Certification for Oceanographic Professionals: A Needs Assessment Study

A few times a year, volunteers fan out along the causeway that links the South Carolina mainland with the seashore community of Folly Beach to clean up plastic bottles, straws, bags, and other debris from along the road and the salt marsh. Some of this debris has come from cities miles away. On windy days, litter is often blown off city streets into waterways. During rainstorms, debris floats into drains that empty into rivers. Other trash probably came from places closer to home. “I see bags and other plastic flying off the beds of pickup trucks going down the causeway,” says Marty Morganello, who organizes the cleanups for the Charleston-area chapter of the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation. “I see them coming out the open windows of cars and out the backs of garbage trucks and even recycling trucks. This material is lightweight, and if you don’t secure it, it will fly away.” By one estimate, the volume of plastic debris going into the world’s oceans could more than double by 2025, assuming current trends in coastal development and plastics use. Some countries have begun identifying ways to improve management of plastic ... Beach cleanups yield enormous amounts of trash, with plastic items a major constituent.1 Although the human health impacts of this marine plastic pollution remain poorly characterized, it is widely seen as an emerging problem that deserves much more research attention.2 Likewise, there is a growing urgency among industry, government, nongovernmental organizations, and environmental groups to develop tools and policies to track, capture, and recycle plastic waste before it reaches the ocean.

Certification is a way to recognize that an individual has demonstrated professional competence and integrity in an occupational field. The Marine Advanced Technology Education Center undertook a study from September 2006 to June 2009 to assess whether there is a need for a voluntary certification program for oceanographie professionals (CPOP) in the U.S. The study, funded by NOAA, was motivated in part by the rapid growth in recent years of operational oceanographie activities and ocean observing systems, and the increased public attention to ocean issues. The goals of the project were to explore the pros and cons of certification programs in similar fields of expertise; collect and analyze data on the opinions about the need for, and structure of, a CPOP; report the analysis results; and make recommendations to the oceanographie community in order to: improve ocean-related education, enhance professional development for oceanographie professionals, help meet national ocean-related workforce needs, and assist users of oceanographie products and services in making well-informed decisions.

SEPTEMBER 2014 PLACEMENT ADS

This paper explores the complex environmental relationships of coastal cities with their shorelines and the sea. Cities developed in coastal locations because they offered easy access to fisheries, trade and commerce, transport, attractive scenery and recreational opportunities. However, coastal cities have also been vulnerable to the natural hazards of hurricane-force winds, tsunamis and tidal flooding; and climate change will exacerbate flood risks in the future. Many of the world's largest cities are situated by the sea, and today in every continent except North America the highest share of urban dwellers live in coastal zones. These issues, together with growing concerns over the state of the world's oceans - declining fish stocks, aquatic ecosystem degradation, and marine acidification - have attracted growing historical interest in coastal cities and their role in environmental change. Using examples of different types of coastal cities, I survey how growing urbanisation, trade, industrialisation and tourism impacted on shorelines and the sea over time. I also examine how communities have adapted to the challenges and risks of living in coastal cities. The paper concludes by offering some suggestions for further inquiry.

Fish stock falls unreported

Metal concentrations in the growth bands of Porites sp.: A baseline record on the history of marine pollution in the Gulf of Mannar, India

The variability of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and chlorophyll-a distribution in the southern waters of East Java is heavily influenced by the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) phenomenon. This study examines oceanographic parameter variability, their relationship with the IOD from 2003 to 2014, and fishing dynamics in the southern waters of East Java, particularly at PPN Prigi. Data utilized include SST and chlorophyll-a from Aqua-MODIS satellites, the Dipole Mode Index (DMI), and 12 years of fish production records. The analysis reveals significant fluctuations in SST and chlorophyll-a, with a strong inverse relationship (correlation: –0.677), where chlorophyll-a concentrations rise as SST decreases. Positive IOD events reduce SST, while negative IOD events increase SST, with correlations of –0.591 for SST and IOD and 0.601 for chlorophyll-a and IOD. During the positive IOD events of 2006–2008, SST decreased, leading to increased fish production. Conversely, the negative IOD in 2010 raised SST, contributing to a decline in fish stocks. Over the 12-year period, a notable increase in Bali Sardinella and skipjack production was observed, despite a sharp decrease in 2010 caused by higher SST levels. This study highlights the importance of understanding the interactions between SST, chlorophyll-a, and IOD in developing sustainable fisheries management strategies. These insights can support efforts to optimize fish resource utilization, mitigate the impacts of climate variability, and ensure long-term fisheries productivity in the southern waters of East Java, particularly for strengthening adaptive resource planning within climate-sensitive pelagic ecosystems and supporting informed decision-making for regional fisheries policies and sustainable blue-growth initiatives.

BackgroundConflicts of use between fisheries and marine megafauna (sharks, turtles, mammals and seabirds) now extend around the globe and are exacerbated by the intensification of fishing, the decline in fish stocks and significant conservation issues. Although the end of the 20th century saw a shift from an approach of eradicating megafauna to one of human-wildlife coexistence, there are st

Co-management of natural resources has developed within the premise that sustainable management is more likely achieved through decentralized and participatory governance. For Lake Victoria (Kenya), the introduction of co-management through the establishment of beach management units (BMUs) coincided with apparent increases in unsustainable fishing practices associated with concurrent decline in fish stocks. In this article, we identify what institutions at the community level influence practices and how these shape the interpretation and application of formal rules laid down by fisheries policies. Primary data collected from four beaches on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria document local fishing practices. We found fishing practices are often contrary to government regulations, despite the creation of BMUs that were established to implement government regulations. Instead, fishing practices regulated by the BMUs are highly influenced by kinship ties and corruption. This analysis uses the concept of institutional bricolage to discuss how norms and rules interact to affect resource management. The findings build on existing evidence which challenges the view that devolution of natural resource management to local institutions, even those that follow national guidelines for participatory management, provides for more sustainable fishing. We suggest the need for a perhaps radical rethink of the design of participatory fisheries within Lake Victoria if sustainable management goals are to be realized.

For more than fifty years, Artificial Reefs (AR) have been deployed in France to respond to the decline in fish stocks with a high deployment on the Mediterranean coast. However, from 40 sites listed, less than a quarter have not been the subject of any known published ecological or socio-economic monitoring reports, over the past five years. The lack of data on the evaluation of these structures therefore raises questions about their interest, both from an ecological and social point of view. By relying on the theory of organizations and more specifically on the translation resulting from the sociology of innovation applied to the environment, we will develop an original socio-ecological approach intended to meet this need for evaluation, in particular for managers. Based on two case studies on the coasts of the French Channel (Etretat and Cherbourg), we will highlight the interests and roles of human and non-human actors in an AR immersion process. The analysis will highlight the social and ecological objectives of these two projects from an analytical framework designed to verify the adequacy between the socio-ecological network "artificial reefs" formed and the objectives initially expected by the actors, especially decision-makers and funders. The limits posed by these approaches to improve the evaluation of artificial reefs will finally be discussed.

Due to the decline in fish stocks in Brazil, mainly in the Amazon Basin, the Closed Fishing Season Law was implemented to help fisheries recover and protect fish habitat. Tambaqui ( Colossoma macropomum ) is one of the main overexploited fish species and there is concern about its decline in many Amazonian rivers. Therefore, in order to investigate the effectiveness of the Closed Fishing Season Law as it applies to tambaqui, seizure data compiled by IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environmental Protection) was analyzed for the period 1993 to 2012 (20 years) for the Negro, Solimoes and Amazonas rivers. Although the results of this study showed variations in the volume of tambaqui seizures among the three different rivers analyzed over a 20-year period, these variations were small in comparison to the differences found between the 10-year periods before and after implementation of the Closed Fishing Season Law. Overall, there was a 24.4% decrease in the volume of tambaqui seized after implementation of the Law, which can be attributed to a number of possible reasons: 1) reduction of tambaqui stocks in the area of study; 2) occurrence of great floods and dry periods influenced by the natural phenomena El Nino and La Nina, which strongly affected fish stocks in 2002-2003 and 2009, respectively; 3) poor enforcement of regulations, due to reductions in IBAMA personnel and; 4) difficult to patrol such a large area, including many remote locations. However, notwithstanding the noted overall decrease, the results suggest that implementation of the Closed Fishing Season Law with its corresponding compensation payments to fishers did not end up dramatically improving the protection of tambaqui stocks and may have even encouraged more people to enter into the fishery to benefit from the payments. Keywords: Fishery stocks; fisheries; closed season compensation.

Can the “10-year fishing ban” rescue biodiversity of the Yangtze River?

Within the waters of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), there are nine sea snake species and five species of sea turtles, two of which (Hawksbill and Green Sea Turtles) are breeding and forage residents and the remainder migrate to feed through UAE waters. Not only are the waters of the UAE recognized as important habitats for Hawksbill and Green Sea Turtles, but sea turtles are ambassador species for ocean conservation and recognized as a priority species by policy makers and conservationists alike. As a result, despite their numerous challenges, Hawksbill and Green turtle populations in the country are relatively stable. On the other hand, Loggerhead and Olive Ridley Sea Turtles, along with sea snakes enjoy far less interest and attention and so their threats, ecology and population status remain ambiguous. The known challenges facing marine reptiles in the UAE include, but are not limited to, habitat destruction through coastal development, marine pollution, bycatch and climate change.

Environmental drivers and ecological responses of seaweed litter production and decomposition: A comprehensive review.

The Prevention Principle--A New Theory for Invocation of State Responsibility for Marine Environmental Harm