The ocean is full of litter, and it is difficult to remove it all.  So why not employ the good-will of fishers to remove some of it?

Farmed fish and shellfish is becoming increasingly common in our supermarkets, but did you know that global aquaculture production has now overtaken beef production?

Most life on Earth needs oxygen to survive - even those living in our oceans.  So when oxygen levels in our coastal waters are severely reduced, (hypoxia), and worse still reduced to almost zero levels (anoxia), the impacts can be deadly

Simply calling an area of ocean a 'marine protected area' does not make it so

Ideally discards of marine life accidentally caught whilst fishing should be minimized by not catching non-targets in the first place. 

We are constantly on the search for ideas on how to improve our current technologies, like those used in agriculture or in medicine.  Searches can lead us to looking into the natural environment, revealing an array of compounds that can prove extremely useful.

These days its rare to find humans living far from other animals, even those that spend a large portion of their lives in the sea.  Sometimes, like with the Galapagos sea lions on San Cristobal island, they are very close neighbours.

Surely if a species becomes too rare, it will eventually become uneconomical to hunt - even if they are worth a lot of money....so exploitation will stop?  Not so!

So my lovely readers living out in the USA, just how much of the marine ecosystem in your state waters is afforded strong protection? Probably not that much.