Australia has pledged more than $500m Australian dollars (£274m) to help preserve the Great Barrier Reef, in an attempt to protect the world heritage site from the effects of climate change.

In 2016, marine heat waves caused by global warming killed and damaged large expanses of coral. Much of the impact was felt along 500 miles of the northern Great Barrier Reef, its most pristine region.

The funding, announced on Sunday, is part of a conservation plan that will see the Australian government partner with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to monitor and improve the reef’s long term health.

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Described by the government as the largest ever single investment in reef conservation in Australia’s history, the money will go towards improving water quality, controlling coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish – a major predator – and expanding reef restoration schemes. It will also help preserve 64,000 jobs that depend on the reef, according to a statement from the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

Speaking to reporters after the project was unveiled, Australian environment minister Josh Frydenberg said the reef was under considerable pressure but that challenges could be overcome.

“The more we understand about the reef, the better we can protect it,” he was quoted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as saying.

The more we understand about the reef, the better we can protect it

The Great Barrier Reef is home to the world’s largest collection of coral reefs, with some 400 types of coral and 1,500 species of fish. It is also home to a number of endangered species, including the large green turtle and the dugong (pictured below).

Featured image: The heart-shaped coral of Heart Reef is one of the most recognisable sights of the Great Barrier Reef

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Supported by 140 countries, the UN general assembly has passed a resolution allowing negotiations to begin on a treaty to protect the high seas.

Waters outside national boundaries – known as the high seas – cover almost half the surface of the Earth and play a vital role in the functioning of the atmosphere and climate. But they suffer from a chronic shortage of regulation, and many areas have been devastate by pollution and overfishing as a result.

After years of planning, UN members agreed in December 2017 to open formal negotiations on an international treaty to protect them. Negotiations will begin in September and are expected to continue until 2020. It is hoped the treaty will lead to the creation of more marine protected areas. According to the UN, only about 5 per cent of the world’s oceans is protected at present.

“We are increasingly aware of the importance of the high seas to all life on Earth and this is reflected in the move to protect it,” said Peggy Kalas of the High Seas Alliance, an umbrella body for organisation working on issues to do with the high seas, which led the drive for the treaty. “The negotiations will be hard but there are many champion countries that have worked to get us this far and who will continue to push for a robust and meaningful treaty.”

It is too early to say how ambitious the treaty will be in scope. While some have express doubt about how effectively it could be enforced, the UN resolution has been largely welcomed by conservationists.

Featured image: Randall Ruiz

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The UK government has announced it will ban the sale of ‘rinse-off’ cosmetic products that contain microbeads: tiny plastic particles that damage marine life and may also pose a serious risk to human health.

Exfoliating scrubs, shower gels and toothpaste are among the products affected by the decision, which followed a public consultation. The legislation will come into effect on 30 June 2018 and, a day later, the US will implement a similar ban. The UK law will be enforced by warnings and fines.

Microbeads negatively affect marine wildlife, including by preventing animals from consuming their natural prey and reducing reproduction rates.

Environmental groups welcomed the move. Louisa Casson, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace UK, described the planned law as “the strongest ban on microbeads in the world”.

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“This is great news for our environment and a positive sign of Britain’s global leadership on ocean plastics,” she said, adding: “to achieve a fully comprehensive ban we need companies to be much more transparent about when their products contain harmful microbeads.”

The cosmetics industry resisted calls for ‘leave-on’ products such as makeup and sunscreen to be included in the ban, arguing that they would have to reformulate up to 90 per cent of their products, which would be “difficult” and “expensive”.

As a result, the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association submitted a formal objection to the changes with the European Commission earlier this month. The industry body claims that the ban goes too far and should be limited to exfoliating scrubs.

In response, a coalition of organisations who support the ban, which includes the Environmental Investigation Agency, Fauna and Flora International, Greenpeace UK and the Marine Conservation Society, released a joint statement saying: “A weakening of the ban would prevent effective, robust legislation and would allow damaging microplastics to continue flowing into our seas.”

We need companies to be much more transparent about when their products contain harmful microbeads

Campaigners insist that microbeads can be easily replaced with natural alternatives.

A representative for the Marine Conservation Society said microbeads should be banned from any product that was likely to end up being flushed down the drain.

As part of the announcement, UK environment secretary Michael Gove outlined proposals for a deposit and return scheme for single-use plastic bottles, which break down into small particles over time.

Elsewhere, Belgium has announced plans to phase out microplastics in all consumer products by 2019, France and Sweden will ban rinse-off cosmetics containing microplastics from January 2018 and last week saw the end of a European Commission public consultation on policy options to reduce microplastics entering marine ecosystems, with results to be published by the end of the year.

Image: Francis Taylor

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The waters off the Madagascan coast used to teem with life. But overfishing by foreign fleets, increasingly extreme weather brought about by climate change and a buildup of soil released by deforestation have severely degraded this coastal bounty – along with much of the population’s livelihood.

And without drastic action – around Madagascar and far beyond – these vastly depleted reserves will continue to diminish, with potentially catastrophic results for hundreds of millions of families around the world who rely on fishing for their food and income.

“The decline of fish stocks worldwide is a critical problem for livelihoods and food security,” says Dr Alasdair Harris, chief executive of the London-based conservation group Blue Ventures. “About 97 per cent of the world’s fish live in the developing world. These fish stocks are collapsing because of over-exploitation and with climate change, these problems are only becoming much more severe.”

Fortunately, Dr Harris has a cheap, simple and effective solution – a softly-softly approach that involves large doses of octopuses and good storytelling. Typically, marine protected areas are imposed upon fishing communities without explaining the rationale or offering any form of compensation for a measure that leaves villagers cash-strapped in the short term. All too often, this results in standoffs between well-meaning conservationists and the communities they are trying to help.

We use the octopus as the catalyst to protect the broader ecosystem. Seeing their rapid recovery allows us to start a conversation with locals

By contrast, Dr Harris and his team work closely with often-suspicious local communities, typically using octopuses to demonstrate cheaply and quickly the power of conservation. The tentacled creatures are ideal because they grow so rapidly. Communities can quickly see the benefits of, and profit from, closing off an area to octopus-fishing for a short while to allow them to breed uninterrupted.

“We’re not primarily interested in conserving octopuses. We use the octopus as the catalyst to protect the broader ecosystem. Seeing their rapid recovery allows us to start a conversation with locals who were previously totally opposed to, for instance, setting up a permanent marine reserve.”

Velvetine says that octopus gleaning is the only source of income available to her

Closing off a quarter of an octopus fishing area for just three months has been found to double their catch in that area by villages after it reopens. The elevated catch will last for around two months before returning to the previous level.

The real beauty of the scheme is that the total number of octopuses caught remains stable, as fishermen are able to step up their catch in the other three quarters of the area,” Harris says. The villagers can cordon off each area twice a year, ensuring that their fish stocks are continually being rejuvenated.

“Everybody knows how big the average octopus is and remembers the biggest octopus they ever saw. And if they start seeing an octopus that’s 10 times bigger than anything they’ve seen, just by closing part of the fishery for three months, that’s quite seismic,” says Harris.

The catch is good in the days after openings. I have more money for food and for my family

Blue Ventures, which gets 70 per cent of its funding from donors such as the government, and the rest from diving holidays, has also used giant clams and blue swimmer crabs as ‘gateway species’ to sell conservation to suspicious communities. The group also works in East Timor, Mozambique and Indonesia on a broad range of conservation projects using the ‘catalyst’ model. But it is in Madagascar that it has made its biggest mark. The country had no marine protected areas 10 years ago, despite having a huge dependence on the ocean, says Harris.

“We used the octopus catalyst model to demonstrate to one community what could happen. It worked, and they talked to their neighbours, who also tried it, and so it spread virally around the coast,” he explains.

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Velvetine, a member of the Vezo ethnic community living on the south Madagascan coast, says: “Octopus gleaning is the only way that I can earn money. A long time ago, we could also glean for sea cucumbers, but there are no more left. Before we started doing octopus reserves, we were only catching two or three octopuses in a day, and some days we wouldn’t catch any at all.

“With the reserves, we make a small sacrifice, but the catch is good in the days after openings. I have more money for food and for my family.”

A Vezo mother with her child

The model has now been replicated hundreds of times on the Madagascan coast. As a result, more than 100 locally managed marine protected areas have been established that are much more ambitious than protecting octopus.

They include permanent marine reserves around really important areas of coral reefs, mangrove and seagrass, covering 14.5 per cent of one of Africa’s largest sea beds.

“This has happened on a budget that has been negligible at a time of government shut-down most of the time, and most of that period there’s been a military coup,” Harris says.
Last year, Blue Ventures organised an exchange scheme that saw a group of Mexicans travel to Madagascar. “They had nothing in common, no language, no culture, no reference points except they both target octopuses. The guys from Mexico saw what these people in Madagascar had achieved, it’s quite powerful stuff,” Harris says.

Images: Garth Cripps and Blue Ventures

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Our oceans provide us with every drop we drink, every other breath we take and endless inspiration, yet our knowledge of life under the waves is less than that of outer space, and what we do know about the marine environment is often scary or gloomy, or sensationalised into the plain ridiculous (Sharknado, anyone?).

But today, 8 June, is a chance to change that, because today is World Oceans Day, a day where we can take a few moments to discover some of the amazing things that are happening to make our blue planet a better place for all of us, fish and people alike. And as it turns out, there’s plenty to smile about.

For a start, just three days ago the British government used the Queen’s Speech to introduce a tax of 5p on plastic bags in supermarkets across England. This brings the country in line with the rest of the UK and most of the EU, and adds its name to an increasingly long list of nations and cities (including Washington DC, Rwanda, and China) that have applied either taxes, or a total ban on plastic bags.

The cumulative global impact of these measures will make a huge difference to the wildlife that lives in our oceans. Fish, birds, turtles, and marine mammals can all become entangled in plastic bags and debris floating in our waters. The Marine Conservation Society found over 4,000 plastic bags on beaches on just one weekend last year, but thanks to the recent announcement, this may soon be a thing of the past on British coastlines.

For the plastic already in the ocean, there are plenty of projects springing up to remove it and turn it into stuff we can actually use. See for example the Net-Works project in the Philippines or the Ecover’s innovative washing up bottles scheme, due to appear in UK stores this month.

The Zoological Society of London, Interface, and Project Seahorrse, Philippines have collaborated on a project to turn discarded fishing nets into high quality carpet tiles

If our oceans are to have a positive future we need to protect them more effectively than we are doing at present. A recent study published in Nature concluded that marine reserves must be large, isolated, old, well-enforced, and – crucially – completely protected from all forms of fishing and other extraction if they are to be effective. Thankfully, several leading NGOs are now campaigning for marine reserves that fit these criteria.

The UK itself has an incredible opportunity to contribute to the creation of such reserves in its overseas territories. The people of Pitcairn recently voted unanimously to create what would be the world’s largest highly-protected marine reserve – a truly humbling commitment from one of the world’s smallest and most isolated communities. If the British government grant their wish and designate marine reserves around the South Sandwich Islands and Ascension Island as well, then – added to the marine reserve already declared around the Chagos Islands – the UK will have protected 0.7% of the world’s oceans single-handedly. It’s not a huge figure, but it’s a crucial step in the right direction.

For more positive ocean stories, follow the #OceanOptimism hashtag on Twitter today, and add your own tweet to share the good news.

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Approximately 250,000 marine species have been formally described in the Ocean Biogeographic Information System, following the completion of a ten-year study known as the Census of Marine Life.

The largest ever study of life in the planet’s oceans, the results of the census have created the clearest picture yet of what lives in our seas, showing that the world’s oceans are far more diverse and interconnected than previously recognised.

Founders of the new online resource hope it will help protect the oceans and endangered sea species. The website gives information on the migratory routes and feeding areas of vulnerable species to help decision-makers protect the world’s marine life. It also hosts a comprehensive list of endangered sea species, with the hope that international efforts can be targeted at those most threatened.

The Census involved 2,700 scientists from around the world, who made over 30 million observations, to help create a greater knowledge of vital ecosystems and enable governments and other organisations to better understand the impact of humans on the oceans.

With 70% of the world’s surface area covered by water, the project involved 540 expeditions at a cost of $650 million and studied some of the most extreme conditions on the planet, as well as regions that had never previously been explored.

Scientists involved estimated that, on top of the 250,000 valid marine species that have been formally described in scientific literature, excluding microbes, a further 750,000 species remain to be discovered and described. More than a billion types of microbes may also live in the oceans.

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