May 2019 - Mission Blue

Monthly Archives: May 2019

Leaders in Sustainability Highlighted in Newly Declared Tetiaroa Atoll Hope Spot

Tetiaroa Atoll is a rare, secluded place that serves as a refuge for nesting green sea turtles and a variety of seabird species, surrounded by a healthy and ecologically important coral reef and a brilliant turquoise lagoon.
Unfortunately, like other atolls around the globe, Tetiaroa and the coral reefs that support it are at serious risk due to the negative effects of climate change and resource misuse– but there is hope. Local nonprofits Tetiaroa Society and Te mana o te moana, along with their partners – The Brando Resort, The Brando Family Trust, and the local government and community – are working to preserve and restore the atoll.
International nonprofit Mission Blue has declared the Tetiaroa Atoll a Hope Spot in support of Tetiaroa Society’s goal of establishing full protection of the island from a ground-up, grassroots approach and in support of Te mana o te moana’s long term sea turtle nesting program on the atoll.…

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Ocean Organizations Designate Seamounts off California Coast as Newest Hope Spots in Worldwide System

CALIFORNIA COAST, UNITED STATES (May 14, 2019) – Deep below the ocean’s surface, not far from the beautiful beaches of the California coast, where millions sunbathe, surf, and enjoy the majesty and tranquility of the sea, lies a world of underwater mountains, volcanoes and ancient islands called seamounts. These seamounts provide a home to biologically important treasures critical to the health of the ocean. Although virtually unknown to the Golden State’s nearly 40 million residents, the seamounts are home to creatures like the endangered blue and gray whales and sperm whales, sharks, rare deep‐sea corals that take hundreds of years to grow, and seabirds hunting high overhead for fish that aggregate near the seamounts. Unfortunately, the dozens of vibrant seamounts along California’s coast and across the globe face a risky future due to potential deepsea trawling, ocean warming and acidification, offshore drilling, and the rise of deep-sea mining, a practice that extracts minerals from the seamounts and seabed.…

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

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Rodriguez Seamount – A Geologic Rarity

By Samuel Georgian, Marine Biogeographer at Marine Conservation Institute

Rodriguez Seamount is a 10–12 million-year-old seamount located approximately 42 miles off the coast of southern California. It towers over a mile above the seafloor, with its tallest summit cone standing over a little over 2,000 feet below the surface. Once upon a time, Rodriguez was an island standing as tall as 230 feet above sea level, with an area of 2.6 square miles. Like the neighboring San Juan Seamount, it has since sunk back beneath the waves largely due to the subsidence of the ocean crust beneath it. Due to the erosional forces it was exposed to as an island, its modern summit largely consists of a large flat dome, qualifying Rodriguez as a guyot – a flat-topped seamount.…

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