Webinars

Thursday, February 6, 1 pm US EST/10 am US PST/6 pm UTC. Presented by: Jameson Buffmire of buoy.fish. Description: Lost and abandoned fishing gear (aka ‘ghost gear’) continues to trap and kill marine wildlife long after it has served its intended purpose. In addition, the buoys and lines used to find and retrieve pots ensnare and kill endangered species and foul vessel propellers. A recent article in Science (Richardson et al., 2022) estimated that more than 25 million pots and traps are lost and abandoned every year. buoy.fish, in partnership with the Global Ghost Gear Initiative and Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, takes advantage of recent advances in wireless technology, cloud services, internet connected devices, and machine intelligence to provide cost-effective GPS-enabled floats that allow the identification, tracking, and recovery of remote fishing equipment. Previous connected/intelligent floats have been limited by the cost and power needs of satellite connections and the short range of cellular connections. buoy.fish uses Low Power, Long Range Wide Area Networking protocols that extend the range of terrestrial wireless networks to cover meaningful near coastal areas – and with the addition of field deployable gateways, vast swaths of the ocean. buoy.fish’s intelligent floats look like traditional fishing floats and are similarly durable and easy to deploy and operate but can broadcast their location over more than 30 miles of open ocean to ensure their recovery.

Thursday, February 20, 11 am US EST/8 am US PST/4 pm UTC/5 pm CET/8 pm GST (UAE). Presented by: Dr. Emily Darling, Director of Coral Reef Conservation and Co-Founder of MERMAID, Wildlife Conservation Society; Dr. Rita Bento, Research Associate, NYU Abu Dhabi; and Dr. Angelique Brathwaite, Science Director, Blue Alliance Marine Protected Areas. Description: Did you know that less than 15% of the world’s coral reefs have been monitored? This data gap makes it difficult to track changes and protect these critical ecosystems. Join us for an engaging webinar to explore MERMAID, a global platform for coral reef monitoring. Launched in 2018, MERMAID is now empowering over 2,000 scientists from 70+ organizations across 46 countries to collect, analyze, and act on coral reef data. By simplifying field data collection and analysis, MERMAID enhances workflow efficiency and enables rapid assessment of reef health. In this webinar, we’ll provide an overview of the MERMAID platform and highlight its application in two unique contexts: 1) Centralizing coral reef data from the Arabian/Persian Gulf for global reporting and 2) Monitoring small-scale Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Philippines. This webinar will offer valuable insights into how MERMAID is driving impactful coral reef conservation efforts worldwide and how as a manager it can help you improve your monitoring workflow.

Wednesday, February 26, 1 pm US EST/10 am US PST/6 pm UTC. Presented by: Shanondora Billiot (United Houma Nation Citizen), Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University; Yolanda López-Maldonado (Yucatan, Mexico), Human Ecologist and Geographer; and Mr. Dune Lankard (Eyak Athabaskan), President and Founder of Native Conservancy. Description: Current demands on freshwater, driven by climate change and population growth, have led municipalities, water stewards, and academics to focus on conserving scarce freshwater resources. This shift has spotlighted the concept of a circular water economy—a system that emphasizes conserving and reusing freshwater instead of conventional methods of limited treatment and discharge. While circularity may seem novel from a modern, Western perspective, Indigenous cultures have practiced it for millennia, embedding it into their ways of life and environmental stewardship. This webinar will explore these enduring cultural practices and their modern implications for conservation, policy, and ecology. Participants will gain insight into the foundational principles of circularity and the essential role Indigenous peoples play in sustaining these practices. This session, featuring Indigenous scholars Dr. Shanondora Billiot (United Houma Nation Citizen), Dr. Yolanda López-Maldonado (Yucatan, Mexico), and Mr. Dune Lankard (Eyak Athabaskan) alongside other experts in policy and water rights, will highlight how traditional knowledge can guide contemporary water management approaches.

Wednesday, March 5, 10 am US EST/7 am US PST/3 pm UTC/4 pm CET. Presented by: Ibon Galparsoro of AZTI. Description: Ecosystem-based marine spatial planning (EB-MSP) is a holistic approach to MSP. It embeds the principles of the ecosystem-based approach (EBA) into the planning process with the aim of jointly managing sustainable human activities and environmental health by accounting for ecosystem processes. However, despite the growing recognition of its benefits, EB-MSP is generally not fully implemented in management plans. The EB-MSP assessment tool is a comprehensive Decision Support System (DSS) which aligns each step of the EB-MSP implementation process to the required data, knowledge and tools. The DSS enable both strategic guidance and technical solutions based on best practices to deliver a comprehensive EB-MSP. The tool is available at https://aztidata.es/EB-MSP, and a new open access publication about the tool is available https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01975-7.

Wednesday, May 14, 1 pm US EDT/10 am US PDT/5 pm UTC. Presented by: Claire Colegrove and Alex Driedger of ProtectedSeas. Description: While hundreds of nations have committed to the global 30×30 target, much work remains to reach that goal and sustainably manage the remaining 70%. Regulatory protections are crucial for marine management efficacy, and accurate data on in-place management measures are essential for assessing existing marine protections and informing the creation of new areas. However, collecting and interpreting marine regulations can be challenging due to often unavailable or difficult-to-access legal instruments. Overlapping measures and siloed management add further complexities. ProtectedSeas Navigator contains data on worldwide regulations for MPAs, fishery management areas, and other place-based marine managed areas (MMAs) and considers restrictions cumulatively across overlapping areas using spatial aggregation techniques to provide insights into overall protection. This cumulative analysis of regulations in overlapping marine managed areas offers insights into overall uses and protection across ocean spaces, enabling better protection assessments, planning, and management. As an example, initial analysis in California revealed several ocean spaces where individual MMA protections were minimal, yet when combined with protections from other overlapping MMAs, resulted in more highly regulated spaces with enhanced protection.