The Skimmer & MPA News

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.

• 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

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.

By Stephanie Wear of The Nature Conservancy

Editor’s note: Stephanie Wear is a senior scientist and strategy advisor at The Nature Conservancy. She is also a visiting scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Duke University Marine Lab. She can be contacted by email at swear [at] tnc.org, on Instagram at oceansewage, and on Twitter @stephwear.

While most of us can recite the top three threats to ocean health (i.e., climate change, overfishing, and pollution), there is a notable disparity in how we allocate our precious time and resources to addressing these three threats. I have worked in marine conservation for over two decades. And what I have seen is that we are doing a lot to address overfishing and a lot to address the impacts of climate change (ranging from tried and true strategies to the novel and perhaps even a little crazy. Desperate times…) However, much less is happening in the non-plastic pollution space. To see if my observations held more broadly, in 2016, I surveyed hundreds of marine resource managers (mostly focused on coral reefs) to see what their big problems are and what they are doing to address them. The results confirmed my personal observations – coastal pollution is a big problem … but very little attention is given to it. Survey respondents cited a lot of valid reasons given for this, none of which will surprise you. They include lack of government mandates, other priorities for funders and stakeholders, and politics. (You can read the full survey findings here.)