Oceans

YouTube persuasion

Why do some messages persuade, and others don’t?   What is good science messaging?  How can we reach new audiences about the importance of sustainable resource management? If you’re interested in these questions, you might like this video on overfishing, created by a couple of UCLA undergrads as extra credit for a class in oceanography.  I …

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Remembering Rachel Carson

Earth Day seems an appropriate time to recall past leaders in environmental thought.  Few have played a greater role in the development of U.S. environmental law than Rachel Carson (1907-1964), whose books did much to spark the environmental movement.  It is good to hear that her books have been reprinted as ebooks by Open Road …

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This week it’s bad news for the oceans

I try occasionally to report good news on this site, to counteract the tendency of most environmental lawyers to suffer periodic depression. But this week I can’t find anything but bad news in the marine context. Pour yourself a glass of wine, click, and cry: The World Resources Institute has published a new report, Reefs …

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Great Sources on the BP Oil Spill

The National Commission has added some valuable additional material to its cite: A multi-media resource, especially useful for students and journalists. For those who want to dive deeper, the Chief Counsel’s report is a great resource. It presents a good deal of evidence unfavorable to BP, but also significant criticism of Transocean and Halliburton. Of …

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Judge Feldman is still mad

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. You may remember Judge Martin Feldman from his decisions last summer enjoining enforcement of Interior’s first effort at a deepwater drilling moratorium, and more recently declaring that the Department must pay the legal fees of the plaintiffs in that case because it was in contempt of the injunction order. (For my take …

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What we’re reading, oceans edition

Cross-posted at CPR Blog. Here’s some of what’s going on in the ocean policy world: BOEMRE is reviewing the first post-moratorium application to drill an exploratory deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico. As required by a June Notice to Lessees, Shell’s application to drill 130 miles from shore in 2000 to 2900 feet of …

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What makes fisheries co-management successful?

Global fisheries provide an important source of food, yet most fisheries are thought to be fully or over-fished. That’s led to a great deal of discussion recently in the academic literature about how fisheries could be more effectively managed. One suggestion is “co-management” — cooperative regulation undertaken by fishers and managers together. A recent study …

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California Environmental Blueprint: Environmental monitoring & modeling

This post is the second in our ongoing series on our Environmental Blueprint for California. In our Blueprint, we recommended that Governor Brown establish an independent, statewide agency or council devoted to compilation, modeling, prediction and presentation of environmental quality data. I want to elaborate on what this agency might look like and why we believe …

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The BP Oil Spill and the Disappearing Louisiana Coast

The fact is that even before the BP Oil Spill, the Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Mexico itself were under siege from damage to wetlands, a poorly regulated oil and gas industry, rising seas, an immense marine “dead zone,” invasive species, and damaged ecosystems.

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California designates new Marine Protected Areas

The California Department of Fish and Game has created a new network of state-designated Marine Protected Areas, as Tony Barboza reported today in the Los Angeles Times. This action, controversial because of its restrictions on fishing in the protected areas, begins to fulfill the promise of California’s decade-old Marine Life Protection Act.  As this detailed …

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