5 Ocean Victories of 2022

As 2022 comes to a close, I am reflecting on everything we’ve accomplished together on behalf of our ocean throughout the last 12 months.

It’s been an incredibly busy year here at Ocean Conservancy, to say the least. I am ending this year feeling excited—and grateful—for everything we did to promote ocean health and productivity this year. Most of all, I so appreciate all the ocean advocates who stood alongside us to make these wins possible. 

Love our content?

Sign up to never miss an update!

Sorry, but we failed to add you to the list. Please try again or contact 1.888.780.6763

Enter Your Email

...loading

Thanks for signing up for Ocean Conservancy emails.

Join me in reflecting on five tremendous ocean victories from the past year: 

1. California passed a landmark plastics bill.

In June, California passed SB54, also known as the Plastic Pollution Producer Responsibility Act. This bill, which reduces single-use plastic packaging and funds restoration efforts, will eliminate about 23 million tons of plastics over the next decade. That’s equivalent to the weight of almost 1 million redwood trees or 150,000 blue whales. Dr. Anja Brandon, U.S. Plastics Policy Analyst here at Ocean Conservancy, said it best:  “The United States is the number-one generator of plastic waste in the world and a top contributor to the ocean plastics crisis. We can’t solve this problem without U.S. leadership, and by passing this law, California is righting the ship. This is a huge win for our ocean.” Learn more about what is in this historic bill. 

2. We launched a new program to support locally-led climate and ocean justice action. 

In August, Ocean Conservancy launched our Ocean Justice Community Grants program, which amplifies and uplifts the work of historically marginalized ocean advocates. We will fund projects that strengthen coastal communities, promote sustainable fishing, advance ocean innovations and more. We received an impressive range of applications and are excited to share updates on the grantees in 2023. These grants are one way we’re working towards our vision of a healthier ocean, protected by a more just world. Read more about our commitment to advancing ocean justice. 

3. Parties across the globe made strides for our climate. 

In 2022, we joined representatives from around the world at COP27, the annual gathering of countries to advance the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change. One of the biggest outcomes this year was the recommitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which means countries have a renewed incentive to reduce emissions. This is a critical threshold: Above 1.5°C, our ocean and coasts are severely threatened by acidification, storms, sea level rise, warming and more. We were happy to see that our ocean played a big role in the COP27 conversations, as ocean-based solutions are an imperative part of a sustainable climate future. Read the recap from my Ocean Conservancy colleagues who attended COP27. 

4. The Biden administration invested in ocean-based climate solutions. 

When the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August, it marked the largest investment in climate change solutions in U.S. history. The bill includes steps to decarbonize our ports, increase coastal restoration and incentivize offshore wind efforts. Although there are some parts of the bill that aren’t as positive—measures to prop up the oil and gas industry, for example—it represents a big step in the right direction towards meaningfully addressing climate change and an opportunity to advance ocean justice. We look forward to working with the Biden administration to implement the beneficial parts of the bill and continue to move away from the destructive oil and gas industry. Learn more about what this bill means for our ocean. 

5. Ocean Conservancy celebrated 50 years of ocean conservation. 

This September marked our 50^thanniversary—that’s five decades of advocating for our ocean. Ocean Conservancy has seen so much in the last 50 years—many victories and many challenges. But one thing is for sure: Our network of dedicated ocean advocates has grown tremendously. It’s thanks to you that we’re able to look back on all the ocean triumphs we’ve celebrated together over the years and look forward to what comes next. See my post of some of the highlights over the last 50 years of ocean conservation.

These are just a few of the many ocean wins we celebrated this year, and it makes me more hopeful than ever to see what we can accomplish in 2023. As always, this work wouldn’t be possible without the support of ocean advocates like you. Kick off 2023 by taking action for our ocean.

The post 5 Ocean Victories of 2022 appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.

from Ocean Conservancy https://ift.tt/y9cNXhm https://ift.tt/rgTsZtm

Building Climate Resilience Through Ocean Justice

Speaking in October at the National Adaptation Forum (NAF) in Baltimore, Gullah/Geechee Nation Chieftess Queen Quet (recently Ocean Conservancy’s cultural ambassador for promotion of environmental justice and insight into the culture and preservation of the Gullah/ Geechee Nation) shared that there’s no word in Gullah for “collaboration” because working together is completely ingrained in the Gullah/Geechee culture. The NAF, meeting biennially, brings together leaders in the public and private sectors to share ideas on strengthening climate resilience across the nation. 

Queen Quet is the recipient of the Order of the Palmetto in 2021 and more than 300 awards of environmental justice; she is the embodiment of a lifetime of achievement of being a steward of the land and sea. Chieftess’ oral storytelling centers the spirit of collaboration as it relates to solving climate change, the greatest global issue facing us today, and build up resilience and solutions to its growing impact. The ocean’s critical role in climate change—both as a victim and an essential part of the solution—has received more attention, as is its due, in the past several years. One issue extremely important to Ocean Conservancy is the advocacy of ocean justice and equity, too long ignored, in developing ocean policy. 

This year’s NAF was especially important to our organization as it afforded the Ocean Conservancy Ocean Justice team the opportunity to meet with peers in the Ocean Justice Advocacy Group (OJAG)—a terrific representation of the collaboration espoused by Queen Quet. OJAG was born out of the 2021 Capitol Hill Ocean Week and a shared desire to advance ocean policy in a way that better includes the perspectives of coastal Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities, increases representation and creates more equitable outcomes.

Since then, the OJAG member organizations have focused on partnering with community-led groups and influencing policy at federal, state and local levels to protect the ocean and coastal communities. Ocean Conservancy defines ocean justice and the mission of our ocean justice work as the fair and equitable distribution of both the benefits of the ocean’s bounty and the burdens of its complex care. Inequalities accelerate ocean harm, strain people’s relationships to the ocean and undercut innovation. Our success depends on our ability to address multiple challenges and remain agile in our work.

Gathering at NAF gave us an occasion to reflect on our efforts to build up climate resilience. Climate change threatens the ocean, our world’s biodiversity and human wellbeing. However, the ocean itself is an immensely powerful resource that can help us protect our world and ensure a safe future. Together, we’re working alongside community-led organizations to advance equity and justice. We’re committed to using community-centered solutions that we share with these groups. And we’re working to ensure our partners get access to directly shape ocean policy. 

Ocean Conservancy’s Ocean Justice team, in this first year of inception, is proud to lead efforts that support climate resilience and is enthusiastic to grow further in this work. A manifestation of our efforts is the recent launch of the Ocean Justice Community Grants program. We acknowledge that there are gaps in funding for local community-led organizations that we can help fill. We’re working to ensure these organizations get the resources they need as these partnerships are invaluable in our shared efforts.

These grants support frontline coastal communities. Our goal is to prioritize the ongoing work in these communities around fishing sustainably, advancing ocean innovation and developing new ocean leaders, all of which will support efforts towards climate adaptation. 

As we continue to embed justice and equity in all our conservation work, one important focus is on our Climate Policy team which tracks the climate resilience work and federal funds in Justice40. This federal initiative aims to address inequities in how federal funding and benefits of federal programs reach marginalized or disadvantaged communities. The goal of Justice40 is to see at least 40% of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy realized in disadvantaged communities. We’re focusing on Florida, a state with huge economic and community ties to the ocean and where coastal communities will face threats to drinking water, stormwater and wastewater systems from climate impacts like sea level rise and storms. In its initial phase we will work with local officials and community members to understand how federal funds can benefit the communities facing these threats and those who need them most. Ocean Conservancy’s work in Florida is helping bring new voices to marine conservation and support ongoing work that will equally benefit communities and the marine environment.

We all want a thriving ocean that centers and protects both people and nature as we work to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Achieving that goal depends on building trust with our community partners, including by learning more about the communities we’re all serving, remaining transparent with information we’re gathering and valuing community expertise as much as any other expertise. Our Ocean Justice team and our entire staff at Ocean Conservancy understand the importance of building community, and that’s why our work with OJAG is so meaningful. We are working towards breaking down silos within the conservation space to better address the issues at hand, harnessing collective action as we work toward a healthier ocean protected by a more just world. Just as Queen Quet advises, we’re working to make collaboration in advancing equity and justice part of our DNA.

The post Building Climate Resilience Through Ocean Justice appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.

from Ocean Conservancy https://ift.tt/0XIailH https://ift.tt/TJlEDAR

Protecting the Ocean Means Protecting Communities

When we think about plastic pollution, we often think about where plastic products—from water bottles to microplastics—end up. But plastics present a much broader threat to our ocean, climate and marginalized coastal communities.

Why? It’s a problem of how plastics are made—nearly all plastics are made from oil, and they take a lot of energy to produce. And while we’ve begun to transition away from oil and gas for our cars and electricity, the oil and gas industry has responded by investing its vast financial resources in a new source of demand for their products: new production for plastic materials and packaging. 

More plastic means more pollution—for the climate, coastal communities and our ocean. By 2030, plastic production will contribute 1.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions into our atmosphere—the equivalent of 300 coal-fired power plants—and these facilities are sited in predominantly low-income communities and communities of color. Producing plastics is a dirty business. The petrochemicals infrastructure used to produce plastics is often coastal energy infrastructure—oil and gas production, refining and export facilities. This production process emits significant air and water pollution with severe health consequences for neighboring communities already bearing the brunt of climate change impacts like sea level rise, severe storms and flooding. 

The concentration of polluting industries in low-income and minority communities is no accident—it is the result of decades of discriminatory housing and zoning policies (i.e. redlining.) Just last year, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights called out the expansion of plastic-producing petrochemicals plants in Southern Louisiana as environmental racism—a threat to the basic human rights of the predominantly Black residents of the region.

Fenceline leader Shamyra Lavigne describes the impact of plastic facilities in her community. Learn more about Rise St. James here.

This injustice must be addressed. On December 1, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), Representative Jared Huffman (D-CA-02), Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Representative Alan Lowenthal (D-CA-47) introduced new legislation, the Protecting Communities from Plastic Act (S. 5163/H.R. 9388), to tackle the plastic pollution crisis head-on, crack down on the plastic production process and address the harmful environmental justice impacts of this growing fossil fuel sector. This bill builds on the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021 to:

• Help reduce our reliance on virgin plastic by requiring the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create new nationwide targets for single-use plastic reduction in the packaging and food service, while incentivizing the expansion of new refill and reuse systems. Reducing new plastic production is critical to solving the interlinked plastics, climate and community impacts. 
• Protect fenceline [1] communities around plastic production and disposal facilities by expanding the definition of covered facilities to be monitored by the EPA and requiring that the agency consider the cumulative impacts of plastic production and disposal, temporarily pausing the permitting of new and expanded facilities.
• Strengthen environmental regulations like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Toxic Substances Control Act protections to reduce pollution and climate impacts in fenceline communities.
• Block new petrochemical and plastic production facilities from being built within a five-mile radius of schools, residences and other community buildings.
• Direct the EPA to not include harmful chemical recycling technologies in the national recycling strategy.
• Create new financial requirements for companies so that communities are not left with the bill to clean up environmental contamination when facilities close.

Fenceline communities are the closest to the problem and the closest to the solution; they led this resistance movement to protect their communities. This current legislation provides an opportunity for government leaders, and all of us, to have their backs in advancing their fights. Ocean Conservancy is proud to support this legislation because it centers fenceline communities’ solutions and marries that with what the science tells us we need to do to protect our ocean and climate. It’s long past time to reach across sectors and systems to address the generational harm faced by Black, Indigenous and people of color and other disadvantaged fenceline communities to ultimately find multidimensional solutions to advance justice and equity across the board. Plastic pollution is a social justice issue, a climate issue and an ocean issue. They can’t be separated. The more we center communities in our policies and our conversations, the better outcomes we will achieve.  

Grassroot movements have long presented the model of societal change in the United States. Ocean Conservancy recognizes that supporting this movement in targeting single-use plastics will have a chain effect on many other social injustices that tie together the health of the ocean and the marine ecosystems within. We are dedicated to our journey in advancing ocean justice, which we define as the fair and equitable distribution of both the benefits of the ocean’s bounty and the burdens of its complex care. Want to learn more about Ocean Justice? Check out how we are fulfilling our commitment at OceanConservancy.org.

[1] Fenceline communities live immediately adjacent to highly polluting facilities—fossil fuel infrastructure, industrial parks or large manufacturing facilities—and are directly affected by the traffic, noise, operations and most-concerningly, chemical and fossil fuel emissions of the operation.

The post Protecting the Ocean Means Protecting Communities appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.

from Ocean Conservancy https://ift.tt/EWJlwqS https://ift.tt/u89JGCQ

Everything You Need to Know About Gray Whales

Gray whales might not be as well known as their humpback or sperm whale cousins, but I think you’re going to fall in love with them all the same. For instance, did you know gray whales blow hearts!? They have two blow holes, and when they exhale you can see a heart spout out of the water. 

Gray whales also have the reputation of being the friendliest whales in the world. They are curious about boats and will often approach them and check out the humans aboard. Near Mexico, a gray whale actually played with a boat of tourists by lifting the vessel onto its back and briefly swimming away with it. Gray whales want to learn about us, so let’s take some time to learn about them in return. 

Why are they called gray whales?

Gray whales get their name from their color which is, you guessed it, gray with white splotches all over their bodies. They’ve earned a few nicknames, like “devil fish,” due to their aggressive behavior when trying to escape whalers in the past. They’ve also been called “mud diggers” or “mussel diggers” due to the way they eat. Gray whales will dive down to the ocean floor, turn to their sides, and scoop up sediment with their mouths. As they swim up, they leave long trails of mud in their wake while filtering out their food, mainly small invertebrates. 

Their Latin name is Eschrichtius robustus. The genus Eschrichtius is named for Daniel Frederik Eschricht, a nineteenth century scientist who was the authority on whales at the time. Some of his work even got a shout out in Jules Verne’s underwater epic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Their species name robustus comes from the Latin meaning strong. It is a fitting description for these powerful swimmers. 

How big is a gray whale?

Fully grown gray whales range from 43-49 feet, about the size of a semi-trailer. They are among the top ten largest whale species and about half the size of a blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. But gray whales are by no means small; they weigh approximately 60,000-80,000 pounds on average, more than the combined weight of six elephants. 

How do gray whales get their spots? 

While they might not be a fashion statement, the white spots barnacles leave behind on these animals help scientists identify individual gray whales. These white blotches are often scars from barnacles and parasites. The most common hitchhiker on gray whales is Cryptolepas rhachianecti, a species of barnacle that attaches only to whales. When feeding at the bottom of the ocean, a gray whale will try to scrape off these freeloaders, but it doesn’t always work. A single gray whale can have up to a thousand pounds of barnacles on it at any given time.

These barnacles don’t reside alone; they also provide homes to whale lice. As gross as whale lice sound, they actually do perform a beneficial service to the whale. They eat skin for lunch, literally, and often will feed around wounds and scars which helps reduce the risk of infection. 

Where do you find gray whales?  

Gray whales prefer shallow coastal waters where they can find their favorite foods in the muddy bottom. They can be found in the North Pacific spanning from the west coast of North America to the eastern coast of Asia. There were gray whales in the North Atlantic, but they were likely driven to extinction on the American coast by whalers in the eighteenth century. They disappeared from the European coast during the Middle Ages. 

Gray whales hold the record for the longest migrations in the world, travelling up to 14,000 miles round trip. That is the equivalent to going coast-to-coast in the United States more than four times! When migrating, a gray whale swims about 75 miles a day which is a lot considering their average pace is just five miles per hour. One gray whale travelled even further from its home: it was found in Namibia more than 16,700 miles away from its home in the North Pacific, making it the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. 

How many years do grey whales live?

The exact age of gray whales is difficult to detect, but scientists found one female whale who lived until she was somewhere between 75 and 80 years old. That means there could be gray whales alive today that would be old enough to remember World War II or when perms were cool. Just imagine how gray whales have seen their ocean home change during that time. 

How can I help gray whales?

There are reports every year about gray whales being entangled in fishing gear. They are among the many animals that fall victim to this plight, including a 47-foot-long adult male sperm whale that was found with a knotted mass of plastic debris after it beached itself in the Florida Keys earlier this year. Grey whales need protection from plastic pollution and other threats, including ocean noise and habitat destruction from oil and gas development. Luckily, the friendliest whales have a friend in you. You can take action with Ocean Conservancy to demand change for our ocean and the marine life that depends on it.

The post Everything You Need to Know About Gray Whales appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.

from Ocean Conservancy https://ift.tt/dyKJGP9 https://ift.tt/McnCjaO