Feature Destination

The National Marine Park of Alonissos and Northern Sporades

The National Marine Park of Alonissos and Northern Sporades was the first marine park established in Greece and is currently the largest marine protected area in Europe. The National Marine Park of Alonissos and Northern Sporades is member of the MedPAN (Network of Marine Protected Areas in the Mediterranean). Read more…

Monachus Monachus in The Mediterranean

The scientific name of the monk seal is Monachus monachus has been named after either the top of its head, which looks like it is wearing a Roman Catholic monk cap, or its tendency not to live in large groups preferring isolation from the human presence. Read more…

Volunteer at Alonissos, the Largest Marine Park in the Mediterranean

Environmentally aware individuals are invited to offer volunteer work at the first National Marine Park in Greece and the largest in the Mediterranean, which was established in 1992. Volunteers will help the Management Body of the NMPANS. Read more…

NEWSROOM

Marine Plankton Tell the Long Story of Ocean Health & Maybe Human Too

Using samples from an almost century-old, ongoing survey of marine plankton, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine suggest that rising levels of manmade chemicals found in parts of the world’s oceans might be used to monitor the impact of human activity on ecosystem health. Read more…

New Funding Could Put North East On The Map As a Climate Leader

South Tyneside Council has secured £6.9m in funding for the region’s Stronger Shores initiative, which will take a new approach to make British coastlines and communities stronger in the face of flooding, erosion and the impacts of climate change. Read more…

The Nature Conservancy Launches Southeast Marine Mapping Tool

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) announces the launch of the new Southeast Marine Mapping Tool, a digital tool that allows decision-makers to draw from the best available regional data when making ocean planning decisions. Developed by scientists at The Nature Conservancy. Read more…

SAWFISH NEWS: Florida’s Endangered Smalltooth Sawfish

The population of smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata) in the United States was once found in coastal waters from Texas to North Carolina. However, smalltooth sawfish populations declined dramatically during the second half of the 20th century. Read more…

How YOU can help the Mediterranean monk seal

MOm / The Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk seal is a Greek non–governmental environmental organization with the legal status of a Non–profit association. MOm is active in the protection and promotion of the coastal and marine environment of Greece. Read more…

Using Fungi, Researchers Convert Ocean Plastic Into Ingredients for Drug Industry

The chemical–biological approach for converting polyethylene uses an everyday soil fungus called Aspergillus nidulans that has been genetically altered. The results were reported recently in the paper “Conversion of Polyethylenes into Fungal Secondary Metabolites.” Read more…

Summer Heatwaves, Low Oxygen Proves Deadly for Bay Scallops as Fishery Collapses in New York

Islands around the world have been decimated by introduced invasive species, but restoriA new study by Stony Brook University researchers published in Global Change Biology  demonstrates that warming waters and heat waves have contributed to the loss of an economically and culturally important fishery, the production of bay scallops. Read more…

Short-Term Bang of Fireworks Has Long-Term Impact On Wildlife: Study Says

Popular fireworks should be replaced with cleaner drone, and laser light shows to avoid the “highly damaging” impact on wildlife, domestic pets and the broader environment, new Curtin-led research has found. Read more…

100+ Organisations Call on The EU to Rebuild Tuna Stocks & Protect Our Oceans

An urgent call by more than 100 environmental organisations, fishing groups and retailers was made yesterday directly to the European Commission, the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (MARE), all Heads of State of the European Union and the EU Committee on Fisheries to address the harmful environmental impacts. Read more…

Xanthochromism in Petrale Sole

Petrale sole is a brown West Coast flatfish that’s not particularly sexy. Thousands are caught by US West Coast groundfish trawlers every day, but the crew on the F/V Noah’s Ark caught one that was a complete anomaly. The fish shined a bright yellowy-orange, something none of the crew had seen in their lifetime. Read more…

SEVENSEAS Beach Cleanups

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Signing up for the free Weekly Newsletter & Jobs List will get you a round-up of upcoming events, webinars, meetings, reports, funding opportunities, photos of the week, and recent postings to the jobs list.

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Since 2004, SEVENSEAS Media has fostered an informal and non-partisan platform to promote understanding of key issues and challenges while building partnerships across an increasingly diverse group of marine conservation professionals and students.

Our mission is to promote communication and build partnerships across the global marine community and to identify and address gaps in the community’s work. SEVENSEAS Media achieves this through multimedia promotion and partnerships. The community consists of a diverse and growing group of participants, including non-governmental organizations, government agencies, foundations, bilateral and multilateral agencies, fellowship programs, independent consultants, and academia/students.

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An urgent call by more than 100 environmental organisations, fishing groups and retailers was made yesterday directly to the European Commission, the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (MARE), all Heads of State of the European Union and the EU Committee on Fisheries to address the harmful environmental impacts associated with drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) used by the industrial European tuna fleet in the Indian Ocean.

The 120 conservation organisations, civil society groups, artisanal fisher associations and responsible businesses, including retailers from around the world, united in the last three days to support the letter that addresses the lack of transparency and accountability associated with the use of drifting FADs  – a type of destructive fishing gear used by EU tuna purse seine vessels. 

Among the 120 signatories are retailers and brands that source tuna from the Indian Ocean. These include Marks & Spencer, MIGROS, Woolworths, Fish Tales, Fish4Ever, followfood, Big Fish, and Greenfish amongst others. Global conservation organisations such as Seas at Risk, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Blue Marine Foundation, BirdLife International, Deutsche Stifftung Meereschutz, Sciaena, and Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) also endorsed the call to action. Small-scale fishers also added their voice with groups like Fédération des Pêcheurs Artisans de l’Océan Indien (FPAOI) and the Confédération Africaine des Organisations de Pêche Artisanale (CAOPA), requesting action from the EU on FADs

The signatories of the letter emphasised that the EU has a moral and legal obligation to act in the best interests of its 450 million citizens and not only to protect the interests of commercial enterprises in Spain, France and Italy who profit from their fishing operations in the Indian Ocean. The letter also highlighted the EU’s obligation to apply the precautionary approach – a key environmental principle that mandates action to prevent possible environmental damage – at the upcoming Special Session of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) that will be held in Mombasa, Kenya, on 3-5 February 2023.

Read The Letter & The Request of Its 120 Signatories Here

The IOTC Special Session is being held in the wake of rampant overfishing of the region’s tuna stocks. The valuable Indian Ocean yellowfin tuna stock is overfished and has been since 2015. Recently, the region’s bigeye tuna stock has also been assessed as overfished and subject to overfishing. Scientists have consistently shown strong links between dwindling tropical tuna stocks and the high numbers of juvenile tuna caught around drifting FADs. A recent study showed that 97% of the yellowfin tuna caught around drifting FADs in the Indian Ocean are juveniles. 

According to 2020 statistics, the EU fleet caught 217,000 tonnes of tuna in the western Indian Ocean. Of this catch, 69% was taken by Spain, 28% by France, 2% by Italy and 1% by Portugal. The catch consisted mainly of skipjack, yellowfin and bigeye tuna, with more than 60% of the yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean caught by EU vessels.

Martin Purves, IPNLF’s Managing Director, who will be attending the meeting in Mombasa, said:

“This upcoming Special Session of the IOTC provides an important opportunity for the EU to act responsibly and to play a leadership role in driving improvements in FAD fishing operations. The lack of transparency in how these fishing operations are conducted, the lack of responsibility taken by FAD owners for the damage caused to sensitive ecosystems by these devices and the overall lack of effective management of drifting FAD fishing operations all needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. We all need to work together to ensure that Indian Ocean tuna stocks and the livelihoods that depend on them are safeguarded into the future.”

The EU’s delegation to the IOTC previously pushed back in 2021 and 2022 at attempts to improve existing FAD management measures, arguing that that there is a lack of scientific data on which to base such management decisions. The letter argues, however, that the precautionary approach is not only incorporated as a resolution at the IOTC but is also specifically mentioned under Article 6 of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement (UNFSA) and the EU’s own fishery law adopted under the Common Fisheries Policy.

Tuna fisheries are among the most highly capitalised and valuable fisheries in the world. Tunas are not only a sought-after commodity, but also an important source of protein. They also play a vital role as predators and prey in tropical and temperate marine ecosystems while supporting the livelihoods of many artisanal fishers.

In the Indian Ocean the millions of juvenile yellowfin and bigeye tuna caught around FADs could have grown to much larger fish to feed coastal communities. There is also lots of evidence that FADs are causing serious environmental damage in coastal areas where communities are the most vulnerable in terms of poverty, climate change and impacts on their food security. 

The signatories expressed the hope that their call to action will be acknowledged and the EU will show leadership as an important actor on global marine conservation.

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By the University of Kansas

Research on fungi underway at the University of Kansas has helped transform tough-to-recycle plastic waste from the Pacific Ocean into key components for making pharmaceuticals.

The chemical–biological approach for converting polyethylene uses an everyday soil fungus called Aspergillus nidulans that has been genetically altered. The results were reported recently in the paper “Conversion of Polyethylenes into Fungal Secondary Metabolites” published in Angewandte Chemie, a journal of the German Chemical Society.

“What we’ve done in this paper is to first digest polyethylenes using oxygen and some metal catalysts — things that are not particularly harmful or expensive — and this breaks the plastics into diacids,” said co-author Berl Oakley, Irving S. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology at KU.

Next, long chains of carbon atoms resulting from the decomposed plastics were fed to genetically modified Aspergillus fungi. The fungi, as designed, metabolized them into an array of pharmacologically active compounds, including commercially viable yields of asperbenzaldehyde, citreoviridin and mutilin.

Unlike previous approaches, Oakley said the fungi digested the plastic products quickly, like “fast food.”

“The thing that’s different about this approach is it’s two things — it’s chemical, and it’s fungal,” he said. “But it’s also relatively fast. With a lot of these attempts, the fungus can digest the material, but it takes months because the plastics are so hard to break down. But this breaks the plastics down fast. Within a week you can have the final product.”

The KU researcher added the new approach was “bizarrely” efficient.

“Of the mass of diacids that goes into the culture, 42% comes back as the final compound,” he said. “If our technique was a car, it would be doing 200 miles per hour, getting 60 miles per gallon, and would run on reclaimed cooking oil.”

Previously, Oakley has worked with corresponding author Clay Wang of the University of Southern California to produce about a hundred secondary metabolites of fungi for a variety of purposes.

“It turns out that fungi make a lot of chemical compounds, and they are useful to the fungus in that they inhibit the growth of other organisms — penicillin is the canonical example,” Oakley said. “These compounds aren’t required for the growth of the organism, but they help either protect it from, or compete with, other organisms.”

For a time, scientists thought they’d fully exploited the potential of fungi to produce these compounds. But Oakley said the age of genome sequencing has unlocked new possibilities for using secondary metabolites to benefit humanity and the environment.

“There was a realization there were lots and lots of clusters of genes that made secondary metabolites that nobody had discovered — and there are millions of species of fungi,” Oakley said. “A lot of companies have done good work over the years, but it was very much incomplete, because they were just growing things in the incubator and examining them for production of new compounds — but 95 percent of the gene clusters were just silent since they are not ‘turned on’ until needed. They weren’t doing anything. So, there are lots more things to discover.”

Oakley’s lab at KU has honed gene-targeting procedures to change the expression of genes in Aspergillus nidulans and other fungi, producing new compounds.

“We’ve sequenced the genomes of a bunch of fungi now, and we can recognize the signatures of groups of genes that make chemical compounds,” he said. “We can change the expression of genes; we can remove them from the genome; we can do all kinds of things to them. We could see there were lots of these secondary metabolite gene clusters there and our gene-targeting procedures allowed us, at least in principle, to turn some of those clusters on.”

Oakley and Wang’s co-authors were Chris Rabot, Yuhao Chen, Swati Bijlani, Yi-Ming Chiang and Travis Williams of USC, and Elizabeth Oakley of KU.

The researchers focused on developing secondary metabolites to digest polyethylene plastics because those plastics are so hard to recycle. For this project, they harvested polyethylenes from the Pacific Ocean that had collected in Catalina Harbor on Santa Catalina Island, California.

“There’ve been a lot of attempts to recycle plastic, and some of it is recycled,” Oakley said. “A lot of it is basically melted and spun into fabric and goes into various other plastic things. Polyethylenes are not recycled so much, even though they’re a major plastic.”

The KU investigator said the long-term goal of the research is to develop procedures to break down all plastics into products that can be used as food by fungi, eliminating the need to sort them during recycling. He added the work is emblematic of KU’s Earth, Energy + Environment research theme, geared toward “increasing understanding to help sustain the life of our planet and its inhabitants.”

“I think everybody knows that plastics are a problem,” Oakley said. “They’re accumulating in our environment. There’s a big area in the North Pacific where they tend to accumulate. But also you see plastic bags blowing around — they’re in the rivers and stuck in the trees. The squirrels around my house have even learned to line their nest with plastic bags. One thing that’s needed is to somehow get rid of the plastic economically, and if one can make something useful from it at a reasonable price, then that makes it more economically viable.”

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