Latest Skimmer Articles

The EBM Tools Network recently co-hosted a webinar on Reducing Coastal Risk with Natural Defenses: The Latest Ecology, Engineering, and Economics of Natural Infrastructure, presented by Mike Beck of The Nature Conservancy and the University of California Santa Cruz. This talk summarized recent high-level research findings on the ecology, engineering, and economics of natural infrastructure and gave more detail on topics covered in MEAM’s recent lead article “Can we insure our way to healthier oceans and ocean communities?”

“Most of us grew up in a world where data were rare and expensive to collect. In contrast, culturomics is firmly situated in the 21st-century world of abundant, ‘messy’ data, produced from the interactions between humans and the digital world.”

---- Richard Ladle, Federal University of Alagoas

In the past, MEAM’s coverage of social media has focused on how social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Snapchat, Instagram) can be used to communicate with and educate stakeholders and the general public. But this view of social media as primarily an outreach tool largely ignores the fact that these platforms (as well as other digital venues such as online discussion groups and internet search engines such as Google) also provide a source of publicly available information on human interactions with coastal and marine environments. Analyzing data from these platforms can tell us where people are going in coastal and marine environments, why they are going there, what they are doing once they get there, what they are seeing and hearing, and how they are feeling about it – often complete with geotags, timestamps, photographs, and videos.

MEAM and you, an infographic

• Commonwealth nations agree on coordinated actions to protect oceans
• UN begins negotiations for treaty to protect high seas biodiversity
• Sweden developing marine spatial plans for its territorial waters and EEZ
• Northern Ireland soliciting public comment on draft marine plan until mid-June
• Belgium to begin soliciting comments on draft marine spatial plan in July
• New study published on marine spatial planning (MSP) for blue growth
• Trump administration opening up additional areas for wind energy in US Northeast
• Study estimates warming ocean could reduce global fish catch
• Researchers report catches from deep sea trawling grossly underreported
• Report examines ways to increase ocean food production sustainably
• US NOAA publishes global list of fisheries and their risks to marine mammals
• Only 2 percent of world’s oceans in strongly implemented, fully protected areas
• New tool analyzes how well important biodiversity and ecosystem services are represented in marine protected areas (see a webinar on this work on June 14)
• Free paper provides primer for how to use social media for fisheries science and management
• Experts requested for assessments of natural values and benefits and sustainable use of wild species
• Report proposes increases in foreign aid for solid waste management to improve quality of life for world’s poorest people and dramatically reduce plastic entering the ocean
• IOC/UNESCO MSP website updated to include extensive MSP glossary, downloadable versions of three major MSP publications, summaries of and status reports on MSP initiatives in 68 countries, longer descriptions of MSP activities around the world, an updated version of the IOC MSP guide, and more MSP-related resources from around the world

A new paper in Marine Policy (pre-print available for free in the MarXiv research repository) discusses the importance of effective metaphors for marine conservation and policy. Metaphors are figures of speech that describe something in terms more familiar to listeners, e.g., “a blanket of snow”. Good metaphors help shape understanding of something and can mobilize appropriate action. Poorly-chosen metaphors are, at best, ineffective at mobilizing support for the intended cause, and, at worst, counterproductive because they lead to oppositional behaviors or decrease the credibility of the messenger.

MEAM is a project of OCTO (www.octogroup.org). OCTO serves over 80,000 ocean professionals annually with a wide range of services.

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In lieu of a lead article this month, we spent our time expanding MEAM’s compilation of ocean planning and management training opportunities to help current and future practitioners connect with useful opportunities to add to their knowledge and skill sets. Over the past few months, we have added more than 60 training opportunities directly related to marine planning and management, and we know there are more out there! If you know of other opportunities that we should include – especially opportunities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America – please let us know. In the meantime, many thanks to the many EBM Tools Network and MEAM readers who supplied information on training resources they provide or have found useful. Check out the compilation of training opportunities.

Editor's note: The goal of The EBM Toolbox is to promote awareness of tools and methods for facilitating EBM and MSP processes. It is brought to you by the EBM Tools Network (www.ebmtools.org), a voluntary alliance of tool users, developers, and training providers.

A new method helps ocean planners and stakeholders find the best locations for a wide range of ocean uses, while minimizing negative interactions among ocean uses and environmental impacts. This method was described in a recent article in Nature Communications. MEAM learned from authors Sarah Lester, an assistant professor of geography at Florida State University, and Crow White, an assistant professor with Center for Coastal Marine Sciences at the California Polytechnic State University, what makes this technique different from other marine spatial planning tools and what sorts of data sets are needed to use it.

• Scientists describe a new deep reef marine zone – the rariphotic
• Ecosystem-based MSP process underway for Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands
• UNEP launches portal of global and regional marine and coastal data resources
• New high-resolution, publicly-available dataset captures activity of more than 70,000 fishing vessels, including majority of large industrial fishing vessels
• New climate resilience tool helps discover, visualize, and analyze climate and socioeconomic datasets globally
• Paper outlines roles for ocean businesses in implementing Sustainable Development Goals and advancing blue growth
• World’s first commercial floating offshore wind farm performing well in initial months
• Interview with expert on new phenomenon of “annihilation trawling”, non-targeted bottom trawling
• UK releases new report on future trends, challenges, and opportunities from the sea
• Ocean Atlas provides short summaries and good graphics of major threats to ocean ecosystems
• Expert input on cumulative impact tools for MSP summarized
• New online mini-course provides overview and case studies of coastal social science
• Ecosystem approach to aquaculture and its role in blue growth reviewed
• Regional assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services for Africa, Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe-Central Asia released
• US NOAA avoids major budget cuts for now
• Interactive tool shares findings and lessons learned from Baltic MSP
• TNC launches updated website of marine planning resources
• New MSP Library and MSP Glossary available

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

Maritime industries deliver 90% of international trade, supply 30% of oil and natural gas, and carry 98% of international communications. Yet despite the vast industrial use of the oceans, ocean planning processes often have relatively little involvement by industry. Read what industry leaders have to say about what ocean planning practitioners should (and should not) do to engage the ocean business community.