Webinars
Upcoming Webinars
Getting our $h!t together: The urgent need and opportunities to improve public and ocean health by addressing sewage pollution
Tuesday, October 4, 1 pm US EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm UTC. Presented by: Chris Clapp of The Ocean Sewage Alliance. Description: Roughly 80% or more of the world’s sewage enters the oceans completely untreated or poorly treated, stressing many ecosystems to the point of collapse. This challenge goes largely unnoticed until a crisis happens – a fishery is lost, beaches get closed, or, worse, people get seriously ill. The Ocean Sewage Alliance was formed to break the silence about ocean sewage pollution and bring a sense of urgency to public discourse on the issue. We do so by simultaneously raising awareness about the problem and highlighting the many opportunities that arise from addressing sewage pollution – opportunities in the form of resource recovery, job creation, and risk avoidance.
The ONo Index: Detecting novel ocean conditions for MPA management
POSTPONED Presented by: Steven Mana‘oakamai Johnson of Arizona State University. A fundamental challenge in ocean conservation is translating the results of climate models into forms that managers and others can use to plan for the future. Using techniques from information theory, the Ocean Novelty (ONo) Index provides a simple and intuitive way to understand how climate change will alter key ocean biogeochemical variables. This measure can help MPA managers know what they need to prioritize in their planning and design policies and regulations that help their MPA keep pace with expected shifts in the ecosystem state. This webinar will share how the ONo Index is calculated and walk through an application for large MPAs. We will also be asking attendees to share their experiences and challenges using climate change data and scenarios in their MPA planning.
Past Webinars
Urban Ocean: Partnering to advance clean, healthy cities for clean, healthy seas
This webinar originally aired on February 24, 2022. Presented by: Steve Morrison of NOAA, Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia, and Keri Browder of the Ocean Conservancy. This webinar will present the NOAA Marine Debris Program and its partnerships to curb plastic waste. It will cover the program’s overarching portfolio and goals as well as one of its programs – Urban Ocean. Led by Ocean Conservancy and in close collaboration with University of Georgia’s New Materials Institute and Circularity Informatics Lab, Urban Ocean provides a platform for city governments to connect with one another as well as with community leaders, academia, and the private sector to develop, share, and scale solutions to the ocean plastics crisis while progressing their broader urban development priorities. The webinar will showcase Urban Ocean’s recent findings and outputs, including the results of the Circularity Assessment Protocol in each of the learning cities and the recently released Urban Ocean Toolkit.
Marine Connectivity Conservation “Rules of Thumb” for MPA and MPA Network Design
This webinar originally aired on February 8, 2022. Presented by: Barbara Lausche of Mote Marine Laboratory and the IUCN-WCPA Marine Connectivity Working Group and Mary Collins of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. To help guide, enhance, and restore ecological connectivity of the ocean, the IUCN WCPA has released a new publication entitled “Marine Connectivity Conservation ‘Rules of Thumb’ for MPA and MPA Network Design.” This publication provides broadly applicable guidance on connectivity for MPA managers. This webinar will highlight several of the 13 ‘Rules of Thumb’ and how they can help guide integration of connectivity into conservation activities – ranging from interactions across the land-sea interface to the movement of currents and migratory species around the world and across political boundaries.
Never let a good failure go to waste: Learning from conservation failure
This webinar originally aired on 25 January 2022. Presented by: Allison Catalano from work conducted at Imperial College London. How does your organization handle failure? Failure or outcomes that are less than successful are not uncommon in conservation initiatives, yet we rarely discuss failure in systematic ways that make use of the learning opportunities failure presents. Here we will discuss alternate ways to think about failure and the individual and interpersonal dynamics that make it challenging.
Planning for Coastal and Marine Heritage in a Changing Climate
This webinar originally aired on 16 December 2021. Presented by: Erin Seekamp of North Carolina State University. Heritage sites represent our inherited traditions, objects, monuments, and land and seascapes that provide cultural connections and identities as well as societal benefits.
Supporting self-financing mechanisms in MPAs
This webinar originally aired on 17 November 2021. Presented by: Guillaume Le Port and Nastazia Femmami of BlueSeeds. The webinar described two support programs: visitor fees and concession agreements. These programs empower and build MPA staff’s capacity to manage their site or network’s local financing mechanisms over the long term.
MPAs as Part of the Climate Solution: The Role of Blue Carbon
This webinar originally aired on 26 October 2021. Presented by: Sara Hutto of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Well-managed marine protected areas (MPAs) protect valuable blue carbon habitats and processes, and they must be included in global and national mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change.
Turning the tide of parachute science
This webinar originally aired on 21 October 2021. Presented by: Paris Stefanoudis of the University of Oxford and Sheena Talma of the Nekton Foundation. Parachute science is the practice whereby international scientists, typically from higher-income countries, conduct field studies in another country, typically of lower income, and then complete the research in their home country without any further effective communication and engagement with others from that nation.
Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation
This webinar originally aired on 13 October 2021. Presented by: Samuel Brody of the Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas at Texas A&M University at Galveston, Carlos Martin with the Brookings Institution’ Metropolitan Policy Program, and Carolyn Kousky of the Wharton Risk Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Sea level rise will cause interrelated challenges in communities around the United States. The issues extend far beyond land use planning to affect housing policy, financing for public infrastructure, insurance, fostering healthier coastal ecosystems, and more.
How to do science so it influences marine policy and management: A panel discussion with a focus on Latin America, Caribbean, and African contexts
This webinar originally aired on 28 September 2021. Moderator/panelists: Peter Edwards of The Pew Charitable Trusts (moderator), Rodrigo Arriagada of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (panelist), Nicole Leotaud of the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (panelist), and David Obura of CORDIO East Africa. Many environmental scientists find that their research has less impact in the real world than they hoped for or expected.
Using an incremental approach for “wicked problems” in fisheries management and marine EBM
This webinar originally aired on 16 September 2021. Presented by: Jon Hare of NOAA Fisheries Ecosystem-based management is a ‘wicked problem’, that is, a problem that is…