Marine Resources

The global COVID-19 (or coronavirus) pandemic is having a major impact across the globe and on all segments of the population.

The pandemic caused by the virus, COVID-19 has had wide-ranging effects on coastal and island communities throughout the South Pacific.

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has had far reaching effects across the Pacific, including isolated island nations like the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), population 112,000.

Papua New Guinea (PNG), the largest of the Pacific island nations (population 8.9 million), has not been spared from the COVID-19 pandemic. The government declared a State of Emergency in March, closing off international borders and suspending domestic air travel.

Over the last decades scientists have discovered that seagrass meadows, tidal marshes, and mangroves – “blue carbon” ecosystems – are among the most intensive carbon sinks in the biosphere.

Dare To Be Deep:  SeaStates Report on North America’s Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)

Our rapidly warming climate is threatening coral reefs as thermal anomalies trigger mass coral bleaching events. Deep (or “mesophotic”) coral reefs are hypothesised to act as major ecological refuges from mass bleaching, but empirical assessments are limited.

The deep sea — usually defined as the realm below 200 metres — is a world of extremes. Temperatures near the sea bed in many places hover near 0 °C, there is next to no light, and pressures can exceed 1,000 bars, equivalent to having a couple of elephants standing on your big toe.

Designing Marine Protected Area Networks to Achieve Fisheries Biodiversity an

The Guide contains information about essential components and sub-components of marine spatial planning legislation, describing each and highlighting its role and significance.

This study identifies the importance of: acquiring robust baseline data, being fully protected (no-take), using ecosystembased management, community inclusion, and of adopting an ecologically connected network approach.

The UN General Assembly has made a unanimous decision to start negotiations to establish an international, legally-binding instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity within Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ).

• Deep Sea Mining contract areas in ABNJ
• Purse seiner pollution observer incidents across region
• Regional fishing vessel density
• Purse seiner pollution observer incidents and purse seiner vessel density

Ecologically or Biologically Significant Marine Areas (EBSAs) Special places in the world’s oceans (Western South Pacific)

Monitoring of marine protected areas (MPAs) is critical for marine ecosystem management, yet current protocols rely on SCUBA-based visual surveys that are costly and time consuming, limiting their scope and effectiveness.

Vava’u, Kingdom of Tonga, is a well-established whale-watching destination in the South Pacific. Between July and October, the waters around the archipelago represent one of the most important breeding grounds for Oceania humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae).

Three mangrove restoration methods were tested at Nu’uuli, Tutuila Island, American Samoa.

How can ocean governance and science be made more equitable and effective? The majority of the world’s ocean-dependent people live in low to middle-income countries in the tropics (i.e., the ‘tropical majority’).

Converting assemblages of marine protected areas (MPAs) into functional MPA networks requires political will, multidisciplinary information, coordinated action and time.

Marine protected areas can serve to regulate harvesting and conserve biodiversity. Within large multi-use MPAs, it is often unclear to what degree critical sites of biodiversity are afforded protection against commercial activities.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are designed to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services. Some
MPAs are also established to benefit fisheries through increased egg and larval production, or the

Deep-sea mining (DSM) may become a significant stressor on the marine environment.

We show that the high seas are colonized by a diverse array of coastal species, which survive and reproduce in the open ocean, contributing strongly to its foating community composition.

The vulnerability of marine biodiversity to accelerated rates of climatic change is poorly understood.

An expedition in 2002 to the Phoenix Islands Protected Area in the Republic of Kiribati documented an extensive and delicate community of staghorn and tabular Acropora colonies...

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) is in a naturally ironpoor region in the equatorial central Pacific.

Fisheries

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations

Marine fisheries throughout the world are in serious decline due to overharvesting (National Research Council, 2001), and management for sustainable fisheries requires effective tactics for limiting exploitation rates.

 Marine Protected Areas in French Polynesia

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation has released their findings from the largest coral reef survey and mapping expedition ever conducted in French Polynesia.

Marine megafauna, the largest animals in the oceans, serve key roles in ecosystem functioning. Yet, one-third of these animals are at risk of extinction.

Formal education at the regional University of the South Pacific (USP) needs to continue to evolve in order to prepare students from Pacific Island countries (PICs) to meet future challenges as ocean managers.

To safeguard biodiversity effectively, marine protected areas (MPAs) should be sited using the best available science. There are numerous ongoing United Nations and nongovernmental initiatives to map globally important marine areas.

Gender equality is a mainstream principle of good environmental governance and sustainable development. Progress toward gender equality in the fisheries sector is critical for effective and equitable development outcomes in coastal countries.

The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) aims to provide the most authoritative, publicly-available bathymetry data sets for the world’s oceans.

Global Biodiversity Outlook 4: A mid-term assessment of progress towards the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020

Marine traffic is increasing globally yet collisions with endangered megafauna such as whales, sea turtles, and planktivorous sharks go largely undetected or unreported. Collisions leading to mortality can have population-level consequences for endangered species.

Coral reefs worldwide are facing impacts from climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. The cumulative effect of these impacts on global capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services is unknown.

Global Environment Outlook
GEO - 6
Regional Assessment for Asia and the Pacific

Sediment runoff from disturbed coastal catchments is a major threat to marine ecosystems. Understanding where sediments are produced and where they are delivered enables managers to design more effective strategies for improving water quality.

Difficulties in scaling up theoretical and experimental results have raised controversy over the consequences of biodiversity loss for the functioning of natural ecosystems.

The expedition was conducted by KSLOF, a US-based nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to providing science-based solutions to protect and restore ocean health.

The Global Reef Expedition: The Kingdom of Palau Final Report provides a summary of the foundation’s findings al

On the Global Reef Expedition—one of the largest coral reef studies in history—the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation conducted research in the Solomon Islands to map and characterize shallow marine habitats and assess the status of coral reef benthic and fish communities.

Our global analysis of nearly 1,800 tropical reefs reveals how the intensity of human impacts in the surrounding seascape, measured as a function of human population size and accessibility to reefs (“gravity”), diminishes the effectiveness of marine reserves at sustaining reef fish biomass and th

Sharks and rays are key functional components of coral reef ecosystems, yet many populations of a few species exhibit signs of depletion and local extinctions. The question is whether these declines forewarn of a global extinction crisis.

Islands  support  unique  plants,  animals,  and  human societies found nowhere else on the Earth. Local and global stressors threaten the persistence of island ecosystems, with invasive species being among the most damaging, yet solvable, stressors.

Small-scale fisheries and aquaculture (SSFA) provide livelihoods for over 100 million people and sustenance for ~1 billion people, particularly in the Global South.

Coral reefs worldwide are suffering mass mortalities from marine heat waves. With the aim of enhancing coral bleaching tolerance, we evolved 10 clonal strains of a common coral microalgal endosymbiont at elevated temperatures (31°C) for 4 years in the laboratory.

This introductory brief's target audience is professionals from governments, civil society, private sector, and other stakeholders who know multilateral processes and treaties but are not “BBNJ (biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction) experts”. It is an easier read than the t