We categorize and sub-categorize. Constantly. We divide what appears whole into smaller and smaller bites until we no longer recognize the whole. The sky is not the sky but a collection of stars. The ocean is not one body of water but four distinct oceans. It’s the illusion of knowledge. Above all, humans want to know. But zoom out and those distinctions no longer hold. Continents appear connected. Nations integrate. Our blue and green marble is bereft of boundaries. Everything is connected. And that scares us. Because knowledge is control. Control is safety. Controlling our environment makes us feel safe. But is it ours? What of the numberless life forms that call the ocean home? Until we consider their plight as tied to our own, we will find no solace in endless categorization. The extinction of a species erodes our own existence. Which is why I write Save the Ocean Series. To bring awareness to our impact as stewards of our environment. We may not have asked for such a weighty responsibility, yet it is ours alone. We must speak for the voiceless. We must consider their destiny our own.

This week’s vote on menhaden quotas

This week, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) votes on whether to reduce the commercial fishing quota for menhaden, a critical food source for osprey hawks, juvenile humpback whales, dolphins, tuna, striped bass and bluefish. Menhaden are one of those fish that has a geographically variable name. If you live in New England, you call them “pogies.” If you live in New York, you call them “bunker.” We’re accustomed to the ubiquity of vast menhaden schools along our summer beaches. Lounging on hot sand in August, they appear as a dark brown patch of water peppered with tiny splashes. As filter feeders, they also clean our water. Menhaden swim along with mouths agape to feed on swarms of plankton. As juveniles, their diet consists entirely of the phytoplankton that blooms near the surface during warmer months. As they age, adult menhaden prefer the direct protein source provided by zooplankton. Menhaden live up to twelve years. A twelve-year old menhaden can measure eighteen inches and weigh two pounds.

On Tuesday, the ASMFC will decide whether to lower the quota in the Chesapeake Bay region by up to fifty percent. The main driving factors for reducing the quota are historically low osprey birth rates and reduced populations of local game fish like striped bass. Chesapeake Bay ospreys had their “worst breeding season on record,” with only a 19% success rate for nesting pairs. Researchers are finding nests filled with dead osprey chicks. The apparent cause is a dearth of food, i.e. menhaden. Omega Protein, the monopolistic harvester of Atlantic menhaden, is pushing back by arguing that the ASMFC “has not classified menhaden as overfished by the commission’s own measure and that no study has established a link between starving osprey chicks and the commercial catch.” But the above-mentioned observational data shows evidence to the contrary. Public comments to the proposed quota decrease are now closed. Let’s hope the ASMFC does the right thing to protect a species that enables the survival of so many other species whether sea or sky dwellers.

After 91 years on Planet Ocean, Sylvia Earle a/k/a “Her Deepness” still has a lot to say about how to save the ocean. “There is no sustainable extraction of krill in Antarctica possible, period,” Earle said at the latest annual summit of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). CCAMLR manages the Antarctic krill fishery, which closed in August this year after reaching its quota of 620,000 metric tons. The fishery also closed in August last year due to industrial fishing by two countries: Norway and China. The leading krill fishing company, Aker BioMarine, was recently privatized by American Industrial Partners, a New York private equity firm. Aker BioMarine was founded by Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Rokke who created the market for krill to be used as red omega-3 supplements and industrial fish farm feed. But, as Earle further remarked, krill are not the only available source of omega-3. “It’s all for choices,” not necessity. In Earle’s opinion, there is no sustainable level of harvest when it comes to krill.

Euphausia superba, the scientific name for Antarctic krill, are translucent crustaceans resembling shrimp. They are mostly transparent with a tinge of red. Because they’re transparent, they also have a touch of green algae visible in their digestive tract. Large black eyes make them adorable when viewed under a microscope (see photo above). When schooled up as densely as 30,000 per cubic meter, krill’s red tinge can color the surrounding water a deep reddish-brown. Krill are a primary food source for whales that migrate to the Antarctic each southern-hemisphere summer. Seals, penguins, seabirds, crabs, squid and other Antarctic fish also rely on Antarctic krill for sustenance.

Scientists are still learning about the tiny crustaceans’ social behaviors. Some krill “swarms” entirely consist of juveniles while other swarms are all female or male. Individuals may live up to ten years and grow up to six centimeters in length. A krill’s dilutive stature belies its hardiness. Antarctic krill survive harsh winters primarily through two adaptations: their ability to go without food for up to 200 days when phytoplankton, their primary food source, is unavailable and downsizing their body mass via moulting. Krill feed on the surface at night, descending to the depths during the day.

The impact on Planet Ocean of this “diel vertical migration (DVM)” is remarkable. Through DVM, krill sequester vast amounts of carbon by feeding on carbon-rich plankton and descending into deeper waters. DVM thus prevents the escape of carbon into the air where it would otherwise contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. This daily ascent to the surface also has benefits. A krill swarm carries with it deep water rich in nutrients. These nutrients are essential to phytoplankton development. Phytoplankton are not only a primary food for krill, they are the foundation of the ocean food chain. Without krill’s DVM, phytoplankton would perish.

The downside of Antarctic krill’s daily migration is predictability. Knowing where krill will appear each night makes catching them a piece of cake for industrial krill fishing operations. At the same time that Earle is calling for the end of commercial krill fishing because of the critical role they play in the ocean’s health (“There is no sustainable extraction of krill in Antarctica possible, period”), officials from 24 countries, including the US, are busy negotiating the fishery’s expansion. The krill fishing industry is pushing to increase the annual krill quota by 77% to 1.1 million metric tons. Opposition to this increase includes marine scientists like Earle and a coalition of over 30 conservation organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, Sea Shepherd, the Blue Marine Foundationarine, Greenpeace, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

How to get involved

Donate to any of the organizations above. I just donated to Sea Shepherd. Leave a comment here after you donate. Planet Ocean needs us. And share this post with a friend!

Living next to the Ocean sensitizes you to man’s destructive nature. I have a friend who walks the beaches every morning. He sets out with an empty trash bag. By the time he walks off the sand, the bag is full. Balloons, plastic bottle caps, fishing gear, abandoned dog poop bags. These are the things we leave behind. These are our love letters to the Ocean. In return, we get the rhythmic thunder of energy transference inviting meditation. The mineral breath of a crashing wave enveloping us. A blazing sunset reflected by the gentle undulations of August. If only we could appreciate what we take from the sea, we might be more generous in our actions. We might take care to give the Ocean what it truly needs from us. Protection.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

1. Plastic pollution

Plastic is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s cheap and, therefore, ubiquitous. We use it to build our boats, fishing gear and drinking vessels. The keys upon which I’m typing this post are plastic. The ephemera of our lives are anything but ephemeral. The trash I find on the beach each morning when I walk our dogs is the proverbial iceberg’s tip. Microplastics are the rest. Microparticles of everything ever made of plastic penetrate all of nature, including our brains and the entirety of Planet Ocean. If I were to rank the items I find washed up each day in descending order the list would look like this: plastic bottle caps, mylar balloons, plastic bottles, straws, zip ties, plastic fishing line. Do we think our discard has no impact? Do we think the Ocean can dissolve our dependence on petroleum-based materials? Plastic is convenient, not necessary. When I buy water, I try to find glass, aluminum or paper containers. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. Living next to the ocean, I’d never buy a mylar balloon for fear that an unlucky sea turtle or mola mola might mistake the remnants of a fleeting celebration for a jellyfish, its favorite food. Microplastics have infiltrated the deepest parts of the ocean. They started here, on the surface.

2. Anthropogenic noise

Vava’u, Tonga, 2024. I’m floating in the South Pacific, my masked face submerged in crystal blue water to witness a mother humpback whale nursing her weeks-old calf. As the mother approaches us, she makes eye contact. She’s wary of this group of four humans clumsily kicking towards her. Satisfied we are no threat to her baby, she glides towards us seemingly without effort. Her tale is motionless yet she’s moving fast enough that we need to kick continuously to stay by her side. Of a sudden, her tale makes three or four sweeps downwards. Sixty feet of visibility vanish in seconds. When we climb back onto the boat, we ask the captain what happened. What broke the spell of underwater intimacy we felt just moments before? “Ferry,” he replies pointing to a distant ship. If the inaudible (to humans) sound of a boat three miles away can cause a whale to expend critical energy, imagine the effect of a fleet of boats. Imagine the effect of the 110-decibel pile driving employed in the construction of an offshore wind farm. Even our attempts at shrinking our destructive footprint are harmful to marine mammals.

3. Deep sea mining

The damage wrought by commercial fishing bottom trawlers has been well documented. I wrote about it in SOS 025 // Bottoms Up. A weighted net dragged across miles of seafloor obliterates the slow-forming habitat of essential sponges, corals, fish and microbes. Bottom trawling is akin to clear-cutting an old growth forest. Yet, commercial bottom gear have a half-mile maximum depth. The ocean’s average depth is two-and-a-half miles. Below a half mile, a new threat emerges. Deep sea mining. In SOS 019 // The next gold rush, I discuss the Trump Administration’s dream of exploiting the deepest parts of the ocean to mine polymetallic nodules for the raw ingredients of battery tech, weapons, semiconductor chips and AI infrastructure. The potential destruction is, well, unfathomable. Research is being conducted worldwide to determine just how harmful deep sea mining will be. I say “will” because the pendulum of human greed is always swinging. One way or another, deep sea mining will soon be a thing. Just like nuclear weapons, we are being pulled headlong into unknown risk in a myopic search for security. We all know the ending of this story. We are all, thus, complicit.

4. Commercial fishing bycatch

I mentioned my daily beach walks with my dogs. Norman and George are good boys, but their primal drive to eat sometimes overrides fealty to me. Trying to keep Norman from eating a dead skate’s tale or George from crunching on fish cartilage is near impossible. Especially in summer, it’s a game of wack-a-mole. On a given day, hundreds of (to them) appetizing morsels can be found scattered on Montauk’s beaches. How did so many skate carcasses and fish parts wind up beached in our backyard? They are the waste products of commercial fishing, by-catch deemed unmarketable. I’m certain that living by-catch released by commercial fisherman outnumber those found by Norman and George, but the dead ones are visible reminders of outdated technology. Bycatch Reduction Devices (BRDs) are available but represent additional costs that would erode the wizening margins of commercial fishing. I like commercial fisherman. I don’t blame them. They have bills to pay and mouths to feed just like the rest of us. Government subsidies for less destructive gear would help. But public awareness that could lead to political pressure isn’t there yet.

I write SOS each week with the hope that by sharing knowledge I can inspire action in others. One action would be sharing SOS with your friends and family. It’s easy. Just hit the heart and share button at the top of this post. If you have any questions or comments, please add them via the comment button. It means a lot to me and to our common love, Planet Ocean.

“I'll have the salmon.” I find myself saying this a lot when dining at a restaurant. The unctuousness of fatty salmon draped seductively over a nob of packed sushi rice is tough to resist. Even in peak tuna season here in Montauk, I can’t resist the siren call of salmon. I suppose there are physiological reasons for this. We crave the omega-3 rich, fluorescent-colored flesh. It’s candy to our survival reflex. The human body can’t manufacture omega-3 fatty acids, yet we need them for brain and heart health.

Peek into my kitchen cabinets and you’ll find another great source of fatty acids: sardines. I rarely eat them. I prefer salmon. And I’m not alone. In 2023, each American consumed approximately 3.5 pounds of salmon. We consume more salmon than any other country by twofold. About 70% of it is produced by the aquaculture industry, including virtually 100% of Atlantic salmon because fishing for wild Atlantic salmon has been illegal in US waters since 1948.

Why is this a problem? Two unappetizing words: fish meal. In the wild, salmon eat forage fish such as mackerel, crustaceans and cephalopods. Farmed salmon, however, primarily eat fish meal. Fish meal is manufactured by grinding, cooking and processing oily fishes such as herring and sardines. These fish are caught by commercial trawlers and bottom draggers that scoop up the seafloor along with their target species. The damage done by this sort of fishing is devastating to slow growing flora and fauna that occupy the bottom floor of Planet Ocean. Dragging also releases carbon into the atmosphere thereby contributing to a glut of greenhouse gases (see SOS 025 where I focused on the importance of a healthy seafloor). The environmental concerns don’t stop there. Worldwide, there are approximately 1,400 fish meal factories. More than 16.5 million people live within one mile of one of these factories. The waste products are often disposed of unsafely, polluting local rivers and drinking water. The rancid smell of rotting fish displaces local tourism and can even be carcinogenic. The “fishy” smell of less than fresh seafood comes from a gas called trimethylamine (TMA). In small concentrations, TMA smells “fishy.” In higher concentrations, TMA smells like ammonia. The chemical is linked to cardiovascular damage and potentially contributes to cancer risk among exposed populations.

Aside from the environmental concerns, the fish meal industry is rank with human rights violations. Crews on these ships can consist of forced labor subject to 15-hour shifts, unimaginable sleeping accommodations and perilous working conditions. In Peru, the largest contributor of fish meal raw ingredients, more than a dozen fish meal vessel crew members have died since 2019. The criminal practices of the fish meal industry are the foundation of the farmed salmon market. Without cheap (or forced/free) labor, salmon farm profit margins would be much less appetizing.

Where does that leave the salmon lovers of the world? Wild caught salmon costs two to three times more than farmed salmon. Even if we endeavor to eat only wild caught salmon, there is the real risk of inaccurate labeling by greedy retailers and restaurants. A 2015 study by Oceana found that up to 43% of wild caught salmon sold at US restaurants is actually farm raised. It seems the most conservative approach is abstaining from eating salmon altogether unless you catch it yourself. For most of us, that means never eating salmon again. It’s a harsh reality, but I can live with it. Can you?

After six months of writing about all things ocean, I’m more passionate than ever. I want to thank you for reading and sharing Save the Ocean Series. Without you, SOS would not exist! I’m inspired and awed by all the ocean has shown me over the past 6 months. Most of all, though, I’m grateful. We’ve covered a lot in our 26 editions, yet we’ve barely scratched the surface of Planet Ocean. I can’t wait to learn with (and from) you in the next 6 months and beyond. We are a family, related by our mutual love of the ocean and its inhabitants.

How it started

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the ocean. Spending summers in Montauk, NY meant exploring. Exploring the forest trails near the house on Big Reed Path that my father built. Exploring the star glittered skies at night. And most of all, exploring the lake, sound and ocean that dominate the landscape out here. Last winter I began a daily journal. I gave myself a limit of 5 minutes a day to write whatever thoughts I had each morning. After a few months, I began to feel like I wanted to share my writing with others. But what would I write about? Surely, the world didn’t need another personal blog full of navel gazing and goal setting. What value could I add? Looking out at Fort Pond Bay from our winter rental, I realized that my love for the ocean was not unique. People (like you) care about the health of Planet Ocean. Yet, mainstream media is devoid of meaningful ocean content. We might see short videos of a whale breaching near a beach or sharks swimming near surfers. These videos are awesome to watch, yet they don’t contain much substance. Seeing this gap, my idea was to search out news from each week and highlight it for you here. I start with a news article, then read the research behind it. Sometimes it’s a slog to read entire scientific studies, but it wouldn’t feel authentic to simply summarize an article summarizing those studies.

How it’s going

Living next to the ocean, I find inspiration every day. Every shell I find is a possibility. A path for curiosity. Planet Ocean needs our help. It gives so much. Now it’s time for me to give back by highlighting issues we need to address to heal the harm we’ve perpetrated for centuries. Technological advances have magnified our capacity for harm. These “advances” seem to increase logarithmically. From the development of sonar in the early 20th century to the rollout of omni sonar in this century. Larger, more efficient vessels with larger, more efficient nets scoop up greater catches from dwindling seafood populations. Every year, it seems, the scales tip further and further in favor of commercial fishermen. Regulations, slow moving and, thus, outdated, are a blunt instrument. Yet, regulations are our best tool for protecting a global resource. The tragedy of the commons lives on. By continuing to publish Save the Ocean, my hope is that I am having an impact by raising awareness to my audience. With every article, I will include a call to action that enables you to also have an impact. I invite you to participate. Together, we have power to affect positive change. To save the ocean. Thank you for continuing to read SOS. Without you, the ocean has no future.

Sea floor health is critical to everything

"I believe there is not a portion of the ground but what the trawl destroys. I have dragged 50 miles off Aberdeen. I have got fast there and brought up coral about 2.5ft in circumference, lumps of soft coral, and I am prepared to say that whatever is in the way of the trawler will not escape." - Fisherman from Aberdeen, Scotland, The Guardian (2014).

Last week I found myself standing on the bow of a boat as we followed a scallop dredger closely enough to see the sandwiches the crew had for lunch. I studied the crew’s movements trying to predict when they were about to haul back their gear. Commercial fishing for sea scallops involves towing a large dredge resembling a giant clam rake across the seafloor to scrape the smooth shelled scallops from their habitat. As soon as that rake surfaced, I needed to throw a live bluefish bait as close as possible to the rake without fouling it. Why? To catch a bluefin tuna. Scallops are candy to large bluefin and they often follow a scallop dragger looking for that candy. I was thinking about the possibility of a once in a lifetime fish. I wasn’t thinking about how I was surfing a wave of destruction. Corals, sponges, seaweed, shellfish scraped from the bottom of the ocean. A habitat obliterated in seconds to harvest a cash crop.

Planetary Health Check 2026 is part of an annual series published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. This year’s report includes a chapter on the health of the seafloor. Covering two-thirds of the planet, the seafloor has an average depth of two and a half miles. Such depths were once considered a moat against anthropogenic damage, but technology has a way of eroding moats. Today, trawlers can reach depths of half mile. Regulations on the west coast of the United States ban trawling deeper than three quarters of a mile. A country may regulate fishing activities within its Exclusive Economic zone that extends 200 miles from land. But beyond those 200 miles, the seafloor is unprotected. Each year, 1-2% of the global seafloor is destroyed by bottom trawling. Deep sea mining for polymetallic nodules will bring more destruction to an environment that I'm some cases takes more than a human lifespan to regenerate.

Protecting the seafloor is critical to the overall health of the planet. It provides habitat for flora and fauna from kelp to slow-growing deep sea corals to microbes. These plants and animals form an integral part of the marine food web. They also form the foundation of the ocean’s carbon storing function. Continental shelves store around 360 billion tons of carbon, accounting for 75-80% of marine carbon burial. The carbon stored on the seafloor would have stayed there for geologic times. But commercial fishing and mining operations disturb that timeline. Trawling the bottom suspends this carbon in the seawater where it breaks down into carbon dioxide and potentially re-enters the atmosphere to contribute to global warming. So, aside from killing innumerable plants and animals, bottom trawling and deep sea mining negatively impact planetary health at a significant level.

The regulation of the seafloor is currently accomplished by a mix of national and international authorities. Each coastal country may impose restrictions within its territorial waters up to 12 miles from land and its Exclusive Economic Zone up to 200 miles from land. Beyond those boundaries, Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) such as the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) govern fishing activities in the “high seas” while the International Seabed Authority governs deep sea mining activities. The enforcement power of these entities is tenuous at best and poaching is rampant due to the sheer size of the area being regulated. Organizations like the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) are working to raise awareness of the potential impact wrought by deep seafloor exploitation. To learn more about current the current regulatory framework and find out how you can support their efforts, visit the DSCC website.

The most important fish in the sea

I own a book by that title. Written by H. Bruce Franklin, the dense volume provides everything you need to know about menhaden. I must admit I haven’t read the entire book. It’s dense, remember? But I managed to glean some key facts. Menhaden feed by filtering plankton from the water. Incidentally, they clean the ocean. The affect of such filtration is visible from a drone. The water clarity improves dramatically in the wake of a big school of menhaden. Menhaden are an integral part of the food chain, critical to the survival of species like striped bass and ospreys. This year’s over harvesting of menhaden resulted in an osprey die off in the Chesapeake Bay. Even the juvenile humpback whales that visited our beaches in late summer this year rely on menhaden as a primary food source. Each time a whale lunge feeds, it consumes hundreds of menhaden. Always an impressive sight from the beach and from the sky via my drone. Menhaden are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. In fact, menhaden’s leading cause of death is a fleet of factory ships operated by a company called Omega Protein. From the 437,000 metric tons of menhaden it harvests annually, Omega Protein produces Omega-3 supplements, protein supplements, animal feed, and crop fertilizer. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is charged with regulating menhaden catches. Each year, ASMFC sets a commercial quota. Part of that quota is the Chesapeake Bay reduction fishery cap, which has been 51,000 metric tons annually since 2018. ASFMC is currently seeking public comments as it contemplates lowering the cap by up to 50%. Please make your opinions known by submitting a comment here.

The aquaculture conundrum

At least 62% of the fish we eat in the United States is imported. Why? Because 35% of fish are being harvested unsustainably. A meal consisting of wild-caught fish is thus illusory. A thing of the past. The stuff of nostalgia. To meet the increasing domestic demand for seafood, we import our fish from foreign aquaculture operations because no commercial scale finfish farms exist in the US. Fish farming is growing exponentially, just not here. We rank 20th in worldwide aquaculture production. Countries like China, India and Indonesia are leaving us in their wake. Our current seafood trade deficit is greater than $20 billion. The biggest obstacle preventing America from providing its own sustainable catch in the form of farmed fish is a prohibitory regulatory framework. Congress is currently considering a forward-thinking approach to fish farming pursuant to the Marine Aquaculture Research for America Act (MARAA). MARAA aims to establish a test program for marine aquaculture operations that will gather research to develop an environmentally responsible fish farm industry in domestic waters. Support for MARAA includes an unlikely partnership between the Environmental Defense Fund and the seafood industry. Both parties support MARAA’s potential benefits such as reducing pressure on wild stocks, low-carbon operations and new investment in port infrastructure and seafood processing.

Turning poachers into ecotourism guides

It turns out illegal fisherman make excellent guides for tourists who want to observe endangered species. My wife and I can attest to this. When we visited Mexico’s Revillagigedo Archipelago on a dive trip, the captain of the liveaboard was a former tuna fisherman who used to make money exploiting the now-protected marine area. When we swam with humpback whales in Vava’u, Tonga, the boat captain was a former whaler. The skills of these former hunters and, perhaps, sometimes poachers have been repurposed to guarantee tourists like us get to see some of the most pristine underwater environments on Planet Ocean. These conversions are happening all over the world. Project Hiu, founded by Australian shark conservationist Madison Stewart, hires former shark fisherman who frequently flaunted Indonesian shark regulations as guides for tourists who want to snorkel with local blacktip sharks. With a fleet of 15 boats, the project already has about 80 guides pulled from the ranks of shark fisherman. The work of Project Hiu is not limited to tourist operations. The local guides also tag and provide valuable research about the sharks they used to kill.

Super El Niño

We know less than we think we do about this planet. Many, many aspects of this world are mysterious. Yet, we grasp at a shadow of a shadow and call it fact. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation can be counted among these mysteries. El Niño is a limited period of global warming sea surface temperature. Its effects are felt mostly in the equatorial Pacific, but El Niño echoes in all areas of the world. The occurrence of El Niño is barely predictable, though we know it tends to appear every 2 to 7 years and lasts about a year. The current El Niño has been dubbed a “super” El Niño for its relative strength in comparison to occurrences of the past. The effects on the east coast of North America have been considerable. One positive effect is that no hurricanes have formed yet in the Caribbean. Only five tropical storms have formed, all of which have been squashed by the atmospheric affects of El Niño. The Pacific region, on the other hand, has seen twice as many cyclones as normal. In Montauk, we’ve had an unusual year. Lots of east wind in the summer. Unusual sea surface temperature patterns. I credit El Niño with the abundance of life I witnessed offshore this year. El Niño has been kind to us, for the most part. While I want to know as much as I can about Planet Ocean, in this case I'm grateful for a little mystery.

The emotional life of whales: do whales grieve?

In October 2024, my wife and I visited Tonga, a far flung country consisting of a smattering of volcanic islands deep in the South Pacific. Why did we go to Tonga? Because every June mother humpbacks give birth near Vava’u, Tonga and spend several months nursing their calves in the calm, protected waters before making the perilous journey to their winter homes in Antarctica. Tonga is one of the only spots in the world where you can legally swim with humpbacks. After filming so many humpbacks in Montauk, going to Tonga was a pilgrimage of sorts. Swimming beside humpback whale mothers and their calves in the deep blue crystalline Pacific is something I can never erase from my soul. Looking into the mother’s eyes while she warily approached us, I knew she was sentient. I knew she felt compassion, joy, sadness. I had no proof. I just knew. But knowing is not proof, not from a scientific perspective. Scientists draw conclusions from observational data of an animal’s behavior and, until recently, emotions such as grief have been attributed only to toothed whales like dolphins. Dolphins account for over 90% of observed “post-mortem attentive behavior.” That’s grief to you and me. For whales, grief looks like attending a dead calf’s body for hours or even days. Doing so costs the whale a substantial amount of energy, which leads us to conclude that there’s an emotional component to the behavior. Dolphins have been observed doing this. So have orcas. An orca nicknamed Tahlequah was observed carrying her calf more than 1,500 kilometers over 17 days in 2018. The same orca carried another of her deceased calves for an extended period of time in 2025. Scientists had not directly observed such grieving behavior in baleen whales, a class that includes humpback whale, until July 17, 2025. On that day, scientists spotted a mother humpback repeatedly surfacing in the same spot. The scientists, equipped with a GoPro (view video here), dove to the bottom where they saw a stillborn calf and witnessed the mother “touching it with her head and pectoral fin as well as remaining still and eye to eye next to the stillborn for at least 1 min at a time.” The emotional capacity of a humpback mother was clear to me when I swam with them in Tonga. Several times, we witnessed a mother helping her calf to the surface with her head so that the calf could breathe. There was emotion and tenderness that transcended species. I like to think the recent study proves what I knew.

The global ecological impact of offshore wind farms is 86% unknown

You read that right. 86% of the global ecological impact, good and bad, of offshore wind farms is unknown. The 14% we do know includes variable electricity generation (good), interference with whale communication during construction phase (bad), potential accretive habitat for marine life (good), a hazard for migrating birds (bad). Net result: neutral. But what about the other 86%? A recent study suggests that mostly negative effects comprise the unknown 86%. First, while the subsurface components of a wind turbine provide artificial structure for marine life, there is “mounting evidence globally that artificial structures, both coastal and offshore, function as prime sites for invasive or exotic species.” These non-native species frequently displace species native to an environment. The follow on effects of such displacement include decreased commercial catches, which will negatively impact local economies. Second, offshore wind farms represent potential harm to socially valued species such as seabirds and marine mammals. Outsized turbine blades kill seabirds. Ship strikes and cable entanglements are a primary cause of whale deaths. Most offshore wind farms are granted an Incidental Harassment Authorization exempting the developer from liability for non-lethal harm to marine mammals, including critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. The exemption is meant to apply to the disturbance attributed to construction noise, cable laying and geophysical surveys. But the construction of an offshore wind farm requires a lot of ship traffic and increased ship traffic means increased risk of ships striking whales. When a large vessel strikes a whale, there’s a good chance the captain is unaware of the incident. Finally, there’s the issue of competing with space against recreational boaters and fisherman. Huge swaths of the ocean off of New England are covered by colossal steel and carbon pinwheels. Heading to the offshore canyons from Montauk at sunrise used to mean an unimpeded view of the sun peeping out from the horizon. That view now includes a spindle work of wind turbines. The study concludes by stating that there are major data gaps to be resolved before we can know 100% of the offshore wind farm story. I find little comfort in the knowledge that we know practically nothing.

In law school, I took a course called the Law of the Sea. How romantic, I thought. Leave it to me to find an ocean-related curriculum among the driest of course titles: Securities Law, Corporate Law, Real Property. Still, this was law school and most of maritime law involves disputes related to freight companies and international boundaries. However, the course did include a subject that fascinated me. The International Whaling Convention (IWC). For the few weeks we studied the IWC, I sat rapt as the professor spoke of the 1985 moratorium on commercial whaling. By 1986, whales were in dire need of saving after centuries of commercial exploitation. The “Save the Whales” movement of the mid-1970s had finally come to fruition.

The IWC bans commercial whaling but has an exemption for aboriginal subsistence hunting. This tracks because there are aboriginal communities, even in the US, that consider whale meat a staple of their diet. The number of whales taken by such communities is sustainable. Commercial whaling is not. Three countries, however, continue to kill whales commercially: Iceland, Norway and Japan. Norway never agreed to the IWC, Japan left the IWC in 2019 and Iceland left the IWC in 1992 then rejoined in 2002 but continues to object to the commercial moratorium. All three countries are required to report whale catches to the IWC.

The whale kill data from Iceland, Japan and Norway is available on the IWC’s site. Since 1985, Iceland has killed 2,049 whales, including fin, sei and common minke whales. Japan has killed 24,908 whales, including fin, sperm, sei, Bryde’s, common minke and Antarctic minke whales. Norway has killed 17,338 minke whales and 1 Antarctic minke whale. I find these numbers staggering. I’m not sure many people know just how many whales continue to be killed despite the purported ban on whaling. For more detail, you can check out the interactive data analysis I created using IWC data here.

What is being done to end commercial whaling for good? Four major organizations focus on eliminating whaling carried out for commercial purposes. Greenpeace started the “Save the Whales” campaign in the 1970s and continues to oppose whaling using non-violent political action, public education, and political lobbying at the IWC. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, founded by former Greenpeace member Paul Watson, uses aggressive tactics at sea. Sea Shepherd vessels will physically block whaling vessels, putting their crews’ lives at stake in the fight against whaling. The Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) was founded by Watson to continue the work of Sea Shepherd after he was voted out of the Sea Shepherd board of directors. CPWF uses even more aggressive tactics than Sea Shepherd. The World Cetacean Alliance focuses on policy, ending marine mammal captivity, extinguishing demand for whale meat and exposing the cruelty of current whale hunting methods.

You can help these anti-whaling organizations by getting involved in their work and/or making a donation at the following links:

Donate to Greenpeace

Donate to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Donate to the Captain Paul Watson Foundation

Donate to the World Cetacean Alliance

The whales still need our help despite the work of the IWC. In the past week, I've been filming humpback and common minke whales along the beaches in Montauk. The view through the monitor of my drone’s remote controller is nothing short of intimate. I watch these whale as they breath, dive and feed. Feeling as connected as I do to such beautiful animals, I’m asking all of you to join me in protecting them permanently. Thank you for reading this article. Reach out if you have any questions about how to get involved.

Some of the things we know we just can’t prove. Not on our own, any way. Not without the proper instruments, expensive instruments. So we go on knowing without having the proof to back up that knowledge. One thing we know is that loud noises affect animals. Think of your dog cowering beneath the bed when he hears an approaching thunderstorm. Think of a horse that bolts upon hearing the sudden boom of gunfire. Think of your child who cries when he hears the loud crash of a broken plate. Are whales any different? Until now, we haven’t had proof that whales are affected by loud noises generated by humans. I’ve even asked a few whale researchers whether the sonic blasting used to survey the seafloor during windfarm development could be blamed for the increase in whale mortality over the last few years. All they could tell me is that there’s no research showing a correlation. I was left knowing and not able to prove. It’s an uncomfortable place to be.

So it was with relief that I read recent research linking anthropogenic noise to decreased communication among fin whales in the Mediterranean Sea. Because, of course loud noises affect whales. Whales rely on communication just like we do. Just like us, whales can’t eat, travel or reproduce without communicating with each other. You knew this. I knew this. Windfarm developers knew this. This study focuses on shipping noises. Perhaps the most ubiquitous sound on Planet Ocean, underwater noise from large vessels increased fourfold between just 1992-2012. The 20-100 Hz low frequency sound generated by ship traffic directly conflicts with that used by baleen whales. Baleen whales are all of the whales we think of when we hear the word “whale.” Humpbacks, fin, blue and right whales are all baleen whales. Sperm whales are the one non-baleen whale species that comes to mind when thinking about “whales.” Fin whales most commonly produce calls at a frequency of about 23-18 Hz, which corresponds with the frequency range of ship noise.

The sound data gathered by the Mediterranean researchers suggests that fin whales alter their “voices” in order to be heard over the din of ships, either raising or lowering their vocal frequency. Such alteration requires more energy than the whales normally expend when communicating. Think of the way you need to raise your voice to be heard at a loud restaurant when dining with friends. Like all wild animals, energy expenditure is a key contributor to an individual’s survival rate. Animals are expert at conserving energy. Whether we’re talking about a lion snoozing in the shade of an Umbrella Thorn Acacia in Serengeti National Park or a yellow lab snoozing in the sun, we know that animals know how to conserve energy.

Just how severely whales are affected by anthropogenic noise is not yet known. But as a result of this research we now know that whales are negatively impacted by the noises humans make. Can ship noise be used as an analogy for the sonic blasting used in windfarm development? With the proviso that no current research shows such correlation, wind mills generate sound both during development and operation at a frequency range similar to that used by baleen whales. Pile driving is the loudest phase of wind mill construction. I’ve personally heard the tinny hammering-in of a wind mill’s steel piling foundation and, anecdotally, it’s during those times that all marine life seems scarce. Even during operation, a rotating wind turbine generates significant low frequency noise, with decibel levels increasing along with RPMs. The impact of windfarm noise on whales is one of those things I know but, for now at least, can’t prove.

Why we can’t have nice things

New research finds that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are ineffective in protecting against the damage caused by abandoned fishing nets. Also referred to as “ghost gear,” abandoned fishing nets have been found polluting 53% of the existing MPAs. Why is that a problem? MPAs are a critical component of 2022’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework intended to reverse the loss of global marine biodiversity. The goal of that framework is to increase MPA coverage to 30% of the ocean by 2030. To date, only 3% of the ocean is protected against commercial fishing activities and even that minor percentage of protection can’t prevent against damage from ghost gear. The impact of such ghost gear is significant. Drifting nets smother coral and trap endangered wildlife like sea turtles, whales and fish.

The most dangerous type of ghost gear is abandoned tuna nets. Traditional tuna gear consists of drift nets submerged at depths of up to 80 meters. When lost, these nets are nearly impossible to recover. Recent design improvements include GPS and echosounder buoys that make it easier for fishermen to track schools of fish, but that doesn't necessarily equate to gear trackability because the data is not publicly accessible. Fishing companies have proprietary control over their GPS equipment and, understandably, resist disclosing location data for fear that competing fishing operations will use it to steal their catch. At the same time, the potential for damage to MPAs is exacerbated by fishermen’s unwillingness to disclose when their gear invades an MPA. Protecting against unknown perils is tricky business.

How can regulators solve for the borderless nature of the ocean? Three solutions are proposed by researchers studying the impact of ghost gear to MPAs: (1) minimize the risk of damage when interaction occurs between fishing gear and MPAs; (2) limiting the risk of such interaction; and, (3) ensure accountability when interaction and damage occur.

In order to minimize the risk of damage resulting from ghost gear, regulators have begun requiring the use of low-impact fishing gear, including non-entangling and biodegradable nets. Standardized weight limits have also been suggested but not yet adopted. Limiting the weight of gear will reduce the likelihood of smothering coral or unintentionally trapping fish. Rope, cloth and canvas, however, are still permitted and when abandoned these components can still inflict significant damage to protected marine life before disintegrating.

Limiting the risk of interaction between ghost gear and MPAs is another way we can reduce damage to vulnerable marine life. Measures to do so include limiting total fishing gear deployment, spatial restrictions and ensuring net retrieval. Currently, fishing vessel captains self determine where and when to fish. Prevention of damage relies on the judgment of a commerce-minded individual who is likely to take risks in order to ensure more profitable catches. Instead, regulators should be making such determinations. The opportunity for damage to an MPA directly correlates with proximity to commercial tuna netting operations. Moreover, efforts to retrieve lost nets should be required whether intentional or not. Current law only prohibits abandonment that is intentional. Proving intention is difficult, if not impossible, without third party witnesses.

The third component of MPA damage prevention is ensuring accountability when interaction and damage occur. To date, fisherman do not have a meaningful incentive to avoid damage to MPAs caused by their gear. The fact that most gear is often unmarked means that a perpetrator is rarely identifiable. Regulators should require fisherman to clearly mark their fishing equipment and/or implement a standardized retrieval deposit that corresponds to the substantial cost of removing ghost gear from MPAs.

The effort to reduce damage to marine life in MPAs caused by ghost gear is further complicated by the fact that regulation is delegated to low-income island nations or countries that rely on funds derived from commercial fishing operations. Therein lies a not-to-be-ignored conflict that limits the effectiveness of any of the three preventative measures outlined above. As with all Planet Ocean problems, a centralized enforcement body appears to be the missing piece here. The borderless nature of the ocean makes it extremely difficult to save. That’s where you come in. I urge you to get involved by learning more and taking action wherever you can. The ocean needs us.

Seeing a whale in the ocean thrills me every time. Over the last five years, I’ve been lucky enough to see countless whales while fishing for tuna offshore and even just going to the beach. The balletic grace of a fifty-foot mature humpback evokes awe. Their outsized pectoral fins give them an alacrity no other whale species possesses. And they seem to like showing off, which, as a human, makes them relatable. Watching a humpback performing complex bubble net feeding or flipping its tale languidly when it dives one can’t help but cheer out loud. One can’t help but care.

So I've been focused on how the appearance of windmills in our area may be affecting whales. The number of whales washing up dead on east coast beaches has increased at the same time windfarm installation has scaled up offshore of my home in Montauk, NY. In 2023 and 2024, humpback whale deaths off the eastern seaboard spiked to 40 and 32, respectively. This time period coincides with increased wind farm development in our area, including Vineyard Wind 1 and the Southfork Wind Farm. The question is whether there’s any evidence that such development caused whale mortality or is it simply a coincidence?

Marine mammals are significantly affected by loud noise. Whales and dolphins use sound to communicate and navigate. Sound pollution from human activity interferes with these critical functions. Think of how a loud restaurant or concert interferes with your conversation. We have research to prove that anthropogenic noise affects whales. A study released in February of this year showed that finback whale communication decreased by up to 70% when the whales were exposed to airgun “shooting” used to survey potential oil drilling sites. Windmill surveying does not use this method, however, relying instead on sonar technology similar to sonar used by fishing vessels.

Driving the monopiles that form the foundation of windmills is the loudest part of windmill development. The pile-driving stage for the Southfork Wind Farm and Vineyard Wind 1 took place during the critical time period when whale deaths spiked, 2023-2024. Coincidence still may be the answer, however. Both wind farms deployed noise dampening bubble curtains that muffled decibel levels by up to 90%. At those reduced levels, the noise should have had little affect on whales. Are there other ways a wind farm can have a negative impact on marine mammals?

Baleen whales like humpback whales, finback whales, minke whales and critically endangered northern right whales all feed on small animals called copepods. Copepods feed on phytoplankton and phytoplankton mixes into the water column via currents and wind. A windmill will steal some of the force that would otherwise go towards making phytoplankton more accessible to copepods. Less copepods for whales means the whales need to expend energy looking elsewhere for a meal. But windmill foundations also generate turbulence capable of mixing the water and thus distributing phytoplankton.

My unsatisfying conclusion is that we don’t have a clear answer. For every negative effect of windmill construction, there’s a positive counter. Necropsies are performed on each dead whale that washes ashore. The results of every one of these necropsies indicate that whales die primarily as a result of vessel strikes or fishing gear entanglement. Could anthropogenic noise lead to whales being confused to the point that they are less able to avoid boats and fishing gear? Yes. Could altered phytoplankton concentration force whales into areas where vessels and fishing gear are prevalent? Yes. Could it all be chalked up to coincidence? Again, yes.

If you’re interested in finding out more, follow me here and on Instagram @montaukair where I will share more information as it becomes available.

Ocean Nibbles

☠️ The U.S. used 2 million tires in the to create an artificial reef in the ‘70s. Cleaning up the resulting environmental disaster is about 25% complete and current estimates don’t show 50% completion until 2033!

🐳 Sperm whales release air bubbles to maintain neutral buoyancy while “sleeping.” Sperm whales are the only whale species that rest by floating vertically heads up in the ocean. Scientists discovered that the whales release air gradually in order to avoid floating to the surface.

🦞 Millions of lobster pots littering the Maine seafloor are being removed by divers. Buzz Scott of nonprofit OceansWide is leading an effort to remove millions of lost lobster pots that pollute the Maine seafloor and interfere with lobster fishing.

SOS Wish List

Tin Can Coast: A History of Industry, Greed, and Fishing in the Golden State

Author: Joseph Ogilvy

Price: $12.65 on Amazon

The Northern California coast dominated the abalone, sardine and tuna fisheries for centuries. The decline of “cannery row” is described in exquisite detail by Ogilvy in this fascinating tale of how things fall apart.

Montauk Fishing Report

Summer fishing is in full swing with keeper fluke and seabass being caught by party boats and recreational fisherman just off the point. The Lazybones reported 11 keeper fluke on Thursday morning’s trip. Offshore, the bluefin tuna bite remains strong as does the whale show. Yellowfin tuna are beginning to move closer, with higher concentrations still in areas further west like Coimbra and offshore in the canyons.

Trump marches forward with plan to mine the deep seafloor

In an unprecedented move, the Trump administration announced it’s selling mining leases on more than 30 million acres of America Samoa’s Outer Continental Shelf. This is the latest move in the administration’s “next gold rush” campaign announced in April. An area off the Virginia coast roughly the size of Delaware is also being considered. Commercial deep sea mining has never been allowed before anywhere in the world.

The proposed deep sea exploitation targets mineral-rich deposits called polymetallic nodules. Polymetallic nodules are potato-sized deposits (see photo above) found scattered on the Pacific seafloor at depths of 4,000-6,000 meters (13,000-20,000 feet) that contain manganese, copper, nickel, cobalt and trace amounts of rare earth elements. (I wrote about them in SOS 011). In theory, these nodules can be mined and processed into the raw ingredients of battery tech, weapons, semiconductor chips and AI infrastructure, but deep sea mining has never been done anywhere in the world.

Why is POTUS pursuing deep sea mining with such rabid zeal? One word: China. China currently monopolizes the supply of these critical minerals, controlling ~60% of global rare earth mining and over 90% of processing capacity. The US, and the rest of the world, relies on China for the ingredients necessary to our defense. In fact, China is our sole source for some of the minerals most critical to weapons production: graphite, gallium, yttrium, arsenic and rare earth materials.

While it’s not ideal to give money to a chief rival in order to replenish our increasingly depleted weapons cache, let’s drill down into the benefit of deep sea mining. The primary benefit is security of supply for raw materials necessary to US weapons production and of AI and EV tech development. But the fact is that even if we obtained all the minerals we needed by opening up deep sea mining, we don’t have the capacity to process them. China is still way ahead of us and it will take years if not decades to build out necessary processing infrastructure domestically.

On top of the gap in processing capacity, the negative consequences for Planet Ocean will be nothing short of disastrous. First, the potential extinction of deep sea flora and fauna. Scientists surveying the seabed discover new species with increasing regularity. In the past year, 1,121 previously unknown species were discovered. Second, mining polymetallic nodules could release radiation into the ocean and endanger workers handling the nodules. A recent study found that polymetallic nodules contain dangerous levels of radiation. Mining the nodules will surely lead to the release of that radiation. Finally, deep sea mining techniques cause irreparable damage to the seafloor. The method used to remove polymetallic nodules consists of a vehicle equipped with a powerful vacuum. Nodules are sucked up to a surface vessel along with the top layer of sediment. The effect is an indiscriminate scraping of the ancient ocean floor. Is there a way to mine the seafloor in a sustainable manner? No.

Because we have no certainty around the potential negative impact to the fragile deep seafloor ecosystem and Planet Ocean in general, the only way to prevent irreversible harm to the ocean is banning deep sea mining altogether. Just like the nuclear weapons ban enacted in 2021, there should be a global moratorium on seafloor mining. By doing so, humans can demonstrate their capacity for learning from past mistakes. Pandora’s box can and should remain shut. If you agree, I urge you to make your voice heard by writing to your congressional representatives and/or signing the Greenpeace petition to stop deep sea mining here. The Ocean needs your help!

Ocean Nibbles

♵ Collecting floating plastic harms marine life. The Ocean Cleanup made headlines in 2019 when it used giant ocean skimmers to remove plastic from the ocean surface. Sadly, the skimmers also removed species that inhabit the ocean surface.

🌊 Seabird altruism. A study of black-legged kittiwakes shows that mothers who have an energy-intensive breeding season migrate further in order to ensure a successful breeding season the next year. The cost for this extra effort is a 67% survival rate compared to the typical 83% survival rate.

🐟 Why don’t deep sea fish implode? Fish that inhabit deep water have two ways to cope with the crushing pressure at depth: higher levels of unsaturated fatty acids and they contain higher levels of the chemical that makes fish smell, well, fishy.

SOS Wish List

Freeman 56

Price: $3,000,000-$3,500,000

Freeman Boatworks’ new 56’ catamaran is a battlewagon. Powered by up to 2,400 hp in the form of quadruple 600 hp outboards, the dual hull vessel is capable of cruising at 40 mph for up to 600 miles. No fuel bladder needed here. More information, including how to order yours, is available on Freeman’s website.

Montauk Fishing Report

A lingering low pressure system kept most boats at the dock for most of the week. If you’re planning on fishing today, expect company. We’re all eager to get back to the fishing grounds after several days of land lubbing! Boats that made it out report larger fluke and black sea bass south of the lighthouse and the golden sea bream née porgy fishing remains steady. Further from land, giant bluefin are an ever shortening trip from port. A giant bluefin was caught just 3 miles from the beach! I personally captured footage of one less than 2,000 feet from shore earlier this week. Smaller bluefins are less than an hour away. Yellowfin are also moving closer as warmer water moves in. Send me a message if you get tight!

_{My footage of a humpback bubble net feeding very close to our boat on July 17, 2026.}

What is bubble net feeding?

Bubble net feeding is a specialized feeding tactic where a whale spirals towards the surface while intermittently releasing its breath in a storm of bubbles in order to corral and concentrate a school of fish. The whale then opens its gaping mouth to capture as many fish as it can. Recent research shows that only humpback whales employ this method of feeding. While other whales species are capable of making the balletic turns necessary for bubble net feeding, only humpbacks can do so efficiently enough to make sense from an energy spending perspective. A humpback’s morphology enables the whales to turn sharply without expending excessive energy. Measuring one-third of a humpback’s length, their pectoral fins provide the whales with aileron-like alacrity. The fins pivot and flex, enabling aqua-batic movements that are impossible for other species to achieve efficiently. By efficiency, I mean that the energy spend exceeds the caloric potential of the targeted prey. Remarkably, the pattern the whales use when forming a bubble net is a golden spiral also known as a fibonacci sequence. A fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers such that each number is the sum of the preceding two numbers, i.e. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ad infinitum.

_{My footage of a mother humpback teaching her calf how to bubble net feed on July 17, 2026..}

Bubble net feeding is learned, not innate

A humpback isn’t born with the ability to bubble net feed. Instead, humpbacks learn the bubble net feeding technique from other humpbacks. I’d read that the whales learn this behavior from other whales. Around Montauk, I only started seeing humpbacks employ the bubble net method in the past three years. Are local whales learning from another population of humpbacks? How does a young whale learn how to blow bubbles? In the past week I was lucky enough to witness a mother and calf bubble net feeding on several occasions. We were tuna fishing just southeast of Montauk when I spotted whales spouting nearby. I launched my drone from the boat and was awed by what I saw through the monitor on the controller. In the drone video above, a mother appears to be teaching her calf how to effectively catch its food! First, she makes an outline using an uncharacteristic steady stream of air then she dives again to create a true bubble net with intermittent blasts of air designed to confuse and confine prey. The question is why did she make the first bubble net? Typically a whale, or group of whales (see below), only forms a single net before gulp feeding. Was the mother making an outline of the shape to highlight to her calf how it’s done? Or was she first demonstrating incorrect technique before showing her calf the correct one? My feeling is that it’s the former, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

_{My footage of two humpbacks participating in a bubble net feed in 2024.}

Bubble net feeding is often done by a group of whales

A group of humpbacks often cooperates to corral prey. I’ve seen a lot of solo whales create bubble nets. Just as frequently, I’ve seen concentric bubble nets created by a group of whales. Each whale forms its own net to compound the confusion of the school of fish being targeted. The whales then gulp feed at exactly the same moment. It’s incredible to see from the air. My drone video above shows two whales cooperating in a bubble net feed. I’ve seen up to three in Montauk, but videos from other parts of Planet Ocean depict even larger groups of whales cooperating in bubble net feeds. Precise communication is the only explanation for the high level of coordination that humpbacks are able to achieve. I’d love to know what they’re saying! Wouldn’t you?

Microplastics Found in Deep Sea Marine Life

How prevalent are microplastics on Planet Ocean? Omnipresent, apparently. Even the deepest parts of the ocean abound with these tiny bits of discarded products such as Dunkin Donuts coffee cups, the kind recently discontinued by the coffee chain. A recent study found microplastics in 92% (!!!) of animals living around hydrothermal vents at a depth of more than 6,600 feet. Polystyrene (a/k/a styrofoam) was the most common plastic compound detected. Good on Dunkin Donuts for having replaced their styrofoam cups with more environmentally-friendly paper ones, but maybe too little, too late? Microplastics are defined as particles less than five millimeters in length. Smaller than a sesame seed. The deep sea animals gathered by the scientists included snails and mussels. Each individual specimen contained an average of 3.42 particles. If you’re thinking to yourself, “abysmal,” you’re correct. Ohhh mercy, mercy me.

The “Great Dying” was Caused by Climate Change and Diminishing Oxygen in Ancient Seas

Climate change happens. Always has. A sudden warming that occurred 252 million years ago resulted in a mass extinction referred to as the “Great Dying.” That name may seem dramatic, but it’s fitting considering that the event resulted in the extinction of 96% of ocean species and 70% of land animals. The ocean inhabitants most affected by the die-off were ancient clam-like animals called brachiopods and seafloor fauna like sea lilies. Their extinction made room for today’s mollusks and fish. New research suggests that the species most affected by the Great Dying were animals and plants least able to tolerate warm, oxygen-starved water. The suddenness of the change resulted from the release of “gargantuan amounts” of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane from an historic level of volcanic activity during that period. My bleak takeaway? Such a global event could happen at any time. The story of this planet is still in draft mode. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, my friends.

Pelagic species like tuna may have evolved more gradually than previously thought

If you’re thinking that this week’s article is more geeky than usual, you are correct. Some weeks I feel whimsical, others I crave a deeper dive. Continuing on the latter path, recent research finds that pelagic fishes may have developed more slowly than scientists have hypothesized. Scombridae, a category that includes mackerel, tuna and other fish whose fins are supported by small, bony structures called “rays.” Some of these fish can even generate their own heat just like us. Bluefin tuna, for example, can warm themselves when swimming through colder waters. The scientific name for warm-bloodedness is “endothermy.” A bluefin’s endothermy allows it to access food in cooler water where their competition cannot go. The recent study focused on the evolution of endothermy. It was previously thought that endothermic species emerged suddenly as a consequence of the Cretaceous-Paleogenic K-Pg mass extinction that occurred 66 million years ago after a huge asteroid struck Planet Ocean (Dinosaurs disappeared as a result of the K-Pg mass extinction, as did an estimated 75% of all animals on the planet). But the new research suggests that endothermy in pelagic fish developed much more slowly over millions of years. Research will continue and may revert to previously held theories. Science also evolves slowly, it turns out.

Ocean Nibbles

🌊 Scottish marine scientists appoint the ocean to their board. The Scottish Association for Marine Sciences tap into a global movement to give nature a seat at the table when deciding what’s best for it.

🌎 Nocturnal ocean animals sink more carbon than cars produce. Diel vertical migration is the daily ascent and descent of zooplankton. They do so to feed in shallower water. As a result of this daily migration, an annual 6.6 billion tons of carbon is removed from the atmosphere. Wow!

🐙 Rare dumbo octopus spotted off Norway. One of the cutest octopuses was recently spotted by researchers studying a seabed mining zone near Norway. Let’s take a pause on seabed mining, if only to save its most adorable inhabitants.

Score One for the Whales

I cheered a bit (inside) when I heard about how a breaching humpback whale sank a New Jersey fire department boat that was returning from security patrol in connection with Fourth of July fireworks display in the New York harbor. Is that wrong ? Why? No humans were harmed. They looked pretty silly, but they were all fine. The whales? They were just doing their thing, breaching to feed off of baitfish (menhaden/bunker, I assume) in the ocean off New Jersey. The suspect whale was in breaching mode, about to break the surface, when its head struck the stern of the small fire dept. vessel. It was enough to fatally upset the craft. The firefighters were dumped into the ocean and quickly rescued by nearby jet skiers. But how about the whale? It’s unknown whether the whale sustained any injuries. Clearly, such cranial impact would cause a serious headache at minimum. But no one tracked the fate of tour friend. Let’s hope he/she recovered as well as the firemen. Regardless, the event is getting a lot of press with the subtext being that whales are dangerous. SMH. My takeaway is we should stay clear of whales when on the water. Federal law prohibits getting closer to a whale than 100 yards, yet I’ve personally witnessed (and have drone footage of) recreational fishing boats purposely approaching feeding whales and casting lures across their bodies while targeting tuna. Not a good idea, as this story points out.

Local Great White says “Cheese”

What lurks beneath. We all know they are here. The men in the gray suit swim among us. But who’s ever seen one? Even with the advantage of a drone, I've yet to have spotted a great white shark near Montauk. Does that make me any less trepidatious when swimming in the ocean? No and neither will the recent footage captured by researchers from the Atlantic Shark Institute (ASI) of a juvenile great white shark swimming beneath the carcass of a humpback whale off Block Island. Great whites tend to avoid humans. I promise. One exception is when the humans are near a shark’s food source. Great whites love to feed on the nutrient dense whale blubber of a deceased whale. In the past two weeks, there have been two dead humpbacks drifting upon the surface of our waters. One of them washed up in front of my house. I wrote about it in last week’s SOS. The other whale washed ashore on Block Island, just after the ASI researchers captured remarkable footage of a great white swimming beneath the whale in the clear turquoise water that we get this time of year courtesy of the Gulf Stream’s summer route. The researchers had reports of a dead whale in the vicinity of Block Island. After searching for hour, they were about to call it quits when they spotted a floating hump that was being circled by gulls. The underwater footage they grabbed is jealous-making to someone like me whose passion is filming marine life. Anyone else hear the soundtrack from Jaws in their heads?

Be Careful What You Wish For: Japanese Fisherman Report a Record Bluefin Catch

Japanese tuna fishing is having its moment. The 2026 pacific bluefin quota allotted to Japan is 8,421 metric tons. Just halfway through the year, fisherman are already approaching that limit. They are not happy. Arguing that the banner haul indicates successful conservation measures, Japan is proposing a revision to the quotas at a joint conference of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission - Northern Committee and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission that kicked off July 8th in Nagasaki, Japan. Fisherman who reach their quota are forced to release any excess catch. But it’s unclear whether the new abundance of bluefin around Japan is due to successful conservation efforts or climate change. Regulators argue that the increased catch in Japan may be due to a warming ocean’s effect on the migratory patterns of the king of tuna. It’s interesting to note that Montauk has also seen an abundance of bluefin over the past several seasons. Last year, the recreational bluefin fishery was closed in August. There were still plenty of bluefin around, some of them even hunt just off the beach here. But catching one meant releasing an exhausted fish to an uncertain end. Balancing demand with supply requires research at an institutional level. When it comes to conserving fish, I’ll always err on the side of caution. Especially for my favorite fish, the bluefin tuna.

Ocean Nibbles

🤬 False Killer Whales in Hawaii are Getting Hangry. False killer whales are a charcoal gray endangered cousin of orcas. Competing with commercial fisherman for their supper is not working out so well for them.

🤿 Argentinian Dive Instructor Charged with Manslaughter after Losing Diver. In the my-personal-nightmare file, a 26-year-old diver was found dead after being lost by her instructor in poor viz conditions.

🛥️ Billionaire Repurposes 640-foot Megayacht for Ocean Research. Who says billionaires are a$$holes? REV Ocean’s maiden expedition will be led by Mark Bond, a marine scientist from Florida International University.

SOS Wish List

Garmin GT360UHD 360-Degree Sonar with Spy Pole

42” Spy Pole Bundle $2,999.98

49” Spy Pole Bundle $3,199.98

I’ve heard 360-degree sonar described as underwater radar for fishing. I’ve also heard it described as cheating. Either way, it’s the way of the future for recreational fishing tech and I’m thinking I need one. But mounting the large periscope-like transducer on a small craft hasn’t really been practical. Until now. Garmin’s “Pole Spy” mounts to smaller boats similar to a GPS anchor, making this tech accessible to boats smaller than a 46” battle wagon. Buy yours here.

Montauk Fishing Report

The wind this week has been strong, keeping most boats at the dock. But those who ventured out of the inlet found more fluke and larger black sea bass, along with an abundance of porgies. Offshore, bluefin tuna continue to move closer to shore. Giants are biting at annoying levels for recreational fisherman since the trophy category shut down on July 3rd, even in the canyons. On the Bounty Uncharted, we hooked into two giants in the wee hours of the night on our last trip. Kept us awake, but in vain. Yellowfin and big eyes abound in the canyons and warmer water should bring them closer soon.

Requiem for a Humpback Whale

I’ve spent a lot of time around humpback whales. From a distance, mostly. Like everyone in Montauk I’ve awed at the juveniles who lunge feed along our beaches all summer. Some days, they’re so close that an onshore wind carries their briny breath to our noses. I’ve also been much closer to humpbacks at times. A couple of years ago, my wife and I went to Vava’u, Tonga to swim with mothers and calves. In the weeks preceding the trip, I organized my camera gear and underwater housing, planning out shots that I wanted to capture. This was an opportunity to grab once in a lifetime images of humpbacks, I thought. What I didn’t know was that looking into the eye of a 60 foot whale is nothing short of spiritual. The curiosity and recognition I discovered when swimming mere feet from these gentle giants left an indelible mark on my soul. Getting home after that trip, I had a new connection to humpbacks. Unlike most people in Montauk I use a drone to film the whales as they swim along our beaches. Looking through the monitor, my perspective is much more intimate than a lot of people get to experience. I feel fully present to a whale’s movements, able to anticipate where it will surface next and when it will dive. Filming a humpback is something I never take for granted. After dozens of encounters over the last six years of flying drones, I never take for granted the privilege of seeing them up close at a distance.

At 5:30 a.m. on Friday, June 26th, I walked out of the door of our trailer home that sits a mere hundred yards from the high tide line and was immediately struck by the smell of decaying whale. At the time, I didn’t realize that’s what I was smelling. Instead I thought I was smelling the massive schools of sand eels I’ve been seeing a quarter mile from shore for the past few weeks. As a fisherman who often uses sand eels for fluke bait, it’s a smell I’m familiar with. Our minds tend to cling to the familiar to protect us from the incomprehensible.

I went back inside to grab my drone, thinking I was about to witness a massive feed by the usual suspects this time of year: striped bass, bluefish, terns, cormorants and gulls. Walking out to the deck that hovers above the breakers, I powered on the drone and controller and was airborne within minutes. Ascending to 200 feet, I scanned the ocean through the controller’s monitor. There was some activity on the surface nearby and I sent the drone in that direction without even looking down at the shore where the source of the smell was lolling in the gentle waves of the breathlessly calm dawn. A big splash. Could it be I had spotted my first humpback of the season?! As the drone got closer, I was thrilled to see the bright white pectoral fins just under the surface. The filter of ocean water tinges the white fins a fluorescent aqua. My eyes are riveted to the monitor screen planning my approach angle for the perfect cinematic capture of a feeding humpback. The whale was swimming through dense schools of sand eels. Their reddish hue distinguishes sand eels from other prey fish. These schools were massive bait balls, strung together for miles like a giant beaded necklace encircling the Montauk peninsula.

For about 30 minutes, I filmed this juvenile (see video above) traveling between sand eels clusters. Its lunges were the clumsy surface breaches of a freshly weaned juvenile learning to feed itself. I giggled to myself at the adorableness. What a cutie, I thought. Predicting when and where the whale would lunge is more an art than a science and I was variably successful at it. When the battery level of the drone dwindled to 30%, I turned the drone towards its homepoint a/k/a my perch on the wood bench of one of the trailer park decks overlooking the ocean. Through the monitor, I spotted the true source of the pungent fishiness. A 40-foot humpback whale corpse was heaved upon the rocks of the revetment that protects our home by the sea from that sea’s awesome kinetic prowess. My heart stopped in empathy for her.

After calling the NOAA marine mammal hotline, I learned that I wasn’t the first to see her. Her body had been spotted the night before about seven miles south of Montauk and was predicted to wash ashore on Block Island. From the huge semicircular bite marks on her pectoral fins and head, great white sharks had also been aware of her. But what had caused her demise? We know that boat strikes and entanglement in commercial fishing gear are the primary dangers for whales. Humans were the most likely culprit. After another day of waiting, the Town of East Hampton used an outsized Caterpillar excavator to move the whale’s corpse to the beach in front of “dirt lot” so that scientists from the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society could perform a necropsy. My wife and I walked over with our two golden retrievers, Norman and George, to witness the scientists gathering samples. The image was familiar. They were using blades mounted on long wooden poles to slice off large portions of blubber. I’d seen this before. Whalers used the same implements to remove blubber before rendering it into oil. Only now, these instruments of an outlawed occupation were being used to learn more about a species we are trying to protect. It was haunting to see, while also hopeful. Some day we will learn better ways to prevent the premature deaths of our marine cousins. Can we make fishing gear safer for them? Can we develop simple warning systems that can be installed on boats? Seeing the dozen or so scientists on the beach that day gave me hope. Smart people are working to save the whales from extinction. Future generations will inherit a Planet Ocean with more whales.

New Hope for Coral Reefs

The film Chasing Coral made me cry. I’ll admit that to you. This is the age of vulnerability after all. Coral is less vulnerable, however. And that’s a good thing. It’s rare that we see positive research about the fate of Planet Ocean’s most beautiful and life-sustaining ecosystems. Rising ocean temps have lead to numerous bleaching events globally. Coral bleaching occurs when the symbiotic algae hosted by corals dies. The affected corals appear bright white, as if bleached. The algae provides coral with its primary source of food. Without the algae, coral must filter feed on passing plankton. However, coral can only survive for so long without the algae. If conditions don’t permit the algae to regrow, the coral eventually dies. New research aided by machine learning models has discovered that one-third of the world’s coral may be much more tolerant to warming water than previously thought. More than half of the resilient coral is found in the Bahamas, Cuba, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines, five countries that are surrounded by extensive reef systems. The survival of these heat-tolerant corals will still require regulatory support and that’s where we all need to focus our voices. With enough volume, governments will hear our cries to Save the Coral.

Trump Administration Backs Down on its Plan to Dismantle Critical Ocean Monitoring

Want more good news about Planet Ocean? A plan to discontinue the decade-old U.S. deep sea monitoring system was withdrawn this week by the Trump administration. As a result, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) commissioned in 2016 will continue to provide valuable data to scientists from more than 900 deep-sea monitoring equipment located off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and a region between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank whose mission is to build and promote conservative public policy, had recommended shutting down the OOI. After congressional and international backlash, the administration thankfully caved. Score another victory for Planet Ocean. The OOI’s extensive monitoring system enabled remote research without the need to launch “risky, difficult and expensive deep-sea boat expeditions every year.”

Massive Whale Graveyard Discovered in the Indian Ocean

Covering over 750 miles, the deep-sea “megasite” named the Diamantina Zone necropolis by researchers contains whale fossils as old as 5 million years. The site is the most extensive whale graveyard ever observed. Among the remains of ancient whales, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering found five active whale falls covered in a type of bacteria that lives without light or oxygen. This bacteria converts a whale’s death into the birth of a diverse deep-sea community. The bacteria produces hydrogen sulfide, a chemical that provides energy to jellyfish, brittle stars, bivalves mollusks and bone-eating Osedax worms. Talk about making lemonade from lemons! The oldest fossil observed by the Chinese researchers belonged to an extinct species of beaked whales from the genus Pterocetus. Scientists hypothesize that similarly rich whale necropolises may exist off of South Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and remote areas of Antarctica. We have much to learn about what lies on the ocean floor. What a time to be alive and love the ocean.

Ocean Nibbles

🦈 Rare sighting of a great white shark in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean population of great white sharks is critically endangered. In mid-May, a diver spotted a 13-foot great white while diving 50 miles from land in the Strait of Sicily.

🦈 Goblin shark filmed for the first time. Even rarer than a Mediterranean great white sighting, a goblin shark was recently captured by a remote camera located at a depth of 2000 meters in the Tonga Trench. Check out the video of this living fossil!

🐳 Humpback whale migration breaks distance record. A single humpack whale was found to have traveled over 9,300 miles from Brazil to Australia. The previous record was a 8,800 mile journey that also took the whale from Brazil to Australia.

SOS Wish List

Valhalla Boatworks V-41

Base price: $876,000

This week we’re aiming high. But we’re not getting greedy. Wishing for a Valhalla V-55 would be greedy… With a max engine HP of 1,800 and impeccably designed fishability, the V-41 will do just fine. Build yours here.

🚨 Montauk Fishing Report

Inshore: The migration of species such as bluefish, striped bass, fluke and tuna follows the migration of their food. Seeing a massive school of sand eels from my drone’s camera this week got me stoked for the season. I was looking for bunker, but instead found an innumerable school of the oily sand eels that feed most of the fish we catch out here in Montauk. Fishing the north rips this week on the Bounty Uncharted, we saw tons of small sand eels on the surface while targeting striped bass. Feeding on these sand eels were small bluefish. It was almost impossible to get below the bluefish, so we started casting for them with small tins. Cast after cast resulted in a tussle with one of these “cocktail” blues. A couple of times, mammoth striped bass followed the bluefish to our boat. If you’re looking to catch and release a giant striper, you might want to try live lining a small bluefish. Reports from party boats targeting fluke and black sea bass are mixed. Not many keepers around yet. I can confirm that. When we switched to a sea bass spot, we found only one keeper sea biscuit among dozens of undersized fish.

Offshore: Last Sunday, Bounty Uncharted headed 100 miles south to Atlantis Canyon to see if we could get in on the nonstop action being reported out there. We were not disappointed. It was a 2-man crew, Jeff and me. Trolling with green and purple spreader bars, we had two triple strikes by some very chunky yellowfin. Keeping the third fish on the line while fighting the other two proved impossible. We still got home with plenty of meat. Big eyes also abound out there. The water temp was up to 71 degrees. It was nice seeing clean blue Gulf Stream water in our backyard again!

Nantucket Fisherman Wrestles Great White Shark

“Jackass,” was my first thought when I read about Elliot Sudal’s adventure with a juvenile great white while surfcasting on Nantucket. Call me judgy but shark fishing is something relegated to the childish fantasies of 10-year old boys. Sure, it’s click bait. Guaranteed that Elliot posts his shark fishing “successes” on social media. Don’t follow him before reading the rest of this article. The fact is that humans kill 100 million sharks a year on Planet Ocean. Most of these unlucky sharks are finned/de-limbed then shoved over the side of the boat. Why, oh, why would a grown man target sharks? Enter Sudal, a man child stuck with a prebubescent (imho) fantasy life who brags about having caught “1000-plus sandbars and hundreds of duskys off the beach.”The guy even has an “apprentice.” When you educate yourself about sharks, you learn that sharks kill humans at an almost immeasurable rate compared to the inverse statistic. I’m looking at you, Elliot.

Trump Administration Opens Marine Conservation Areas to Commercial Fishing

Presidents want a legacy. POTUS is no different. Yesterday, President Trump signed the “Executive Proclamation Restoring American Commercial Fishing in the Pacific,” opening up remote Pacific marine conservation areas to U.S. commercial fishing vessels. Areas like the Mariana Trench National Monument are now an option for catching pelagic species like the Pacific yellowfin tuna (see photo). On one side, law-abiding American fisherman have been locked out of these areas while foreign vessels regularly flout regulations. On the other side, these areas have been protected for good reason. They provide needed sanctuary for pelagic species that visit them on their migrations. I support commercial fisherman. The vast majority of them respect the ocean, harvesting wild fish in a responsible manner. And we need them. Not everyone has the means to catch their own dinner. However, restrictions on fishing is necessary to keep everyone honest and preserve dwindling stocks. Globally, only 10% of Planet Ocean is protected as a marine conservation area and fishing restrictions apply to only 3.5% of the ocean. With 35.5% of fish stock classified as overfished, the administration is creating more opportunity to exploit previously protected areas. What could possibly go wrong?

North Atlantic Right Whale Entangled in Rope in Gulf of St. Lawrence

With a global population of approximately 380, North Atlantic right whales qualify as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. The biggest threats to North Atlantic right whales are fishing gear entanglement and vessel strikes (right whales tend to spend most of their time on the surface). We can add climate change to that list. An ever-warming ocean alters the migration patterns of zooplankton, their primary food. This week, researchers in New Brunswick spotted a North Atlantic right whale dragging behind it a long length of rope from fishing gear. The search is on to locate the whale and, if possible, free it from the rope. Scientists estimate that 85% of North Atlantic right whales run afoul of fishing gear at some point in their lives. Most of the whales free themselves without human intervention. The species has a potential lifespan of 50 plus years. Let’s hope this whale is lucky enough to die of natural causes decades from now.

Ocean Nibbles

💩 Sustainably sourced seafood restaurant not so sustainable. The owner of the popular Dudley Market in Venice, CA was fined $150,000 for repeatedly taking fish from restricted areas to serve at the restaurant he advertised as a “source of fully sustainable, transparent, and lawfully procured fish.”

❤️ Engineered algae eats microplastics. When I get down about microplastic ubiquity, I try to calm down by telling myself there are a lot of very smart people working on the problem. Here is a good example.

🦑 Elusive giant squid in deep-sea canyons off western Australia. Scientists found evidence of giant squid by analyzing DNA found in water samples. Famously camera shy, these deep sea denizens have only been caught on camera a handful of times. The ingenuity of these scientists confirms previous hypotheses.

SOS Wish List

Revo® SX VoltiQ™ Low Profile Reel

Price: $249.95

I was late to the baitcaster game, acquiring my first just a few years ago. Maybe it was the Kool Aid they served at Angler’s Club, Montauk that day but I’m now a full convert who eschews conventional reels whenever possible. This new machine from Abu Garcia has the looks and technology you need. Cop one here. Thank me later.

🚨 Montauk Fishing Report 🚨

It’s been a strong start to the season at the tip of Long Island. Tons of bait in the water (you can see giant schools of minnows from your boat when fishing the north rips) has brought massive striped bass when the tide is ripping. Last Saturday, on Bounty Uncharted, my first cast produced a 40-inch cow. Subsequent casts by the crew and me were also successful. On a changing tide, look for diving birds and use any tin you’ve got. Take a quick photo and release the under/overs so they can survive for the rest of us. Bottom fishing has been much slower. There are a few fluke, Black Sea bass and porgies a/k/a golden sea bream around. They are mostly shorts, however. On recent trips, we weren't able to catch a single keeper of any of the respective species. Offshore is starting to turn on, too. Big eye, yellowfin, and white marlin were caught this week in Veatch Canyon. And there’s a fortuitous eddy of warm water approaching Block Canyon. We’re heading deep on Sunday. Stay tuned to find out whether we locate the fish. Happy hunting!

Save the Deep Sea Corals

Out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps one of the most dangerous aspects of human nature is our ability to ignore what we don’t see. Blindspots are something to consider in the environment (and our lives). The unknown unknowns. Among the unknown unknowns are deep sea corals that thrive in the cold water off the coast of North America. This week, let’s make them known knowns. For years, I’ve found coral fragments on the beach never realizing that we have coral just offshore in the canyons. Underwater canyons form at the edges of the continental shelf. Canyons near Montauk include the Hudson Canyon. Formed by the erosive power of the Hudson River, the canyon extends out 400 miles from the New York harbor and reaches depths of 10,500 feet. Just like the Hudson Canyon, the canyons located in the Northeast Canyons and Seamount Marine National Monument (NCSMNM) provide invaluable habitat for fish and corals. As the Trump administration seeks to permit commercial fishing in the NCSMNM, it’s important to realize the impact of doing so. Cold water corals like the magnificent bubblegum coral (see photo above) grow extremely slowly, approximately 1mm per year. Which means that the inevitable damage caused by fishing gear will be effectively irreparable. Just how much damage will occur is unclear. Which brings us to the other known. The unknown known. We know the damage to precious corals will occur, we do not know how extensive it will be.

Banning Draggers is Effective

Pulling heavy gear across the sea floor in pursuit of fish has been a tried and true technique in Europe since at least the 14th century. 86% of the seabed in the Greater North Sea and Celtic Sea has been torn apart by this destructive, non-selective technique. Bottom dragging is kinda like using dynamite to kill a gopher. In fact, the European sea floor has been so damaged that researchers need to look at 150-200 year old records to find descriptions of a healthy European continental shelf. But a small area of sea floor off Scotland where commercial dragging is prohibited demonstrates the effectiveness of such restrictions. About a decade ago, Scotland established the South Arran Marine Protected Area (SAMPA) where destructive fishing methods are banned outright. A recent study focused on SAMPA found evidence of increases in juvenile fish and smaller animals such as worms and snails. Worms and snails act as the “gardeners of the seabed,” continuously turning over the sediment and, consequently, aiding in the capture of carbon. Let’s hope more countries join Scotland in banning commercial dragging. I’d like to see what the sea floor looked like 200 years ago. How about you?

NASA Visualization of Global Ocean Currents

Mapping Planet Ocean’s currents is critical to understanding the effects of climate change. NASA released a visualization showing the movement of currents around the world. Ocean currents push heat from warmer to cooler areas and affect salinity. The currents also carry nutrients that feed fish and, indirectly, us. A previous version of the visualization showed the ocean’s currents in two dimensions, while the current version shows 3D modeling based on satellite observations and buoy data. The video is mesmerizing as it zooms into a close overhead shot of the spinning globe. My favorite part is how you are able to see the immensity of the Gulf Stream as it moves up the eastern seaboard of North America. The graphics are Van Gogh-esque and trippy. Check it out here.

Ocean Nibbles

🤿 Nat Geo’s coldest expedition? Cristian Lagger is probing the unknowns off of Antarctica. As part of the Nat Geo and Rolex Perpetual Ocean Expeditions series, Lagger is using ROVs to discover new species and gather data on carbon absorption.

🧬 Planet Ocean is full of dolphin mucus. And scientists, the ever curious heroes they are, use DNA found in mucus to study dolphins without ever seeing them. The data gathered is also helping to analyze the health of dolphins’ genetic diversity.

🌊 The Gulf Stream is weakening much faster than we thought. According to new research, the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation (AMOC) which includes the Gulf Stream, will weaken by 51% by 2100. The new data reveals slowing 60% higher than previously predicted.

SOS Wish List

Avet Reels T-RXW80/3

Price $1,199.99

Reels are my rolexes. I’m fascinated by them. With gearing almost as complex as a luxury wrist piece and a focus on ergonomics, fishing reels are my weakness. Of all the reel manufactures, Avet dominates with next level gearing and ergonomics. The T-RX80/3 has everything you want to land a 300 lb. plus tuna or marlin with a 3-speed gear transmission and peerless ergonomics. Just look at that lever handle. Buy yours here.