UPCOMING ALTASEA EVENTS
Blue + Green 2023 (AltaSea)
Energy for the Future (AltaSea)
Friday, April 21st at 10:00 am
Please join us as Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger installs the final solar panel in AltaSea’s rooftop array generating enough electricity to power 700 nearby homes.
IGNITE22 (Braid Theory)
The 5th Edition of IGNITE22 will take place on May 4, 2023 at AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, directly on the LA Waterfront. Entrepreneurs, innovators, and future thinkers come together to network & explore the blue tech industry with exhibits and demonstrations on land and in the water. Click here for more information and to get tickets.
Blue Hour (AltaSea)
October 14, 2023 – Save the date!
AltaSea’s Blue Hour connects science, culture and community by cultivating immersive experiences through multi-disciplinary arts. From global to local, creators and innovators chronicle the vision of a Blue Economy, telling the stories of the ocean, the humanity of those devoted to its preservation and future. Blue Hour supports AltaSea’s Project Blue, which offers students a voice in supporting LA as the center of the Blue Economy through education, career opportunity, access to access to arts and culture. This year’s Blue Hour Guest Curator is American interdisciplinary artist, Kim Abeles whose artworks explore the environment, biography, geography and feminism. Stay tuned for more updates!
ALTASEA COMMUNITY
California Department of Fish and Wildlife Opens Field Office at AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles (AltaSea)
AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles announced a partnership with California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to open a field office at AltaSea, bringing CDFW’s Local Marine Operations to the 35-acre blue economy campus at the Port of Los Angeles. This move will enable people – especially students from historically marginalized communities – to become more involved in ocean conservation and pave the way for environmentally focused career paths.
USC Aquaculture lab wows South Los Angeles high school students (USC Dornsife)
Students from King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science in South Los Angeles recently gained firsthand knowledge of aquaculture and the “blue economy” in a state-of-the-art USC lab.
What happened: 45 King/Drew High School students visited the Nuzhdin Aquaculture Lab — a 6,000-square-foot facility in nearby San Pedro — on Feb. 9.
How an aquatic organism could be key to net-zero aviation (BBC)
Aviation currently leaves a major footprint on the world’s climate, producing almost 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Giant kelp, the fastest growing seaweed in the world, is a highly promising source for making sustainable biofuels. Could it become a viable alternative to fossil fuels to power our planes and help us achieve net-zero aviation?
Historic Wave Energy Legislation Initiative Takes a Step Forward in California (Renewable Energy Magazine)
The bill, introduced by State Senator Padilla on February 15, calls for a comprehensive and collaborative study to “evaluate the feasibility and benefits of using wave energy and tidal energy.” It also requires the state’s Energy Commission to develop a strategic plan for the deployment of wave and tidal energy technologies, infrastructure, and facilities.
NOAA Deep Ocean Education Project (NOAA)
The Deep Ocean is a source of endless fascination for young students around the world, and the ever-increasing knowledge we have about its flora, fauna, topology and more means there’s a huge amount for educators to inspire and engage students with.
As the explorers and stewards of a wealth of information about the deep ocean, groups like NOAA Ocean Exploration, Ocean Exploration Trust, and the Schmidt Ocean Institute are open to collaboration with educators all around the world to ensure they have the very best resources at their disposal for truly impactful education about the deep ocean.
MARINE SCIENCE
Scientists film deepest ever fish on seabed off Japan (CNN.com)
Cruising at a depth of 8,336 meters (over 27,000 feet) just above the seabed, a young snailfish has become the deepest fish ever filmed by scientists during a probe into the abyss of the northern Pacific Ocean.
Scientists from University of Western Australia and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology released footage of the snailfish on Sunday filmed last September by sea robots in deep trenches off Japan.
Along with the filming the deepest snailfish, the scientists physically caught two other specimens at 8,022 meters and set another record for the deepest catch.
The Missing 24-Limbed Animals That Could Help Rescue the Ocean’s Forest (The New York Times)
The kelp forests off the West Coast are dying, and with their decline, an entire ecosystem of marine plants and animals is at risk. A large starfish with an appetite for sea urchins could come to the rescue.
One reason for the disappearing kelp is the tremendous expansion of the sea urchin population that feeds on it — including an estimated 10,000 percent increase in their numbers over the past few years in a reef surveyed off the coast of Oregon. And it may be that sea urchins have multiplied because one of their chief predators, the sunflower sea star, has been nearly wiped out by disease.
Another Animal That Speckles with Age: Dolphins (Hakai Magazine)
As humans age, our bodies are often graced with fine lines, gray hairs, and flecks of hyperpigmentation on our skin known as age spots. Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins get spots with age, too. And as scientists have revealed in a recent study, the onset of dolphins’ speckling is so predictable it can be a noninvasive way to gauge the dolphins’ age.
Why sea creatures are washing up dead around the world (The Washington Post)
Dead fish in Florida. Beached whales in New Jersey. Sea urchins, starfish and crayfish washing ashore in New Zealand. Millions of rotting fish clogging up a river in the Australian outback. A mass fish die-off in Poland. Around the world, freshwater and marine creatures are dying in large numbers, leaving experts to puzzle over the cause.
In some cases, scientists say climate change may be leading to more algal blooms and other events that starve fish of oxygen. Warming oceans and marine heat waves are driving sea creatures from their normal habitats. Human activities including coastal shipping are suspected in a spate of recent marine mammal deaths in the United States.
SUSTAINABLE AND INNOVATIVE BUSINESS
2023 Report: Blue Economy Trends, Opportunities, and Recommendations (ISD and SACC-USA)
On World Water Day, the Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) and Swedish-American Chambers of Commerce of the USA, Inc. (SACC-USA) released their 2023 report “Building the Blue Innovation Pipeline: Lessons Learned from the United States and Sweden.” This report emphasizes the role of and need for greater investments in blue R&D and innovation, and gives recommendations for governments, industries, and businesses. Download the free report here or read the press release. For more information, contact info@isdus.org.
An underwater mountain was newly discovered off California coast (San Francisco Chronicle)
An autonomous sailing vessel made a new discovery along vast unexplored areas of the California coast: an underwater mountain 2 miles below the ocean’s surface. Standing about 3,300 feet, higher than the world’s tallest building, the dome has walls that drop down sharply and what appears to be a crater in the middle.
This novel underwater robot can explore extraterrestrial oceans (Interesting Engineering)
Scientists are certain that Europa, the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, harbors a vast ocean beneath its icy shell. According to them, Europa’s salty ocean could hold more water than all of Earth’s combined.
To explore further, Europa Clipper, a Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft carrying science instruments, will take off in 2024 to study Europa. And so, a new underwater robot developed by scientists at the University of Bristol could not have come at a better time. Called RoboSalps, the robotic units have been modeled on the design and life of mysterious zooplankton. Their unique selling proposition? They have been engineered to operate in unknown and extreme environments, such as extra-terrestrial oceans.
The next frontier in farming? The Ocean (The Seattle Times)
For centuries, it’s been treasured in kitchens in Asia and neglected almost everywhere else: those glistening ribbons of seaweed that bend and bloom in cold ocean waves.
Today, seaweed is suddenly a hot global commodity. It’s attracting new money and new purpose in all kinds of new places because of its potential to help tame some of the hazards of the modern age, not least climate change.
EDUCATION
OceanX Partners With Spelman College, Encouraging More Black Women To Pursue Marine Science (Forbes)
Black Women in Ecology, Evolution and Marine Science (BWEEMS) reports that in 2018 Black women in fields of biology, earth science, atmospheric science and ocean science represent less than half of 1% of PhDs granted.
Global ocean exploration nonprofit, OceanX is on a mission to change that.
As part of its efforts to increase diversity in STEM education, OceanX recently announced a historic partnership with Spelman College “to offer students an in-depth experience with ocean exploration and marine science and operations.”
Racing to catalog, study deep-sea biodiversity (The Harvard Gazette)
Paula Rodríguez-Flores has always been obsessed with invertebrates. “Like really, really obsessed,” said the biodiversity postdoctoral fellow, who works in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.
As a youngster in her native Madrid, Rodríguez-Flores captured beetles in jars and brought her finds to bed with her. By college, she had turned her attention to seabound invertebrates such as sea sponges, urchins, shrimp, and squat lobster, Rodríguez-Flores’ specialty. In a new study published in Invertebrate Systematics, she and a team of researchers identified five new species of deep-sea squat lobsters in the Munidopsidae family.
