AltaSea: Trending – July 13,2022

A monthly round-up of news and trends important to the AltaSea community.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Building Blue & Green Communities…One Small Business at a Time (Entrepreneur Education Center Inc./AltaSea)

Join the Entrepreneur Educational Center, Inc. (EECI) and AltaSea for the second of six business seminars designed specifically for minority entrepreneurs interested in saving the environment. Learn how to take advantage of business and job opportunities in the rapidly growing Blue and Green Economy. There will also be an opportunity to enroll in EECI’s Miracle’s Adult Entrepreneur Program’s free Business Plan Development course to either open a start-up or transform your current business into a Blue or Green enterprise. All seminars will be held in the 2^nd and 4^th Districts of Los Angeles County.

Seminar 2:

Saturday, July 23 from 6:00pm – 8:30pm

East Rancho Dominguez Park, 15116 Atlantic Avenue, East Compton, CA 90221

Seminars are free and open to the public.

Open House: We Need All The Kelp We Can Get! (AltaSea)

Saturday, July 30 from 10:00am – 12:30pm

Please bring your family and participate in ocean related science activities provided by local ocean science organizations and step board AltaSea’s Ocean Research Barge (ORB). Be the first to board the ORB – a floating lab for student research and community science.

Join our guest speaker, Dr. Anthony Michaels, nationally recognized leader in sustainability, innovation and environmental science and formerly the founding Director of the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies as he discusses the benefits of aquaculture for food security, human health, biofuels, renewable materials and more.

Event is free and open to the public. For more information and to RSVP, click here.

ALTASEA COMMUNITY

Big Blue moonshot – Terry Tamminen compares AltaSea’s San Pedro warehouse to Steve Jobs’ garage, only bigger (Easy Readers & Peninsula)

The architect of some of California’s groundbreaking climate legislation plans to convert a 35-acre campus at the Port of Los Angeles into a premier ocean research, and start-up incubator for the ocean-based blue economy.

“We are to the blue economy what Silicon Valley was to information technology in terms of innovation,” said AltaSea CEO Terry Tamminen, who took the helm of the non-profit in January.

It isn’t the first time officials have touted the job-generating potential of the public-private institute, which was launched in an abandoned warehouse in 2014. “AltaSea is going to be our Google here in the harbor area,” Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino said at the time.

Free Business Seminars Usher in Clean Wave Economic Opportunity for South L.A. (Los Angeles Sentinel)

Invariably, Los Angeles is listed, in blogs and magazines of all stripes, among the most beautiful cities in the country.

Meanwhile, South Los Angeles continually ranks among the top 10% of the most polluted communities in the state of California. The area has been historically ensconced in and blighted by oil well sites, industrial facilities, hazardous waste dumps, and contaminated land.

It only makes sense that the populations that have historically been most affected by environmentally noxious industry in this area have agency and stakes in this game changing and opportunities to participate in a new wave of local business that incorporates strategies to address environmental pollution and climate mitigation.

The Entrepreneur Educational Center Inc. (EECI), a local nonprofit that sponsors free workshops for individuals and small businesses in the Watts area, and AltaSea, an organization dedicated to advancing an emerging blue economy, have partnered to increase the odds.

Eco Wave Power takes principled stand at UN Ocean Conference (Eco Wave Power)

At the Sustainable Blue Economy Investment Forum in Cascais, Portugal, a special UN Ocean Conference event, Eco Wave Power Global AB (publ) (Nasdaq Capital Market: WAVE) (“Eco Wave Power” or the “Company”) joined 150 major companies in signaling their commitment to a healthy ocean by signing onto the UN Global Compact Sustainable Ocean Principles.

In addition to the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, the Sustainable Ocean Principles provide a framework for responsible business practices across ocean sectors and geographies. Companies signing on to the Sustainable Ocean Principles commit to assess their impact on the ocean and integrate ocean sustainability into their overall strategy.

Local organizations bring STEM programs to Los Angeles Unified (EdSource)

Students across Los Angeles Unified are participating in programming from a group of museums, aquariums and STEM organizations from across L.A. County this summer. From learning about engineering with Tinker the Robot to tackling marine life with the Aquarium of the Pacific, students are able to explore a variety of STEM topics.

Having started with 12 organizations in 2020, the group has now grown to more than 40 and has officially established itself as the LA STEM Collective as it heads into its third summer of programming. The group is now hosting a mix of virtual and in-person enrichment for LAUSD and at parks across Los Angeles.

Water Works (USC Dornsife)

Water is the great primordial home; the incubator of all life on the planet. It has been and continues to be the single most important resource for all known living things.

So, it’s not surprising that water is the focal point of an array of efforts by USC Dornsife researchers, students and alumni to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges. From building resilience in farmed marine species to charting the ocean floor to ensuring homeless Angelenos get the water they need to survive, USC Dornsife scholars are finding innovative ways to quench the world’s thirst for solutions.

In March, USC President Carol L. Folt cut the ribbon at the opening of USC Dornsife’s Nuzhdin Lab in San Pedro, California.

Maritime Surveillance Drone Monitors Whales & Dolphins in Italy (Unmanned Systems Technology)

AltaSea partner, TEKEVER, together with partner CLS Group (Collecte Localisation Satellites), will support the Italian Coast Guard by using the TEKEVER AR5 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for the study and protection of whales and dolphins in the Mediterranean.

The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) has placed the Tekever AR5 Evolution drone at the disposal of Italian Coast Guard for the 2022 summer campaign. The UAV will enable better monitoring of the maritime traffic and surveillance as well as allowing for the surveillance of large marine invertebrates.

MARINE SCIENCE

Seaweed Diet Cuts Cow Methane Emissions “90 To 95 Percent” (CleanTechnica)

It’s called asparagopsis. It’s a seaweed that’s native to Australia that was recently fast-tracked for commercial sale by regulatory agencies for two reasons. The first: cows love it (just look at that happy cow up there). The second: studies show that feeding dairy and meat cattle a diet of asparagopsis can cut their methane emissions by up to 95 percent!

After years of frantic research and development by the CSIRO, Meat and Livestock Australia and James Cook University, the first global sale of asparagopsis was announced by CH4 — one of three companies licensed to sell the seaweed — to a South Australian meat processor called CirPro.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: What If We Get This Right? (On Being with Krista Tippett)

Amidst all of the perspectives and arguments around our ecological future, this much is true: we are not in the natural world — we are part of it. The next-generation marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson would let that reality of belonging show us the way forward. She loves the ocean. She loves human beings. And she’s animated by questions emerging from those loves — and from the science she does — which we scarcely know how to take seriously amidst so much demoralizing bad ecological news. This hour, Krista draws out her creative and pragmatic inquiry: Could we let ourselves be led by what we already know how to do, and by what we have it in us to save? What, she asks, if we get this right?

Marine Microbe Lures Prey into Custom Slime Traps (Scientific American)

Ocean oddities called mixoplankton are organisms that can get energy both through photosynthesis and by eating other microbes. Now new research published in Nature Communications suggests that one such species, Prorocentrum cf. balticum, displays a bizarre and clever hunting technique—one that significantly contributes to the crucial cycling of carbon through land, atmosphere and oceans.

SUSTAINABLE AND INNOVATIVE BUSINESS

Project Drawdown updates world’s leading set of climate solutions—adding 11 new solutions for addressing the climate crisis (Project Drawdown)

Five years ago Project Drawdown published a collection of “drawdown solutions,” technologies and practices that, if ambitiously implemented together, can achieve drawdown—the point in the future when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline, thereby stopping catastrophic climate change. A newly released update of this landmark analysis adds 11 new solutions and confirms with even more clarity and conviction that humanity has the solutions needed to reach drawdown quickly, safely, efficiently, and equitably.

California’s sweeping new plastics law could be a game changer (National Geographic)

The United States creates more plastic trash than any other country and ranks third among coastal nations for contributing litter, illegally dumped trash, and other mismanaged waste to its beaches. Yet, even with such an abundance of disposable plastic—scientists measured 46 million tons in 2016—the U.S. manages to recycle just under 9 percent every year.

So, when California’s sweeping legislation on plastic waste was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom last week, the moment was heralded as a transformative shift that may redefine how the nation at large deals with the growing amount of plastic waste.

The Johnny Appleseed of Sugar Kelp (The New York Times)

When Michael Doall was a teenager, he hated seaweed, and so did everybody else he knew on Long Island. It was an icky nuisance that brushed against your legs at the beach, fouled your fishing hook and got tangled around the propeller of your boat. Only later, as a marine scientist and oyster farmer, did he develop a love for sugar kelp, a disappearing native species that is one of the most useful seaweeds. Now he is on a mission to bring it back to the waters of New York.

EDUCATION

Without Sylvia Earle, We’d Be Living on Google Dirt (The New Yorker)

Do you like to breathe?” This is a question that the marine biologist and deep-sea explorer Sylvia Earle asks frequently. The ocean produces half of the oxygen on Earth. If it dies, humanity can’t survive, so humans better pay attention to it. When Google introduced its 3-D map, Earle pointed out that the designers had forgotten to include the oceans: it was Google Dirt, she said, not Google Earth. (Google fixed the oversight, with her help.)

Plastic Free July (Plastic Free Foundation)

Join millions of people reducing their plastic waste. Plastic Free July is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution – so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities. Learn more here!