The main focus of the latest Issue of theWIOMSA Magazine is Community Based Marine Conservation and Management Initiatives and includes some interesting articles on experiences in setting up community-based marine conservation initiatives in different countries in the WIO region.

Read or download the latest Issue

Big fishing concerns are engaged in “ocean-grabbing,” plundering the seas while scoffing at the environment and local interests, the UN’s food watchdog said today (30 October 2012).

In exceptionally sharp words, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on food, Olivier de Schutter, said the interests of smaller fishermen, local communities and sustainable fishing were threatened by long-distance, industrial-scale trawling.

Read the full article from http://za.news.yahoo.com/ocean-grabbing-threatens-worlds-fisheries-un-133043654.html

“Future generations will pay the price when the oceans run dry.”

Global fishing fleets should be cut drastically to ensure that stocks are not depleted, De Schutter told AFP.

“We must divide our capacity by half,” he said, before concluding that fish farming should replace a large part of deep sea activity.

“That is the only solution,” De Schutter said.

“‘Ocean-grabbing,’ in the shape of shady access agreements that harm small-scale fishers, unreported catch, incursions into protected waters, and the diversion of resources away from local populations, can be as serious a threat as ‘land-grabbing,’” he said.

A group of international researchers, including one from UWA Oceans Institute, has used coral sampling to assess the impact of river run-offs in a bay in north-eastern Madagascar.

The research was carried out in a bay favoured by whales to rear their calves, in effect, making it a ‘whale kindergarten’.

“The aim of the study was to test if we can use coral cores to assess the impact of various small mountain rivers on adjacent coral reefs in Antongil Bay, the largest bay on the island of Madagascar in the west Indian Ocean,” said Dr Jens Zinke, of UWA Oceans Institute.

“The bay is significant because every year up to 300 humpback whales come into this bay between June to October to raise their young and protect them from predators.”

As part of the study, researchers drilled coral samples from the reef in the bay. By exposing the coral samples to various lights, luminescent bands – in effect, similar to the growth rings of a tree – provided a long-term record of river run-off reaching the coral reefs in Madagascar.

Read the full article from http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201209054982/international/coral-study-provides-clues-reef-damage-whale-kindergarten

As the first of the world’s ecosystems faces extermination at our hands, Gaia Vince looks at efforts to protect our underwater gardens worldwide.

I was the neoprene queen – Jacques Cousteau had nothing on me. Suckered into a tight black wetsuit, weight-belt on, the air-tank octopus grazing the back of my head, and my knees buckling under the burden of it all, I waited. Perspiration streamed down my face and prickled the back of my neck as I swayed heavily in the sweltering sun, eager to make my ungainly splash into the cool Coral Sea, off the north-east coast of Australia.

Having been there two years previously, I knew what glories lay ahead in the hidden water world, where fish shimmered like jewels among gardens of coral in fantastic colours.

“The coral’s not as good this year, because of El Nino,” the dive master had warned me while we loaded up the boat.

But nothing could prepare me for what I encountered on that dive.

The coral bed had been entirely drained of colour. I’d expected to see an underwater carpet of vivid pinks, yellows and purples, but the seabed looked as though it had been replaced by a polystyrene model, the colour of concrete. What remnants of life remained were fast being gobbled by a mass of crown-of-thorns starfish. It was profoundly shocking, and I swam anxiously back and forth trying to locate some evidence of the rich biodiversity from my visit two years previously. I ran out of air before I could find any.

Read the full article from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120905-save-our-dying-coral-reefs

Changing climate conditions are making it harder for people in East Africa, most of whom grow food or raise livestock, to survive.

Rainy seasons are changing, destructive floods and temperatures have risen, and the soils have become drier than in recent years. Among the hardest hit are arid and semi-arid regions, small islands and the coastal strips.

Environmental experts say it’s important for the people of the region to learn to adapt.

In an effort to help farmers, the University of Nairobi has introduced a masters and doctorate degree in climate change – one of the first such programs on the continent.
According to Professor Shem Wandiga, acting chairman of the newly-established Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation, the university is proud to pioneer such a program.

Read the full article: http://www.voanews.com/content/kenyan-university-offers-degree-on-climate-change/1496798.html

On 12 August 2012, the UN chief announced an initiative to protect oceans from pollution and over-fishing and to combat rising sea levels which threaten hundreds of millions of the world’s people.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the “Oceans Compact” initiative sets out a strategic vision for the UN system to more effectively tackle the “precarious state” of the world’s seas.

Mr. Ban highlighted the “grave threat” from pollution, excessive fishing and global warming.

“Our oceans are heating and expanding,” he said in a speech to a conference marking the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

“We risk irrevocable changes in processes that we barely comprehend, such as the great currents that affect weather patterns.

“Ocean acidification (from absorbed carbon emissions) is eating into the very basis of our ocean life; and sea level rise threatens to re-draw the global map at the expense of hundreds of millions of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Read the full article from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/un-chief-launches-project-to-protect-oceans-from-pollutions-grave-threat/article4477258/

It is about six in the afternoon, just before sunset, when hundreds of small boats are being dragged up onto the beach in a fisherman’s village in Western Sahara.

The fishermen’s catch, contained in black buckets, is not tuna, or bream, or even bass as one might expect.

Instead, they have caught an even more expensive, blue-blooded ocean-dweller that is lifting their home town Dahkla out of its financial problems.

The town lies at the tip of a peninsula, with the Atlantic ocean on one side and a bay on the other.

The calm waters in the bay contrast sharply with a recent crisis that killed millions of octopuses thousands of miles away, following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Octopus exports

Last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may have been an unprecedented environmental disaster, but across the Atlantic, it turned into a boon.

With the global supply of octopus down due to fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico catching less, fishermen here now enjoy higher prices as the more voracious of the world’s octopus eaters turn to this seaside resort for their stocks.

Read the full article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14015045

NB:

It is interesting that this loss of Mexican octopus followed by a global glut of Moroccan octopus is driving the price down here in Kenya, which may have knock on effects on the price of fish. Andrew Wamukota is following this up for a chapter in his dissertation. I think the quality of Kenyan octopus might be lower, so although the global supply has diminished due to the Gulf Oil Spill, it is having various effects globally possibly due to quality differences? Morocco a winner and Kenya a loser..

Anyone following octopus prices elsewhere in the Indian Ocean? We have a long time series for Kenya and have watched it rise until a few months ago and wondering what the implications will be for other seafood.

Tim McClanahan

Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719#ixzz21jOlXH6h

A World Without Coral Reefs is an interesting and provocative article written by Roger Bradbury. The article was recently published in The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/a-world-without-coral-reefs.html?_r=1

Read the response to the article from The Nature Conservancy:

http://blog.nature.org/2012/07/coral-reefs-roger-bradbury-stephanie-wear-nature-conservancy

The late Jamaican musician Bob Marley has joined the “I have a species named after me” club, as a parasitic crustacean has been donned Gnathia marleyi, researchers announced on 10 July 2012.

This blood feeder infests certain fish that live among the coral reefs of the shallow eastern Caribbean Sea.

“I named this species, which is truly a natural wonder, after Marley because of my respect and admiration for Marley’s music,” Paul Sikkel, an assistant professor of marine ecology at Arkansas State University, said in a statement. “Plus, this species is as uniquely Caribbean as was Marley.”

Read the full article from: http://news.yahoo.com/caribbean-crustacean-named-bob-marley-174903190.html