(Press-News.org) ProtectedSeas Navigator—the first global map of the world’s marine life regulations and their boundaries is now available. Navigator is a free, interactive map of over 21,000 marine protected and managed areas across 220 countries and territories and in over 25 languages.
Navigator offers a global view of marine life protections to help inform progress towards international conservation goals, including protecting 30 percent of the global ocean by 2030, which was adopted at the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada, known as COP15.
“Navigator brings together independently-verified regulatory information for over 21,000 marine protected areas into one interactive map as a first step toward understanding where current marine protections exist,” said Virgil Zetterlind, director of ProtectedSeas. “We created this one-of-a-kind tool to assist international ocean conservation planning and assessment.”
In addition to a comprehensive inventory of marine protected areas (MPAs), the Navigator map includes other marine managed areas such as water protection areas, speed-limit zones to protect marine mammals, fisheries management areas, and other effective areas-based conservation measures, or OECMs.
The Navigator team scoured the globe to compile all marine protection information in the global database for marine protected areas (MPAs) large and small—including the 0.03 square kilometers (0.02 square miles) Batalang Bato Marine Sanctuary in the Philippines—the smallest MPA in the world—where the only known regulatory information was posted on a sign at the site.
The work involved creating the first digital maps for over 2,400 of areas—or roughly 10 percent of the areas—that were previously only detailed on paper. Over 42-person years went into developing this comprehensive database of marine life protections.
The ProtectedSeas team also created a system to evaluate an area’s level of protection from fishing where each area is assigned a Level of Fishing Protection (LFP) score based on an analysis of restrictions on marine life extraction.
The culmination of eight years of research and development, this open-access tool provides scientists, decision-makers and the conservation community with regulatory information on the world’s marine protected areas to support global MPA analysis, design and management.
An analysis of Navigator data shows that 3.4 percent of the global ocean is highly protected from fishing based on the ProtectedSeas' LFP scoring system. On a country level, Palau has the highest percentage of marine area—79 percent—protected from fishing.
Detailed county- and area-level reports can be viewed and downloaded in Navigator for all marine protected and other managed areas to analyze legal protections relative to species, habitats, and other factors to identify potential gaps and inform new protections.
The Navigator tool will be showcased during a webinar on Wednesday, June 21 at 10:00 AM PDT. Register for the webinar here.
“Many areas we had to map were tough—from digitizing complex boundaries that followed coastlines and excluded islands to following connect-the-dots style descriptions to understand the regulations and boundaries,” said Zetterlind.
# # #
ProtectedSeas is the curator of a growing and open dataset of boundaries and regulations for marine protected areas (MPAs) and marine managed areas (MMAs) globally. Learn more at: https://protectedseas.net. Follow us on Facebook @ProtectedSeas.
END
KANSAS CITY, MO—June 13, 2023—Lacking bones, brains, and even a complete gut, the body plans of simple animals like sea anemones appear to have little in common with humans and their vertebrate kin. Nevertheless, new research from Investigator Matt Gibson, Ph.D., at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research shows that appearances can be deceiving, and that a common genetic toolkit can be deployed in different ways to drive embryological development to produce very different adult body plans.
It is well established that sea anemones, corals, and their jellyfish relatives shared a common ancestor with humans that plied the Earth’s ancient oceans ...
OFFSHORE WIND POWER OFFERS A PROMISING SOLUTION to the challenge of decarbonizing coastal China. China’s coastal provinces, though small in land mass, are home to 76% of the population; they are also responsible for 72% of total national power consumption and 70% of total CO2 emissions. Transitioning the coastal areas away from fossil fuels is one of China’s core challenges for achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, and offshore wind power may hold the key.
New research published in Nature Communications develops a bottom-up model to ...
The first side-necked turtle ever to be found in the UK has been discovered by an amateur fossil collector and palaeontologists at the University of Portsmouth.
The fossil remains are the earliest of a so-called side-necked pan-pleurodiran turtle, named as such because they fold their neck into their shell sideways when threatened. This does mean they can only see out with one eye.
Originally found on a National Trust beach on the Isle of Wight, the turtle fossil is an almost complete shell with cervical, dorsal and caudal vertebrae, scapulae, pelvic girdle and appendicular bones. Sadly, the skull was missing.
Lead author, Megan Jacobs, ...
LOS ANGELES -- A new study from Keck Medicine of USC has uncovered significant racial disparities in the diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of peripheral artery disease (PAD) among Black and white patients in the United States.
PAD, which affects approximately eight to 12 million Americans and is associated with nearly half of the 150,000 yearly amputations in the U.S., is a potentially life-threatening condition in which the arteries that carry blood from the heart to the legs narrow or become blocked by the buildup of fatty plaque. This can lead to a heart attack, stroke or amputation of the affected limb.
“We discovered that Black patients are nearly 50% less ...
About The Study: The findings of this study suggest that current dementia risk scores have limited clinical utility for estimation of 10-year dementia risk. Further research is needed to develop more accurate algorithms for estimation of dementia risk.
Authors: Mika Kivimäki, Ph.D. of University College London, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.18132)
Editor’s Note: Please see the article for ...
About The Study: This study found that when clinicians use emoji and emoticons in secure clinical texting systems, these symbols function primarily to convey new and interactionally salient information. These results suggest that concerns about the professionalism of emoji and emoticon use may be unwarranted.
Authors: Colin M. E. Halverson, Ph.D., of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.18140)
Editor’s Note: Please ...
Embargoed by Nature Communications until 10 a.m. Central Time on Tuesday, June 13
SAN ANTONIO (June 13, 2023) — Researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, working with collaborators in five countries, today revealed that the capacity to resist or recover from infections and other sources of inflammatory stress — called “immune resilience” — differs widely among individuals. The researchers developed a unique set of metrics to quantify the level ...
Following encouraging results from pre-clinical research and a recent clinical trial on stem cell-based treatments for patients with Type 1 diabetes, researchers are now working on maximizing the function and potential of stem cell-based treatments for future application in patients.
More than 8 billion people worldwide live with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) according to recent estimates. In T1D, the so-called beta cells in the pancreas do not make enough of the hormone insulin due to the destruction of beta-cells by the immune system leading to blood sugar levels rising above normal levels. Over time, T1D can lead to severe organ damage. There is no cure ...
Researchers have used heart and lung stem cells infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 to better understand how the disease impacts different organs, paving the way for more targeted treatments.
The research, co-led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), found the responses to SARS-CoV-2 varied significantly depending on the cell type, allowing the team to identify effective anti-viral drugs to treat infection in heart and lung cells. The findings were published in the 10th anniversary edition of Stem Cell Reports.
Murdoch ...
Four state policies introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to spur expansion of telehealth were associated with expansion of such services by mental health facilities, but growth of telehealth was lower among facilities in counties with the greatest proportion of Black residents, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
Expansion of telehealth also was lower among facilities that accepted Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, two government insurance programs that aid primarily lower-income Americans, according to the study.
The findings show that disparities in access to mental health care persisted even as ...
