BLUE ECONOMY? WHAT'S THAT?

Recently there has been more and more reference to the Blue Economy, appearing in Gunter Pauli's book "The Blue Economy, 10 years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs" and his Zero Emissions Research Initiatives: (ZERI).

On the Permies website here Wesley Roe posted the following 8 years ago...

Gunter Pauli suggests by emulating nature we can evolve from an economy based on scarcity to an economy based on abundance---the cascading, nutrient rich, Blue Economy.  Founder of Zero Emissions Research Initiatives (ZERI) Global Network, Gunter Pauli pioneered the concept of waste being seen as a resource that with creative thinking, can be used to create multiple enterprises from singular ones, with benefits for the economy and the environment. Pauli is fond of saying that returns on investment from these kinds of business models far exceed those of companies like Microsoft.  

The Blue Economy began as a project to find one hundred of the best nature-inspired technologies that could effect the economies of the world, while sustainably providing basic human needs.  Starting with over 2000 peer review articles, Dr. Pauli found 340 innovations that could be bundled into systems that function the way ecosystems do, that were then reviewed by a team of scientists, corporate strategists, expert financiers, and public policy makers.  For the 100 Innovations described, The Blue Economy estimates an employment potential of 100 million jobs.  The plausibility of this estimate is enhanced by the fact that there are today more people employed in renewable energies than in the oil and gas industries combined.

A terrific enhancement of this theory is the inclusion of  the notion of Biomimicry, "the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes.". 

The Blue Economy is a clear pathway forward and AUSMEPA and Rightship are contributing to this through their shipping emissions monitoring tool the Maritime Emissions Portal (MEP) here.

MEP Tool for Satellite monitoring of emissions for managers and decision makers

It's time to get the world back into balance.

www.ausmepa.org.au

FOR TEACHERS; INTERNATIONAL OCEAN LITERACY STUDENT SURVEY

The Ocean Literacy project has been in play for many years. Although it began and has been developed in the northern hemisphere an AUSMEPA consultant along with other Aussies had the opportunity to participate in its early stage development and later promoting its value within Australian marine education.

Over the last 3 years an unfunded survey planning project, the International Ocean Literacy Survey (IOLS) was developed with the help of a vast array of top notch researchers, communicators, teachers and more. 

The IOLS is now ready to roll out and we need the help of teachers and students in Australia to add value to the standard of Ocean Literacy across the world. To learn more about pedagogical practices for Ocean Literacy see here.

If you have students who are within the age range of 15-17 years old, it would be brilliant to have them help the cause by completing this survey. 

Below please view the invitation to contribute.
______________________________________________________________________

Please distribute the appropriate survey link below to educators who can administer and complete the survey to students 15-17 years old before March 22, 2019. 

Here is what you can do: If you have access to any students ages 15-17 that are native speakers of the languages listed below, please have them complete the survey online. Attached are information letters for both parents and students, and a script to read to students before they take the survey. They can also be found at https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-instructions.  If you don’t have access to students but still want to help, contact the teachers and informal educators you know, and ask them to give the survey to their students. We need at least 200 respondents in each language to be able to analyze the data. 

Feel free to translate the attached letters and script if necessary when you distribute the survey.

Please be sure to send us an email telling us that you are helping so that we can acknowledge you in future publications.

What happens with the data? Data from this field test will be analyzed centrally at Lawrence Hall of Science. We will provide findings back to the community as soon as the analyses are complete. Partners (like you!) who help us distribute the survey will be able to access their own data. We will continue testing the survey until we are satisfied that we have a truly valid and reliable, open-source, comprehensive International Ocean Literacy Survey that can be freely used by educators around the world. We are very close to realizing this goal!

Links to the IOLS Version 4 in various languages:

1.     Catalan: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-catalan

2.     Chilean: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-Chilean

3.     Chinese: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-chinese

4.     Dutch: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-dutch

5.     English: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-English

6.     Greek: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-greek

7.     Japanese: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-japanese

8.     Korean: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-Korean

9.     Polish: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-polish

10.  Portuguese: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-portuguese

11.  Spanish: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-spanish

12.  Tagalog: https://tinyurl.com/IOLS-tagalog

If you would like to translate the survey into another language, and you are confident that you can gather more than 200 responses, please contact us.

Thanks so much for your help!

And thanks to the IOLS partner organizations that support the development of the Survey:

·      Asia Marine Educators Association

·      Blue School—Ministry of Sea of Portugal

·      Canadian Network for Ocean Education

·      Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ)

·      Marine Conservation Society

·      Marine Learning Center of Japan

·      National Marine Educators Association

·      National Ocean Sciences Bowl

·      National Taiwan Ocean University

·      Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean

·      Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile Centro de Conservación Marina

·      Surfline

·      The Hydrous

·      The Oceanographic Society of Japan

·      World Ocean Observatory

Warm regards,

Craig Strang, Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley

Géraldine Fauville, Stanford University

Mac Cannady, Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley

www.ausmepa.org.au

Fancy Footwork; Blue-footed Booby

If you loved the movie Happy Feet you will enjoy getting to know the Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii). 

This beautiful subtropical/tropical marine bird, native in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is easily recognised by their feet! Males use their bright blue feet in an elaborate dance to win their mate. 

from World of Beauty FB page

Boobies spend their lives at sea hunting fish and are related to other well known sea-birds the gannets. They are a big bird with few predators although vulnerable as young at nesting areas. Like all other seabirds they are heavily impacted by human land-based activities that create marine debris including deadly plastic pollution. 

The western Pacific Ocean hosts other varieties and in Australian waters one can find the Abbotts Booby, Brown Booby, Masked Booby and Red-footed Booby. 

Yes, there is a Red-footed Booby! What interesting and colourful marine birds. We need to look after them. 

See more at ozanimals.com here and a Wikipedia article here.



www.ausmepa.org.au

Natural disaster and the affect on ocean water quality

Australia has long been known as a land of contrasts. This has never been demonstrated better than in recent years. Throughout 2018 we have been inundated with unusually disastrous or cataclysmic natural events, drought, storm and fire that exceed cyclic expectations.

We learn about these shattering news events from a land-based perspective however little perspective is provided as to the effects on our coastal waters in the aftermath other than the occasional aerial footage. There is no easily available information to holistically explain what happens in the ocean and yet the effects of almost everything that happens on the land has a large impact on the health of the ocean. We can infer that major events may have massive impacts.

Storms

Extreme weather can be devastating. Each drop of rain is an explosion hitting earth. Raindrops pummel and scour the land during any storm but even more so during extreme events. The aftermath sees trees down, crops ruined, debris across flooded roads, severe erosion, animals and plants in shock or dead.

Waterways and drains become clogged thoroughfares for debris, sediments, and poisonous chemicals, dragged downward by gravity until the water can go no further. All of those watery passengers can be classed as natural debris or non-natural pollution.

Any keen snorkeler, diver or surfer can tell you that the water is much cleaner and clearer during times of drought and that storms following a drought make it much harder to know what is in the water. In fact shark experts pointedly advise against swimming near murky stormwater outlets, streams or rivers following bad weather as opportunistic sharks will be looking for quick snacks in stormwaters.

Drought

Plants hold the land together with their roots, when removed the dirt particles shift and move easily with wind and water causing severe erosion. Storms can pull riparian vegetation away to cause erosion however drought is also the cause of erosion as plants to die of thirst and lose their grip on the soil.  

Fire

Thunderstorms bring not only the threat of flooding but also lightning strike and fire. When a fire devastates the land, as it has around Australia this past year, plants die, cinders and smoke are lifted into the air and deposited surfaces everywhere i.e. forests, paddocks, buildings, roads, roofs. The wind and rain eventually wash those deposited chemicals and particles into the nearest river, stream or drain. Affected waterways carry a higher concentration of contaminants from the catchment in disaster run-off. The waterway becomes a poisonous highway straight down into the ocean, poisoning and smothering inhabitants.

Land changes 

What is the ripple effect from fierce disasters like drought, storms and forest fires and how do they affect the health of our ocean territory (200 nautical miles surrounding Australia). Perhaps an equally telling question is what happens to us if our ocean is unwell, corals die, fish numbers drop, turtle and iconic species are lost or ecosystems fail?

The easiest example relates to the erosion of sediments carried downstream. The bigger the storm, the greater the pollutant load down the rivers and creeks.

 "Moreton Bay Seagrasses" brochure by UTC

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Seagrasses, which are true plants and prolific food factories can be smothered by dirt particles. Without light they cannot photosynthesize and die. Without seagrasses whole ecosystems can collapse and a whole range of animals including commercially important fish species are badly affected. Corals suffer also.

  

Australia is unique. Unlike the northern hemisphere, this island continent is built on a low nutrient system. That means less of one kind of thing but lots of smaller numbers of many different living things to form a viable web of life. Owing to the fragile nature of our ecosystems we now know that Australia has one of the highest extinction rates[i].

Population

Where people are the land is changed by how they use it, farms, towns, industry and even tourism. The number of people living in this breakable landscape has been growing astronomically, as it has across the world. in 1950[ii] the population was 8.2 million people and it increased more than 25% by 1960. Between 1950 and 2017 the numbers are staggering, increasing to 24.7 million increasing more than 200%[iii].

The more of us there are the greater the land changes the greater the impact on the health of our seas and ultimately our own. Are we trying to understand how to find a sustainable balance?

REFERENCES:

[i] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-19/fact-check-does-australia-have-one-of-the-highest-extinction/6691026

[ii] https://www.populationpyramid.net/australia/1950/

[iii] https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/population

www.ausmepa.org.au

NOAA Global Land and Ocean Temperature Anomalies, Jan-Dec 1880-2010

This chart is of interest showing how, over 130 years, things have changed. You can view the whole well written article at https://gcaptain.com/what-is-the-role-of-the-oceans-in-global-warmingclimate-change/

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Plastic Free Boy and his film Plastic Alarm

Getting down to the nitty gritty with Plastic Free Boy and pre-school heroes




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SEAWEEK 2018 - MUSIC FROM THE SEA SHORE

SEAWEEK SOUNDSCAPE

Who isn't affected by the sound of the sea? Well with the assistance of some wonderful folks we've integrated sound stylings and geography into a unique lesson plan for teachers who want to broaden the horizon.

Below find a wonderful clip, courtesy of Kalani, that demonstrates one example of a soundscape using a varitey of materials.

Our challenge to teachers and students is to build your own soundscape using the resource we've provided here under the 'Explore Sounds' menu tab.







www.ausmepa.org.au