In August, around 300 endangered sea turtles were found dead off the southern coast of Mexico, trapped in what was believed to be an abandoned fishing net. The deaths of the olive ridley turtles dramatically underscored the dangers posed by lost or discarded fishing equipment or so-called ghost gear.
In November 2018, a new coral reef communication effort involving inter-governmental organizations, international conservation organizations, and private foundations was announced at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Egypt to send a message about the need for bold leadership to save coral reefs f
Gator Halpern, winner of the Young Champion of the Earth award 2018 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and his team at Coral Vita are off to a flying start in 2019.
Every day, hundreds of thousands of pieces of lost or abandoned fishing equipment haunt the world’s oceans, killing indiscriminately and endangering marine life and livelihoods.
As it drifts, this ghost fishing gear takes on a life of its own; trapping fish, entangling all kinds of animals from seabirds and turtles to dolphins and whales, and snagging or smothering coral reefs.
Ocean lovers are often left out of the bigger environmental discussions and so struggle to see how they can do their part to stop climate change.
But one organization, Sustainable Surf, is committed to changing all that by directly engaging the global surfing community to save and restore threatened mangrove forest ecosystems. Mangroves are five times more effective at sequestering carbon emissions than land-based trees.
Sabah, Malaysia: George Woodman’s first experience of fish bombing in Sabah—a Malaysian state in the northern part of the island of Borneo—was in 1994 during an underwater survey of the area’s renowned coral reefs.
“It's not so much something you hear, but something you feel,” said Woodman, a founding member of the Hong Kong-based non-governmental organization Stop Fish Bombing!.
Throughout human existence, the oceans and seas have been a source of food, leisure, exploration, and a natural carbon sink. But with a rapidly growing global population—and more than half of people living within 100 kilometres of a coast— oceans and seas, and the marine life within them, are facing an unprecedented level of human threat.
Ascension Island, in the southern Atlantic Ocean, is getting a new marine protected area twice the size of the United Kingdom (UK).
Full protection of 443,000 square kilometres of ocean around the British overseas territory will safeguard green turtles, swordfish, sharks, tuna and marlin as well as frigatebirds and terns.
When Ali Tewa started fishing after leaving school in 1990, the waters around Lamu County in southern Kenya were teeming with fish.
“Back then you could go to fish for about half an hour to a maximum of two to three hours and end up catching almost 200 to 300 kg of fish,” he said.
“Now, you could go a whole day without catching any.”
A carpet of algae, floating dead fish for as far as the eye can see, a stench so powerful it irritates the lungs and stings the eyes… these are some of the effects of algal blooms, caused by ocean eutrophication, a deadly phenomenon for aquatic ecosystems.
