OpenChannels Weekly Update Archives

For the week of 08 April 2019

Join us on Thursday, May 9, 3 pm US EDT/ noon US PDT/ 7 pm UTC for a webinar on China's Underwater Cultural Heritage in the South China Sea: Nanhai #1, A Window on the Maritime Silk Road presented by Hans Van Tilburg of the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

Underwater Cultural Heritage can inform us about past events and seafaring cultures in powerful ways. China's ambitious Nanhai #1 excavation project has achieved a new milestone in the recovery of underwater cultural heritage artifacts. The discovery of a 900-year old Song dynasty merchant vessel initiated the removal of the adjacent seafloor along with the intact wreck, allowing for meticulous "in situ" excavation under environmentally controlled conditions within a specially-built lab. The wealth of porcelains and trade goods found with the vessel demonstrates the extensive and vibrant past of the Maritime Silk Road, and archaeologists are only now reaching the lower levels of the vessel’s cargo holds. The project is also relevant to today’s resource and management issues in the South China Sea. 

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar229

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

For the week of 01 April 2019

Join us Thursday, April 11 for a webinar on The Effects of Temperature on Species Distributions and Community Composition: Implications for Marine Protected Area management with Malin Pinsky of Rutgers University.

Recent research has shown that the geographic distributions of marine species are changing – and will continue to change – as climate change leads to geographic shifts in their preferred thermal habitats. Furthermore, as a result of these changing geographic distributions, ecological communities are being reorganized. These changes are already posing challenges for managing living marine resources, and these challenges are likely to grow as marine organisms continue to shift ranges, including across national, state, and other political boundaries. This presentation will provide an overview of relevant research (conducted off the coasts of the US and Canada) and discuss implications for Marine Protected Area management.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar228

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

For the week of 25 March 2019

Join us Tuesday, April 30, 1 pm US EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm UTC for a webinar on The impact of human-caused ocean noise pollution on fish, invertebrates, and ecosystem services presented by Lindy Weilgart of Dalhousie University and OceanCare.

Most fish and invertebrates use sound for vital life functions. This presentation will summarize highlights from 115 studies showing impacts from noise on 66 species of fish and 36 species of invertebrates. These impacts include decreased growth, body condition, feeding, reproduction, abundance, immune competency, nutritional condition, catch rates, school coordination and structure, nest-caring, and territory defense. Noise caused permanently damaged ears and sensory organs, developmental delays and malformations, and increased stress, metabolism, masking, and mortality. Impacts extend beyond individual species to include communities of species and how they interact, compromising ecosystem productivity, and ecological services (sediment mixing, nutrient cycling) with commercial consequences. Conservation and management implications of these findings, and possible policy solutions, will be discussed at the end of this presentation. This work was sponsored by OceanCare.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar227

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

For the week of 18 March 2019

Join us Wednesday, April 24, 1 pm US EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm UTC for a webinar on "Managing the ocean in real-time: Tools for dynamic management" presented by Heather Welch of NOAA and the University of California Santa Cruz.

Spatial management is a useful strategy to regulate human activities and provide protection for vulnerable species and habitats. Dynamic management - a subset of spatial management in which boundaries are flexible in space and/or time - is gaining traction as one solution for managing features with variable distributions, for example highly migratory species. This webinar introduces four applied dynamic management tools: 1) a thermal indicator designed to mitigate loggerhead turtle bycatch, 2) the fisheries sustainability tool - EcoCast, 3) WhaleWatch, designed to reduce ship strike risk to blue whales, and 4) the Atlantic Sturgeon Risk Model. These tools allow scales of management to align with scales of environmental variability, animal movement, and human activities. Next steps to advance the field of dynamic management will also be discussed.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar226

For the week of 11 March 2019

Join us Thursday, April 11 for a webinar on "The Effects of Temperature on Species Distributions and Community Composition: Implications for Marine Protected Area management," presented by Malin Pinsky of Rutgers University.

Recent research has shown that the geographic distributions of marine species are changing – and will continue to change – as climate change leads to geographic shifts in their preferred thermal habitats. Furthermore, as a result of these changing geographic distributions, ecological communities are being reorganized. These changes are already posing challenges for managing living marine resources, and these challenges are likely to grow as marine organisms continue to shift ranges, including across national, state, and other political boundaries. This presentation will provide an overview of relevant research (conducted off the coasts of the US and Canada) and discuss implications for Marine Protected Area management.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar225

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

For the week of 04 March 2019

Join us Thursday, March 28, 1 pm US EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm UTC for a webinar on Unmanned Systems (UxS): Transforming How We Study and Manage the Marine Environment. Presented by: John McDonough of NOAA.

Unmanned Systems (UxS) are transforming how we study and manage the marine environment. This presentation will provide an overview of unmanned aerial systems, unmanned surface vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles, buoyancy gliders, and remotely operated vehicles. Emphasis will be placed on their contributions to establishing and managing marine protected areas.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar224

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

For the week of 25 February 2019

Join us Thursday, March 14, 1pm EDT / 10am PDT / 5pm UTC for a webinar on Sustaining MPA Benefits In a Changing Ocean: A Call To Action from the US Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee. Presented by: Brian Baird, an Ocean and Coastal Policy Advisor; Samantha Murray of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Mark Carr of the University of California Santa Cruz; and Charlie Wahle of NOAA.

The Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee (MPAFAC) provides recommendations to the US Departments of Commerce (NOAA) and Interior on ways to ensure the effective design, establishment, and adaptive management of US MPAs. Created in 2003 and reauthorized by the White House in 2017, the Committee comprises 20 members representing diverse sectors and interests in ocean matters. In 2018, the Committee was directed to document examples of the ecological, economic, and cultural benefits provided by federal and other MPAs around the country, and to recommend specific actions that should be undertaken by MPA agencies to sustain those benefits in the face of rapidly changing ocean conditions and uses. After a thorough investigation, the MPAFAC found extensive, and sometimes surprising, examples of benefits from existing MPAs, including: ecological resilience; coastal storm protection; revenue from ocean tourism and recreation; cultural and historical education; diverse public engagement in ocean conservation; and capacity-building for local ocean decision-makers. The Committee also provided specific recommendations for sustaining MPA benefits, including a unanimous call to "Fully support, fund, maintain, evaluate and adaptively manage the nation's MPAs ...". In this webinar, three of the Committee's leaders, and the NOAA liaison, will provide an overview of the Committee's findings and recommendations and will discuss their implications for MPAs in the US and elsewhere.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar223

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

For the week of 18 February 2019

Join us Wednesday, February 27 3 pm US EST/Noon US PST/8 pm UTC for a webinar on Learning from others: The new global conservation planning database with Jorge Álvarez-Romero, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University.

Creating a new marine conservation or management plan? Learn what others have done in the past – build on their research and experiences and how they addressed challenges – using the new Conservation Planning Database. The database recently launched with 163 peer-reviewed papers on 155 marine systematic conservation planning exercises from around the world. The database will help planners find relevant conservation plans from all over the world including their local area, scientists study trends in conservation planning, and donors and NGOs identify regions where little conservation planning has been done. Join this webinar to learn more about the database, what it reveals about that current state of marine systematic conservation planning, how you can add to it, and how developers are planning to make it even more useful.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/webinar222

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

For the week of 11 February 2019

Join us Wednesday, April 24, 1 pm US EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm UTC with Heather Welch of NOAA and the University of California Santa Cruz.

Spatial management is a useful strategy to regulate human activities and provide protection for vulnerable species and habitats. Dynamic management - a subset of spatial management in which boundaries are flexible in space and/or time - is gaining traction as one solution for managing features with variable distributions, for example highly migratory species. This webinar introduces four applied dynamic management tools: 1) a thermal indicator designed to mitigate loggerhead turtle bycatch, 2) the fisheries sustainability tool - EcoCast, 3) WhaleWatch, designed to reduce ship strike risk to blue whales, and 4) the Atlantic Sturgeon Risk Model. These tools allow scales of management to align with scales of environmental variability, animal movement, and human activities. Next steps to advance the field of dynamic management will also be discussed.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar221

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team

For the week of 04 February 2019

Join us Tuesday, March 5 for a webinar on Sargassum Watch System warns of incoming seaweed with Chuanmin Hu of the University of South Florida.

The Sargassum Watch System (SaWS) uses satellite data and numerical models to detect and track pelagic Sargassum in near-real time. Sargassum is a pelagic seaweed that floats on the ocean surface and is abundant in the Intra-Americas Sea, the Atlantic, and along the coast of Europe. In the ocean, it provides an important habitat for many marine animals. On shore, it serves as fertilizer for sand dunes and biomass for food and fuel. Excessive amounts of Sargassum on beaches in populated areas can cause problems, however. Sargassum decomposition on beaches smells bad, attracts insects, smothers turtle nesting sites, and causes fish kills, in addition to diminishing tourism. Annual Sargassum inundation events are currently occurring annually along the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean coasts. SaWS monitors Sargassum distribution and abundance in the ocean to aid the study of ocean ecology, help fisheries management, and forecast Sargassum beaching events.

To register, visit: https://oct.to/Webinar220

If you would like to check out other upcoming OCTO sponsored webinars, you can find a complete list at https://oct.to/Webinars. 

Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
          – Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team