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Greetings!
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The Ocean Project provides this e-newsletter as a
free service to 1,789 contacts at zoos, aquariums,
museums, conservation organizations, schools,
agencies, and others involved in our Partner
network. We hope you will find it inspiring and
useful in your work and life.
Please forward widely and encourage colleagues and
friends to subscribe (through the link in left
column).
In this issue...
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240 days and counting down...
World Ocean
Day on June 8th each year provides an
opportunity to join together around our planet to
celebrate our ocean, and our personal connection to
the sea. For the last few years, The Ocean Project
has helped promote this event with the World Ocean
Network. Denise Washko is our dedicated part-time
World Ocean Day Coordinator and she will be coming
back from maternity leave to help make World Ocean
Day 07 bigger and better than ever!
Earth Day started small but has grown incredibly
over the years. World Ocean Day is far from that
level of public recognition but times are changing.
In 2004 and 2005, approximately three dozen Partners
were involved in this event; last year we had nearly
75 and our new website, www.WorldOceanDay.org
received a huge spike in hits around the event. For
2007, we hope to at least double the number of
participating Partners. Your involvement now is the
key to success! Please consider planning an event
and visit www.WorldOceanDay.org
to get inspired and learn what has been done in the
past.
We look forward to working with all our Partners to
significantly increase involvement, and promote much
more learning about -- and action for -- the ocean.
One way we are planning to improve efforts is to
make the website much more international. We are
currently working with volunteer translators around
the world, and if you have any time to help
translate, please let us know! The more languages,
the merrier! If you can help, have any questions, or
would like to become more involved in the planning
of an event, please contact Denise at: info@theoceanproject.org.
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Earth's Most Diverse Marine Life Discovered
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Two recent expeditions led by
Conservation
International (CI) to the heart of Asia's "Coral
Triangle" have discovered dozens of new species of
marine life and have confirmed the region as the
Earth's richest seascape.
Researchers described an underwater world of visual
wonders, such as the small epaulette shark that
"walks" on its fins and colorful schools of reef
fish populating abundant and healthy corals of all
shapes and sizes. The unmatched marine biodiversity
of this area on the northwestern end of Indonesia's
Papua province includes more than 1,200 species of
fish and almost 600 species of reef-building coral,
or 75 percent of the world's known total.
"These Papuan reefs are literally 'species
factories' that require special attention to protect
them from unsustainable fisheries and other threats
so they can continue to benefit their local owners
and the global community," said Mark Erdmann, senior
adviser of CI's Indonesian Marine Program, who led
the surveys. "Six of our survey sites, which are
areas the size of two football fields, had over 250
species of reef-building coral each -- that's more
than four times the number of coral species of the
entire Caribbean Sea." Results of the CI-led
surveys highlight the need for a well-managed
network of multiple-use Marine Protected Areas
(MPAs) to conserve the seascape's biodiversity and
ensure the long-term sustainability of commercial
and subsistence fishing.
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Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Legislation to Reduce Greenhouse Emissions
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On September 27, 2006, the California Global Warming
Solutions Act became law. This Act is the most
stringent climate law in the world.
The California bill mandates reductions comparable
to those required under the Kyoto protocol, without
any exemptions or loopholes that undermine the
actual emissions reduction requirement.
As a result,
California will be making the deepest emissions cuts
of any growing industrial economy ever. This
comprehensive plan covers all global warming
pollutants and all sectors; includes technology and
market incentives, and caps the emissions of
out-of-state energy providers. The California Global
Warming Solutions Act provides a solid platform at a
time when evidence shows that worldwide CO2
emissions have increased 70 percent per year since
the 1970s.
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Branson Bets Billions to Curb Global Warming
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On the second day of the Clinton
Global Initiative, British business mogul
Richard Branson pledged to commit all profits from
his transportation businesses over 10 years to
combat global warming -- profits that he estimated
would reach $3 billion. Over the next decade,
Virgin will invest all future profits from its
airline and train businesses into renewable
initiatives both within the company, as well as
further investments in new bio-fuel research and
development, production, distribution, and other
projects to battle emissions related to global warming.
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U.N. Says Sewage Growing Coastal Problem
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Untreated sewage pouring into the world's seas and
oceans is polluting their water and coastlines and
endangering the health and welfare of the people and
animals that inhabit them, according to a bleak new
U.N. report released October 4th on the threats
to the
world's marine environments.
As well as the growing problem of sewage, oceans
are also suffering from rising levels of nutrients,
such as run-off from agricultural land. This is
triggering
toxic algal blooms that deprive the water of oxygen, the
destruction of coastal ecosystems such as mangroves
and a rising tide of ocean litter, says the State of
the Marine Environment report drawn up by the U.N.
Environment Program.
"An estimated 80 percent of marine pollution
originates from the land and this could rise
significantly by 2050 if, as expected, coastal
populations double in just over 40 years time and
action to combat pollution is not accelerated," U.N.
Environment Program chief.
The report will be presented to delegates at a
conference in Beijing from Oct. 16-20 that will
discuss progress in a 10-year-old action plan to
tackle marine pollution and how to boost the effort
to clean up oceans and seas in coming years.
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Harvard Magazine: The Marketplace of Perceptions
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Behavioral economics explains why we procrastinate,
buy, borrow, and grab chocolate on the spur of the
moment.
Like all revolutions in thought, this one began with
anomalies, strange facts, odd observations that the
prevailing wisdom could not explain. Casino
gamblers, for instance, are willing to keep betting
even while expecting to lose. People say they want
to save for retirement, eat better, start
exercising, quit smoking -- and they mean it -- but
they do no such things. Victims who feel they've
been treated poorly exact their revenge, though
doing so hurts their own interests. Such perverse
facts are a direct affront to the standard model of
the human actor -- Economic Man -- that classical
and neo-classical economics have used as a
foundation for decades, if not centuries. Economic
Man makes logical, rational, self-interested
decisions that weigh costs against benefits and
maximize value and profit to himself. Economic Man
is an intelligent, analytic, selfish creature who
has perfect self-regulation in pursuit of his future
goals and is unswayed by bodily states and feelings.
And Economic Man is a marvelously convenient pawn
for building academic theories. But Economic Man has
one fatal flaw: he does not exist...
Download the full article by Craig Lambert in
Harvard Magazine.
Learn more: Visit
The Ocean Project's website for other
thought-provoking resources including some of the
latest conservation-related communications research.
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Green Festivals Sweeping the USA
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Green
Festivals will be held in Washington, DC on
October 14 and 15, San Francisco November 10-12, and
also in Chicago April 21-22, 2007. Each event is an
opportunity to celebrate what's working in our
communities, for people, for businesses and for the
environment. The Green Festivals are all about
hope, of social and economic justice, of ecological
balance. These events feature more than 200
visionary speakers and 400 green businesses in each
city, great how-to workshops, green films, live
music, and much more. The Ocean Project will have a
booth in DC so stop by!
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World Water Monitoring Day
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World
Water Monitoring Day offers Partners and
communities around the world a chance to positively
impact the health of rivers, lakes, estuaries, and
the ocean. Volunteer monitoring groups, water
quality agencies, students, and the general public
are invited to test four key indicators of water
quality: temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and
turbidity. Individuals can perform these tests
themselves and submit results to the World Water
Monitoring Day database.
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National Student Summit on Oceans and Coasts
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Coastal
America will be hosting the 2nd National
Student Summit on Oceans and Coasts, December 5-8,
2006 in Washington, D.C. The Summit objective is to
inspire academic and career interest in marine
science and public policy. Student delegations have
been selected by the network of Coastal Ecosystem
Learning Centers, Centers for Ocean Sciences
Education Excellence, and Sea Grant partners.
Modeled after the White House Conference on
Cooperative Conservation, the Summit goal is to
increase ocean literacy through student driven
solutions, action, and mentorship. Delegations will
make presentations at the National Academies and
Capitol Hill and provide a student voice into the
Cooperative Conservation Listening sessions.
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International Pacific Marine Educators Conference
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The International
Pacific Marine Educators Conference, January 15-20, 2007 in Suva, Fiji, will allow marine educators worldwide to share resources
and build a network aimed at ensuring the health of the Pacific Ocean and the communities who depend
upon it. The conference is an outcome of the One Ocean Marine Forum, whose purpose was to design a
worldwide network of educators for sustainable oceans. Web conferencing will allow educators who
are unable to travel to Fiji to participate.
The deadline for abstracts is October 15, 2006.
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International Sea Turtle Symposium
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The 27th annual international Sea Turtle
Symposium,
to be held February 22-28, 2007 in Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina, is now open for early registration.
The website includes general information,
registration, abstract submission procedures, travel
grant information, and hotel reservations. The
deadline for early registration, travel grant
application, and abstract submission is October 15,
2006. Thematic sessions include ecology and
evolutionary biology; conservation and management;
monitoring; education, outreach and advocacy, and
more.
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Book of the Month : Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
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To coincide with the Seas the Day initiative's
conservation theme of the month
on rethinking
what we "need", the Ocean Book of the Month,
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking
the Way we Make Things, by William McDonough
and Michael Braungart,
challenges society to embrace ecological, social and
economic
sustainability through ecologically intelligent design.
The authors argue that with our growing knowledge of
the living earth,
design can reflect a new spirit. In fact, the
authors write, when
designers employ the intelligence of natural systems
-- the
effectiveness of nutrient cycling, the abundance of
the sun's energy --
they can create products, industrial systems,
buildings, even regional
plans that allow nature and commerce to fruitfully
co-exist.
In
addition to describing the hopeful, nature-inspired
design principles
that are making industry both prosperous and
sustainable, the book
itself symbolizes the changes to come. It is printed
on a synthetic
'paper,' made from plastic resins and inorganic
fillers, designed to
look and feel like top quality paper while also
being waterproof and
rugged. This 'treeless' book can be recycled and
points the way toward
the day when synthetic books, like many other
products, can be used,
recycled, and used again without losing any material
quality -- in
cradle-to-cradle cycles.
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Seas the Day Conservation Calendar
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The unique 2007 Seas the Day conservation education and action
calendar is available for Partners and other
ocean friends. It makes a great "stocking stuffer"!
It helps one strengthen their
connection with our ocean through inspiring
underwater imagery and monthly tips on simple ways
to take action. Available at
wholesale rates for Ocean Project Partners and their
staff.
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