The oceans have changed more in the past 30 years than in all of human history. In many places, more than 75% of marine megafauna has been lost, and almost nowhere shallower than 3,000 feet has been untouched by commercial fishing.

These are just some of the stark facts presented by Callum Roberts, professor at the University of York and member of the Save Our Seas Foundation Science and Conservation Advisory Panel, in a new book titled The Ocean of Life. In an excerpt published this week in Newsweek, Roberts describes the extent to which we have impacted the oceans through overfishing and CO2 emissions, painting a disheartening picture of the future in store for over 70% of our planet if we don’t change course.

On the subject of ocean acidification, he writes:

The oceans have absorbed around 30 percent of the carbon dioxide released by human activity since pre-industrial times, mainly from fossil-fuel burning, conversion of forests and swamp to cities and agriculture, and cement production. If carbon-dioxide emissions are not curtailed, ocean acidity is expected to rise 150 percent by 2050, the fastest rate of increase at any time in at least the last 20 million…

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This weekend saw the official launch of theBlu, a globally shared art and entertainment experience. Inspired by the world’s oceans, “theBlu” is a living and breathing digital art exhibit of ocean habitats and species, created by artists and developers from all over the world. Its aims are to:

Use the power of the internet to connect geographically disparate people in a meaningful way. Empower a global community of artists and developers to create an extraordinarily beautiful and high fidelity series of apps. Support non-profit collaborators in their efforts to better understand and protect the world’s oceans.

It’s not easy to get an idea of what theBlu is exactly from the description, but we’ve tried it and it’s definitely worth checking out! theBlu is available as a free download for PC and Mac.

From social gaming to social responsibility

“theBlu” turns the internet into a globally-connected 3D digital ocean wherein every species and habitat is an original work of art created by a worldwide community of artists, animators and developers, including Academy Award winners Andy Jones and Kevin Mack, and students alike.

Exploring “theBlu” is as easy as browsing the web and includes information about species, exploration of geo-located…

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It might sound like a bad 50s B-movie, but unfortunately it’s not fiction: jellyfish populations appear to be on the rise nearly everywhere.

In a study published in this month’s edition of the journal Hydrobiologia, UBC scientists examined data for numerous species of jellyfish for 45 of the world’s 66 Large Marine Ecosystems. They found increasing jellyfish populations in 62 per cent of the regions analyzed, including East Asia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, Hawaii, and Antarctica.

“There has been anecdotal evidence that jellyfish were on the rise in recent decades, but there hasn’t been a global study that gathered together all the existing data until now,” says Lucas Brotz, a PhD student with the Sea Around Us Project at UBC and lead author of the study.

“Our study confirms these observations scientifically after analysis of available information from 1950 to the present for more than 138 different jellyfish populations around the world.”

Jellyfish directly interfere with many human activities – by stinging swimmers, clogging intakes of power plants, and interfering with fishing. Some species of jellyfish are now a food source in some parts of the world.

“By combining published scientific data with…

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If you’ve been following this blog lately, you’re well aware of ocean acidification – the process by which increased CO2 in the atmosphere is making the oceans more acidiic – and how it negatively affects shell-forming marine life, corals, and other parts of the ecosystem.

We have been sponsoring Jason Hall-Spencer’s ocean acidification research for several years now. He recently appears on a number of programmes to talk about his work, including Australia’s RadioNational and the David Suzuki Foundation blog:

A 30 per cent decrease in the number of species is observed at levels of acidification expected to occur across oceans later this century. Both calcifying and non-calcifying organisms (such as urchins, snails and fish) are adversely affected by acidification, allowing invasive algae to thrive in their place. Transformation of diverse benthic ecosystems into monocultures of invasive algae and seagrass is observed at CO2 vents in Mexico, New Guinea and the Mediterranean, a strong indication of what we can expect to see in the future. Although many large fish species are present in the acidified areas, they have not been observed to deposit their eggs in the algae and eelgrass, opting instead to lay eggs…

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Ocean acidification happens as the oceans absorb excess CO2 in the atmosphere, causing the pH of seawater to fall. This has wide-ranging consequences for the marine ecosystem, among which are coral bleaching and preventing the shellfish shells from forming properly.

Jason Hall-Spencer’s groundbreaking SOSF-funded research on ocean acidification involves studying sites with naturally high levels of CO2, such as those near underwater volcanic vents off Italy. He recently discussed some of his findings and the implications of rising CO2 levels for the Mediterranean in C&EN magazine:

A fall in Mediterranean pH has major impacts on organisms that use calcium carbonate in their shells or corals. That’s because acidification—due to dissolved CO2 forming carbonic acid—throws normal ocean chemistry out of balance, resulting in corrosion of calcium carbonate from shelled organisms. In practice, this means that an organism’s shell will dissolve unless the organism can ramp up shell construction to counteract the loss. “If the organism is willing to put a huge amount of energy into shell production because it has tons and tons of food, then perhaps the organism can continue to exist.”

Hall-Spencer focuses on underwater volcanic vents around Italy and Greece because these are areas where…

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Last week, the head of the World Bank Robert B. Zoellick announced the establishment of a Global Partnership for Oceans to confront widely documented problems of over-fishing, marine degradation, and habitat loss. Speaking at the Economist World Oceans Summit in Singapore, Zoellick described the initiative:

This Partnership will bring together countries, scientific centers, NGOs, international organizations, foundations, and the private sector to pool knowledge, experience, expertise, and investment around a set of agreed upon goals. These goals can sharpen our focus, encourage common and reinforcing efforts, and compel us to measure performance. Together, we will build on the excellent work already being done to address the threats to oceans, identify workable solutions, and scale them.  We can also mobilize financing where there are gaps.

There are an estimated 350 million jobs worldwide that are linked in one way or another to the oceans, so it’s not surprising that the World Bank has taken an interest, bringing together major NGOs, regulatory bodies, and private funding to tackle these issues. But what about the specifics? The Partnership has identified four major goals for the next 10 years:

Rebuilding at least half the world’s fish stocks identified as depleted:…

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Jellyfish blooms have finding their way into the media recently – clogged nets for fishermen, stinging waters for tourists, even choked intake lines for power plants – creating a perception that the world’s oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overfishing.

A new study conducted at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and published in the latest issue of BioScience questions this view. The study’s authors note that while there have been jellyfish blooms in certain areas (notably Giant Jellyfish in Japan), other regions have seen jellyfish declines or fluctuations. As noted in the press release,

Increased speculation and discrepancies about current and future jellyfish blooms by the media and in climate and science reports formed the motivation for the study. “There are major consequences for getting the answer correct for tourism, fisheries and management decisions as they relate to climate change and changing ocean environments,” says Duarte. “The important aspect about our synthesis is that we will be able to support the current paradigm with hard scientific data rather than speculation.”

The study has also led to the formation of the improbably named JEDI (Jellyfish…

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