How To Protect The Ocean

I talked about how the Marine Conservation Community views Boyan Slant's Ocean Clean Up project before and I even touched on my frustrations as to how mainstream media outlets haven't shown the criticisms to their audience. FINALLY, a mainstream media platform showed the criticisms to their audience. And it made me happier to see it. I hope this type of journalism persists with this topic because...

Patima Tungpuchayalkul was this year's awardee for the Jairo Mora Sandoval Award at the International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC5). Patima was given the award for the work she has done freeing fisheries slaves in Southeast Asia. The events that happened after the award was given was a great example of how the award was supposed to work. Listen to the episode to find out what happened. Enjo...

Sea Turtle populations are endangered for all 7 species and there are groups working very hard to ensure their survival; however, a summer red tide event in Southwest Florida is causing high mortality on Sea Turtles that are way above the normal mortality rates for these species.  The average number of Sea Turtle deaths in one year in the Southwest Florida area in 30-35; however, conservation grou...

Nassau Grouper populations have been dwindling since the 1950s and the fisheries collapsed in 1990. Since then, marine scientists and conservationists have been working tirelessly to try and revive the fishery.  Island nations throughout the Caribbean have been monitoring their local populations to find ways to help revive the fishery along each island.  The Cayman Islands have recently shown a su...

The North American Congress for Conservation Biology happened in Toronto, Ontario, Canada this past week and I had the honour of attending. The conference was mostly focused on terrestrial research and conservation; however, there were some great talks. Unfortunately, I learned some lessons while attending a conference in my hometown. For one, when a conference is in your hometown, you have to mak...

If California can reduce its Greenhouse Gas emissions to pre-1990 levels, then why can't other states/provinces and countries do it as well. We are in a time where we need to make changes to our energy uses and California has worked hard to make those changes. Not only did they make those changes, but they did it while growing their economy by 26% since 2004.  So why can't others do it as well? So...

There is a huge movement to ban plastic straws in cities across North America and other places in the world; however, some people have been pointing out that it will not save the Ocean.  An article was recently published in the National Post (a Canadian Newspaper) that pointed out a number of reasons why the straw ban will not protect the Ocean as there are other problems with Ocean Plastic Pollut...

Great White Sharks are the species that EVERYONE wants to know about. We know Shark Week loves their Great White Sharks, but I find they always cover the same kind of thing. So I thought that I would ask my buddy Dr. Dave Ebert whether he would be interested in coming on again to discuss why there were so many more Great Whites in Northern California. Dave was happy to record another episode about...

As Shark Week is on it's way, I thought it would be great to get our friend of the podcast, Dr. Dave Ebert (aka @lostsharkguy) on the podcast to discuss his journey to the wonderful island of Sri Lanka to discover more sharks. If you are not familiar with Dave's work, he discovers and studies new shark, ray and chimera species. It's quite amazing what his team has accomplished over the past few de...

Shark Week has been running for 29 years and this year will be its 30th year running as it had educated, inspired, scared and trick many people over its tenure. Shark Week seeks to educate and entertain; however, 3 years ago, Discovery (the company who puts on Shark Week) focused more in the entertainment rather than the education.  There was a period of a few years where the programming focused m...

One of the great things about the Speak Up For Blue Facebook Group is that people who are facing marine science and conservation problems can post in the group and other people (scientists/conservationists) can provide some advice best on past experiences and their expertise in the subject matter. A recent post by a member named Emma provided a similar opportunity for advice to be given by other m...

The Florida Fisheries and Wildlife Commission decided in April to consider limiting Land-based shark fisheries occurring along its coasts in order to protect swimmers and sharks alike. The initiation of this policy change came to be because of the number of pictures and videos posted on social media with people posing with sharks that they reeled in out of the water, where the sharks can't breathe...

Alissa Barnes of the Dakshin Foundation discovered 7 hermaphrodite bigeye houndsharks of the East Coast of India at a Port of Odhisa during a survey of fishers. The survey was to determine whether a gear change was the cause of a decrease in sharks and rays catches. The discovery is rare in sharks; however, it is not the only time hermaphroditism was discovered in sharks. A 2005 study found a larg...

Conferences in the Marine Science and Conservation fields are super important in sharing information, establishing collaborations, networking for your career and your work; however, conferences for some have been a nightmare that included sexual harassment, being passed up for talks and feeling isolated within a conference.  Many societies that put on conferences are trying to become better at att...

The Columbian government have dispatches the army to protect migrating Black Land Crabs who travel to the coast from the dry, dense forests on the Island of Providencia to lay eggs and where the larvae develop in the Ocean for a few weeks after which they migrate back to the forests where they become adults.  Tourism has shot up over the past few decades adding pressure to the survival of the blac...

Oceana has written a report blasting countries such as Italy, France, Malta and Greece for not enforcing fisheries regulations. The report called out Italy, specifically because they allowed over 10,000 hours of trawling in a MPA that was designed to protect young hake.  The Oceana report stated that 90% of the Mediterranean is overfished and countries need to step up their efforts and put protect...

Basten Gokkon wrote a great article on Mongabay News that was an interview with one of the plenary speakers at the International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC5) in Kuching, Malaysia. the presenter is named John Aini, who founded the Ailan Awareness in Papua New Guinea.  The subject of the plenary and interview that John gave was about decolonizing conservation, which means conservation needs...

Nurse sharks have been in the news lately, but not for good reasons. There have been two incidents in the recent weeks that have been published where two people have been bitten by nurse sharks.  The first person was feeding a nurse shark in Australia. Her hand was sucked into the mouth of the shark who was trying to eat the bait set out for it to eat. The second person decided that they would swi...

The Canadian Government recently implemented a 200 m minimum distance for any ship in the area of Orcas. They also chopped the Chinook Salmon quota by 35%. The government is doing this because the Southern Resident Orca population only has 75 individuals (estimated) left. The Orca population relies heavily on Chinook Salmon for their diet and they won't diversify their diet.  An article in the Tor...

We all dreamed about this day, but now that Scott Pruitt has resigned as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is it really what we want? As Scott Pruitt leaves office, Andrew Wheeler replaces him. Unfortunately, they are the same person in terms of beliefs (climate change deniers) and supporting fossil fuels.  It comes down to the fact that Scott Pruitt did not resign due to bad p...

The Second Part of my conversation with Andrew Thaler on the last 10 years of Marine Science and Conservation Communication.  If you are someone who has been doing SciComm in the same field, how have you noticed the field has evolved? Donate to the Jairo Mora Sandoval Bravery Award to Fund 5 more brave Marine Conservationists Become par to the Speak Up For Blue Nation by joining our Patreon Campai...

500 EPISODES!!! I can't believe the time has finally come where the Speak Up For Blue Podcast has reached 500 episodes!!! What do I do to celebrate? I announce that I will be posting from 3 times a week to 7 times a week. More frequency will result in shorter episodes, but that doesn't mean I won't be diving deep into the topics of each episode. Some episodes, like today's, will be a 2-parter.  To...

A global whale shark study that used bathymetry (depth profiles), as a way to identify potential favourite habitats, along with whale shark sightings revealed a preferred habitat for the largest fish in the sea.  Whale sharks are often found in areas with shallow shelfs with steep drop offs that bring cold nutrient-rich waters to the surface (upwellings) as a food source for the whale sharks.  Sou...

Last year, the North Atlantic Right Whale population lost 19 individuals in the US and Canada due to ship strikes and/or fish gear entanglement. It was a surprise in Canada as Right Whales sightings were rare in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; however, with Climate Change heating up the sea, many species northern boundaries are expanding.  The Government of Canada took some major initiatives to stop the...

After 2 years of preparing, making travel arrangements, preparing presentations, renting podcasting equipment, getting vaccinations and finally, attending the conference...IMCC5 is officially over.  Before I spend my time looking at planning for the next IMCC in Kiel, Germany, I wanted reflect on my time at the conference in Kuching, Malaysia. Enjoy the Podcast!!! Donate to the Jairo Mora Sandoval...