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Verde Island Passage Named a Hope Spot Highlighting Community Reef Monitoring Program

Featured image: Coastal community drone © Joal Ascalon
(VERDE ISLAND PASSAGE, CORAL TRIANGLE, PHILIPPINES)

The Verde Island Passage (VIP) is a major waterway that separates southern Luzon Island from northern Mindoro Island in the Philippines, extending from Lubang Island in the west to Tablas Island in the east. Its 1.14 million hectares of coral reef, mangrove, and seagrass habitats possess a remarkable abundance of marine life, provide livelihoods to millions of people through fishing and ecotourism, serve as a major step commercial shipping channel, and houses significant industrial complexes along part of its shoreline.
Dr. Terrence Gosliner, Senior Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, California Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Wilfredo “Al” Licuanan, Distinguished Full Professor in the Department of Biology and a University Fellow at De La Salle University (DLSU) and their partners are seeking the inclusion of the Verde Island Passage as a National Integrated Protected Area System of the Philippines and declaration as a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area of the International Maritime Organization. …

Posted in .Homepage, Dr. Sylvia Earle, Featured, mission blue, Partner Stories, Uncategorized |

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Innovative Marine Restoration Front and Center with Pangatalan Island Hope Spot

PANGATALAN ISLAND, PHILIPPINES, (September 19th, 2019) – In 1992, French business developer Fred Tardieu and his wife packed up their belongings and departed from their home, careers and ease of familiarity to pursue what they thought would be a well-earned retirement. Little did they know at the time, their unassuming plunge into adventure would lead them to become trailblazing marine conservationists in the Philippines. Driven by their love for the ocean and eagerness for bettering the world, in 2011 they purchased Pangatalan Island in Palawan and founded Sulubaaï Environmental Foundation, where they work alongside conservation partners and local community members to restore the island’s unique ecosystems that have been damaged from unsustainable practices. Alongside their partners, in 2017, they established a 45-hectare marine protected area (MPA) surrounding the island – with another MPA double its size currently in the works.…

Posted in Dr. Sylvia Earle, Featured, mission blue, Partner Stories, Uncategorized |

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Pockets of Hope in the Coral Triangle

By Henley Spiers, Underwater Photographer / Dive Instructor

The Coral Triangle is my favourite place on Earth. I’ve had the privilege of working there for three years as a dive instructor, and I return to it any opportunity I get. I love it there and yet have only seen a fraction of what it has to offer. The Coral Triangle is a massive area which encompasses the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. It spans an area 2.2 million square miles big – that’s more than eight times the size of Texas. It is often called the ‘Amazon of the Seas’. This is because it’s the centre of marine biodiversity for planet Earth. Here are a couple of headline facts:

The Coral Triangle holds 76% of the world’s coral species.…

Posted in .Homepage, Featured, mission blue |

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A Gateway to Discovering Earth’s Underwater Amazon

Mission Blue is excited to announce our new partnership with The Coral Triangle website—a non-profit enterprise supported by the WWF that “tells the story of this million square kilometer marine bioregion in words, pictures and video.”

The global heart of coral reefs, the Coral Triangle, is located in the Pacific and touches the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. Called “the Amazon of the seas,” this global treasure covers 5.7 million square kilometers of ocean, contains 75 percent of all known coral species and sustains the lives of approximately 120 million humans. There are over 3,000 kinds of fish in this area—more than twice the number found anywhere else in the world. Without a doubt, this is a prime global center for precious marine biological diversity.…

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Young Explorer Joins Project Seahorse – Danajon Banks, Philippines

By Carissa Shipman, Young Explorer
My love affair with nudibranchs, a unique group of marine slugs, began six years ago after seeing one of these fascinating critters in a documentary. I watched the television with eyes wide open, in utter awe of its magnificence! Its ostentatious assortment of colors and intricately decorated appendages intensified my curiosity. In that moment, I knew I wanted to study these amazing underwater jewels in graduate school. Today, I am finishing up my graduate project, studying nudibranchs with Dr. Terry Gosliner, at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
The Philippines is one of the most diverse areas in the world for sea slugs. This fueled my desire to dive there, to get up close and personal with these stunning invertebrates.…

Posted in Partner Stories |

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