The Skimmer on Marine Ecosystems and Management
MSP Challenge: Marine spatial planning stakeholders learn by playing
Editor’s note: In last month’s issue, The Skimmer interviewed three practitioners about their experiences developing and using serious games to educate stakeholders, professionals, students, and the general public about aspects of the conservation and management of coastal and marine ecosystems. This month we interviewed Harald Warmelink, a senior research project leader at…
Serious games for coastal and marine conservation, management, and adaptation – Find a game for your work!
Historically, games were a means for young people to learn critical survival skills. In recent decades, however, games have come to be viewed as simply a source of entertainment. A recent movement – “serious gaming” – is now revitalizing the idea that games can do a lot more than just…
Using serious games to increase understanding of marine ecosystem conservation and management: Practitioner experiences from around the world
The Skimmer interviewed three practitioners about their experiences developing and using serious games to educate stakeholders, professionals, students, and the general public about aspects of the conservation and management of coastal and marine ecosystems. Learn about: How the Reef Stakes game is being used across Southeast Asia to explain the complexity…
Latest News and Resources for Ocean Planners and Managers
New report describes expected impacts of climate change on global ocean economy Ocean acidification could cost US fisheries, tourism, and coastal communities billions Ocean deoxygenation increasingly threatens species and ecosystems Global wave patterns will change drastically with further global warming New research able to link frequency of most damaging hurricanes…
Ocean solutions for climate change
It’s no secret that news about the ocean is pretty disheartening these days. So, as we get started with 2020, we here at The Skimmer want to highlight a new report that looks at ocean potential. The High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy recently released “The Ocean as…
Aquaculture and marine ecosystems: Friend or foe?
Aquaculture production is an increasingly important component of global seafood production. Seafood production from aquaculture has expanded nearly six-fold since 1990, while capture fisheries production has remained relatively stagnant. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization’s most recent analysis of global fisheries and aquaculture, seafood production from aquaculture (excluding…
Latest News and Resources for Ocean Planners and Managers
UN publishes evaluation of global progress towards 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Over US$63 billion pledged at Our Ocean conference to improve ocean health and productivity (view pledges in map form) New elevation data triples estimate of global population vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal flooding (explore data with Coastal Risk…
Ecosystem-based aquaculture: We need to stop thinking about an aquaculture farm as something within the limits of a few buoys or GPS coordinates on a map
Editor’s note: Thierry Chopin is a professor of marine biology and director of the Seaweed and Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Research Laboratory at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. He is also president of Chopin Coastal Health Solutions Inc. His research focuses on the ecophysiology/biochemistry/cultivation of seaweeds and the development…
Lessons learned from 40 years of Great Barrier Reef zoning
By Tundi Agardy, Contributing Editor, The Skimmer. Email: tundiagardy@earthlink.net A recent publication “Marine zoning revisiting: How decades of zoning the Great Barrier Reef has evolved an effective spatial planning approach for marine ecosystem-based management” published in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems distills important lessons from Australia’s evolving commitment to…
What webinars would you like to see?
OCTO and its services (The Skimmer, EBM Tools Network, OpenChannels.org, MPA News, and more) are currently scheduling their 2020 webinar series. If there any topics you would like to see covered or presenters that you would like to hear from, please let us know at skimmer@secure308.inmotionhosting.com/~octogr5! Examples of topics we have…