AltaSea: Trending – November 8, 2017

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

COMMUNITY

AltaSea Launches UrgentSEA 2018 Campaign (AltaSea)

Please consider backing AltaSea as we continue to renovate existing warehouses and other facilities into a center of innovation transforming our future. See how much we have accomplished: 2017 In Pictures.

We need an ocean that can sustain future generations. With your support, we can make it happen. Join our campaign for a better Los Angeles and a better world.

Please join today at altasea.org/give.

37^th Annual Spirit of San Pedro Holiday Parade (San Pedro Chamber of Commerce)

Sunday, December 3, 2017 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Once again, AltaSea will be part of the San Pedro Holiday Parade.  We hope to see you there!

Each year, this festive tradition brings families, little leagues, scouts, students, high school bands, equestrian units, and volunteers to downtown San Pedro to celebrate the holiday season and our community.  More than 9,000 individuals will line the streets to view the parade. Click here to view the parade route.

MARINE SCIENCE

Trader Joe’s Stops Buying Mexican Shrimp After Pressure to Protect Vaquita (EcoWatch)

Conservation organizations announced Wednesday that Trader Joe’s has declared it will stop buying shrimp from Mexico. The popular grocery store chain’s decision follows pressure from organizations behind the Boycott Mexican Shrimp campaign, launched earlier this year to save the vaquita, the world’s smallest porpoise, from decades of decline due to entanglement in shrimp fishing gear.

Trader Joe’s declaration comes as Mexican authorities prepare this week to capture some of the fewer than 30 remaining vaquita in the Upper Gulf of California before all are lost to entanglement. The announcement puts new pressure on companies like Amazon that still sell Mexican shrimp.

This Fish Species Can Actually Repair Brain Damage From Freezing in The Winter (Science Alert)

Every winter, the northern European crucian carp gets frozen into the ice, and receives no oxygen. Every spring, when the ice melts, a seeming miracle occurs: the fish emerges from the ice and resumes normal life.

Or, not quite. When they thaw from their winter freeze, the crucian carp’s brain is not quite the same, according to new research. But the same researchers also found that the fish can recover from its months of anoxia.

Resisting Alien Invasions (UC Santa Barbara)

UC Santa Barbara researchers, who have been conducting long-term monitoring of native kelp forests in marine protected areas (MPAs) around the Northern Channel Islands since 2000, encountered low levels of S. horneri around Anacapa Island in 2009. Five years later, its abundance began to rapidly increase, perhaps partially due to unusually warm waters.

Reviewing years of monitoring data both inside and outside of MPAs, the marine biologists noticed interesting community-level patterns and decided to compare them in different areas around Anacapa with varied levels of marine protection. In the oldest MPA — a complete no-take zone protected since 1978 — they saw less S. horneri than in the newer ones established in 2003. Their analysis appears in the journal Ecology Letters.

SUSTAINABLE AND INNOVATIVE BUSINESS

L.A., Long Beach ports adopt plan to slash air pollution and go zero-emissions (Los Angeles Times)

The nation’s largest port complex approved a plan Thursday to slash air pollution by encouraging the phase-out of diesel trucks in favor of natural gas and, ultimately, zero-emissions trucks and cargo-handling equipment over the next two decades.

The Clean Air Action Plan, unanimously adopted at a joint meeting of Los Angeles and Long Beach harbor commissioners, provides a framework for transforming the massive hub for freight-moving trucks, trains and ships to cleaner technologies through 2035. But it leaves many details undetermined, including who will pay for up to $14 billion in cleaner trucks and equipment and which industries will benefit.

A Fisherman Tries Farming (NYTimes.com)

The idea of growing seafood, or aquaculture, is a new concept for this tiny fishing village in the town of Gouldsboro, population 1,700, in Downeast Maine. In some parts of the state, aquaculture has met with resistance over how it might block access to the water and other issues. But a growing number of people in Maine are trying it. The state’s Department of Marine Resources said the number of licenses for small aquaculture operations in this state had more than doubled in the past 18 months, to 415. There are another 126 larger farms, which can be as big as 100 acres. New growers have much to learn, and the state is considering requiring them to take a course on shellfish handling and health.

The clean energy revolution tipping point is inevitable—but the sooner, the better (Quartz)

As global leaders gather for the UN’s annual COP meetings on mitigating the impacts of climate change, an energy revolution is underway with enormous implications, not least for the world’s poor. Renewable energy adoption will be a crucial component of meeting the Paris Climate Agreement to hold a rise in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius, and market forces are accelerating those adoption rates. Perhaps as important as the impact this could have on our environment though, is the promise it holds for improving conditions and development prospects in the developing world.

EDUCATION

After-school program seeks to bring environmental education to diverse communities (The Washington Post)

The sound of the Rev. Johnny Calhoun’s voice filled the classroom, echoed by a group of students from Monarch Academy in Annapolis, Md.

“We are leapers, one and all; we are leapers, big and small; we are leapers because we’re smart; we are leapers, we’re ready to start,” Calhoun said.

They’re “leapers” because they’re a part of LEAP — Learning and Exploring After School Program.

LEAP is an environmentally focused after-school program for elementary students that kicked off at Monarch Academy earlier this month. That chant will start off every session of the program, which is run by Our Creeks & Conservancy, an Annapolis nonprofit with the goal of engaging and educating diverse communities about environmental conservation and sustainability.

UC President Napolitano on prosperity, security and sustainability (GreenBiz)

The President of the University of California and former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano shares her vision for turning the state’s world-class university system into an exemplar of climate readiness, responsibility and resilience.

One of the university system’s efforts is to become carbon neutral by 2025. To achieve this goal, the UC has “bought their own utility” to supply power to many of its campuses, including 80 megawatts from two new solar farms. They have also ramped up the use of natural gas. Napolitano raised her concerns about that point, saying, “How do we make sure that natural gas is not the end-game? That it’s just a bridge to new technologies and not a cul-de-sac?”