Vibrant Environment
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It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for ELI Ocean Program in the Caribbean. Last week on Curacao, the Ministry of Health and Environment on behalf of Curacao and the Waitt Institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreeing to work together on Blue Halo Curacao.
By ELI Ocean Program Staff
On Wednesday, January 14, we hosted a webinar on the litigation summarized below. The webinar featured a panel of experts to discuss the status of the litigation and what is next. You can read more about the webinar and view a recording when it is posted here.
The Disaster and the Trial
Fisheries observers serve important roles in fisheries management. From a scientific perspective, they provide independent verification of the amounts and types of fish caught, providing key data for stock assessment. In some fisheries, observers also have an important enforcement function: they report to law enforcement when they witness violations of fisheries regulations. In 2010, I published an article, based on NOAA’s enforcement data, showing that observer reports are a key source of information for understanding fishers’ compliance while at sea.
By ELI Ocean Program Staff
In the Gulf of Mexico region, 89 projects to date have been finalized for restoration and recovery in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. These projects are funded under several different mechanisms, including the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund. Over the coming years, hundreds if not thousands of projects will be finalized under these mechanisms, the RESTORE Act, and other processes.
It is an invasive species that is one of the most pressing threats to ocean ecosystems in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. And my wife was wearing one on her ear.
My wife had just bought these beautiful earrings, made from the spines of the venomous red lionfish (Pterois volitans), from a studio in Rincon, Puerto Rico. Later that trip, we shared delicious empanadas con pez leon. The jewelry and the food share a common thread—using markets as a tool to control the raging lionfish invasion that is wreaking havoc on Caribbean and Gulf coral reef ecosystems.
Four years ago today, on April 20, 2010, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon mobile offshore drilling unit. Eleven crewmen lost their lives in the blast, and the rig burned for the next thirty-six hours. Then, 41 miles off the southeast coast of Louisiana, the Deepwater Horizon sank. At the wellhead, nearly a mile underwater in the Gulf of Mexico, the environmental disaster was just beginning. Oil gushed for the next three months, during which millions of barrels of oil mixed with millions of gallons of dispersant to contaminate more than 1,000 miles of coast.
In 2006, we launched the Ocean Program at the Environmental Law Institute to tackle pressing ocean and coastal governance challenges.