In June 2009, Living Oceans Society led the Finding Coral Expedition, a journey to the bottom of the sea on Canada’s Pacific coast in search of deep sea corals. Using one person submarines, a team of international scientists made 30 dives to depths of over 500 metres and saw giant coral forests, darting schools of fish, and a seafloor carpeted in brittle stars.
A good marine plan makes for healthy oceans and healthy communities. Like planning in cities or other areas on land, the goal of ocean planning is simple: to ensure the most sustainable use of our marine space for which we have an ever-growing number of demands.
Living Oceans Society is working to protect glass sponge reefs that are found only in the waters off B.C. and Washington State. These living fossils are up to 9,000 years old and extremely vulnerable to damage from bottom trawling. In order to preserve these fragile reefs, we are providing input into a federal process to create a Marine Protected Area around them.
Living Oceans Society is helping to shape a management plan which contains conservation objectives to protect feeding grounds for sea birds through our place on the advisory board for the proposed Scott Island Marine National Wildlife Area. Creating an area which protects the birds’ food source is a critical addition to the existing terrestrial parks.
“Canada’s new strategy, originally set to be released last spring, was spurred by vulnerable right whales, Vatcher said, but entanglement is a top threat — along with vessel strikes — for all large baleen whales on Canada’s coasts, including humpbacks, minke, blue and fin whales.” Read it in the Times Colonist.
“We’re facing record lows with a lot of our salmon populations, and so we’re at a point now where we have to do everything we can to rebuild those populations so that we can have some abundance.” Read the full story at Nanaimo News Now.
"It's been a really great fund that's allowed us to do restoration, monitoring and research," said Dave Scott, research and restoration coordinator for the Raincoast Conservation Foundation's Lower Fraser salmon program. "[The fund] gets a huge number of applications for conservation and restoration-focused work. Politically, I think they would get a lot of pushback if they totally dropped that from [the BC fund]."
Read the full article at National Observer.
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