez Tirona, Rare

Editor’s note: Erik Thulin is the behavioral science lead for the Center for Behavior & the Environment at Rare. Rocky Sanchez Tirona is the vice president of Rare Philippines and the Pacific Islands. They can be contacted on LinkedIn here and here respectively and on Twitter @EThulin and @Rare_org respectively.

The environmental field is full of cooperative dilemmas: in other words, what is best for the individual is different than what is best for the group. This creates a clash in priorities and sometimes results in ecosystem collapse. At Rare’s Center for Behavior & the Environment, we believe that these behavioral challenges require behavioral solutions. 

• New marine planning and management trainings added to Skimmer database
• Fourteen countries pledge 100% sustainable ocean management in next five years
• Global plastic pollution treaty gaining support but not for US or UK
• WTO continues negotiations to eliminate subsidies for IUU fishing and overfishing
• New study examines how damaging ocean activities get funded
• EU releases guide on communicating MSP
• Study provides recommendations for reducing impacts of offshore renewable energy on fisheries
• Drops in carbon emissions will lead to decreased ocean carbon storage
• Carbon sequestration potential of oceans reduced by unprofitable fisheries
• Some species shifting the wrong way during climate change
• Atlantic Ocean experiences record setting hurricane season due to climate change
• Hurricanes intensity over land lasting longer due to climate change
• Health of Great Barrier Reef and Gulf of California World Heritage sites in critical condition and deteriorating due to climate change
• Credit Suisse raises US$212M for world’s first ocean health impact fund
• Hurricane Delta triggers first payout from Mesoamerican Reef insurance plan
• Offshore drilling begins off Bahamas
• Saltwater intrusion and rising groundwater threaten coastal wetlands, drinking water, agriculture, homes, infrastructure, and more
• Report summarizes existing and potential management schemes for deep seas mesopelagic fisheries
• US coral reefs in fair condition, vulnerable; as little as 2% of Florida’s coral remains
• Report documents US national and state marine economies
• 2020 comprehensive analysis of EU fisheries and aquaculture industry available
• Report provides best practices for environmental agencies using citizen science
• Coral atlases for South Asia, Andaman Sea, Timor Sea, and Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands available

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. Since then, the social science of marine management has developed further in these areas and branched out in many other valuable directions. In this issue of The Skimmer and the next, we update our previous coverage by interviewing an ensemble of other social science and interdisciplinary researchers doing innovative social science work with great potential to improve (or a proven track record) of improving marine conservation and management practice. This work ranges from the use of cognitive mapping to create mental models of how fishers in the Caribbean view and organize the world…to testing how “nudges” could cost-effectively increase compliance with conservation regulations…to innovating how communities participate in marine planning processes to reduce feelings of exclusion and suspicion.

Here is the first set of interviews. As with last time, we hope that you find these research and practice profiles as energizing and inspiring for your own work as we found editing them.

Editor’s note: Emma McKinley is a research fellow at Cardiff University in Wales in the United Kingdom. Her work explores the relationships between society and the ocean, and focuses on concepts around ocean literacy, marine citizenship, and public perceptions and attitudes towards marine and coastal systems. Her most recent projects have explored the relationship between ocean literacy and behavior change and coastal community adaptation to climate change in Ireland and Wales. Emma is the founder and chair of the Marine Social Science Network and can be contacted at mckinleye1 [at] cardiff.ac.uk or info [at] marsocsci.net as well as on Twitter @EmmaJMcKinley.

Skimmer: What is the Marine Social Science Network, and how did it get started?

McKinley: The Marine Social Science Network (MarSocSci) started from some informal conversations with colleagues in the UK. These conversations led to a stakeholder workshop in January 2018 that explored whether there was need and scope for a network or community of marine social scientists, initially in the UK, and what this might look like. There was an over-riding sentiment from those of us working within marine social sciences that we felt a bit isolated and that the community was more fragmented than other areas of marine sciences.

At the workshop, we quickly agreed that there was a need for a community or platform for marine social science researchers and practitioners, and that, crucially, this should be an international and interdisciplinary network. And so MarSocSci was born! We started off small with a Twitter profile in May 2018, and then launched officially at the Society and the Sea conference in London, September 2018.

Since then, it feels like the momentum has just continued, and we now have over 600 people signed up to the newsletter and over 3000 following us through social media. Our Committee has also grown, and we now have an amazing team behind MarSocSci, all working voluntarily to support and grow the Network.