Help for Ocean Planet

• Wilson Vailoces, a sixty-year-old farmer from the Bindoy Province in the Philippines started Sea Watchers, a volunteer organization to patrol for illegal destructive fishing practices and replant lost mangroves. He has planted nearly 10,000 mangrove trees himself.

• SOSUS, a Navy sonar listening system designed to detect Soviet submarines is now being used to help conserve the oceans. Operators have used SOSUS to enforce the United Nations ban on driftnets and track the movement of whales.

• A French and British ban on boat paint containing tributyl tin produced almost immediate improvement in poisoned oyster populations.

• Each year 160,000 of volunteers from 33 countries participate in the International Coastal Clean-up.

• In November, 1994, the United Nations Law of the Sea treaty took effect. This "constitution for the oceans" governs seabed mining, environmental protection, exploitation of natural resources, as well as jurisdiction, access to the seas, scientific research, and settlement of disputes.

• Reef Relief, a local Florida group working to prevent anchor damage to coral reefs, has installed more than one hundred mooring buoys in Key West. Concern for the health of the Antarctic ecosystem prompted world leaders to negotiate CCAMLR (Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources). CCAMLR regulates all fishing activities in the Southern Ocean andrequires that fisheries management consider potential effects on the entire ecosystem, instead of focusing solely on the fish.

• The International Marine Life Alliance trains Philippine fishermen to use nets instead of harmful cyanide to catch aquarium fish, and campaigns around the world against cyanide-caught aquarium fish.

• Turtle excluder devices, now required on shrimp nets throughout the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and western Atlantic reduce sea turtle kill by 97 percent and still capture 98 percent of the shrimp that enter the nets.

• Compact fluorescent light bulbs use only one-fourth as much electricity as conventional incandescent bulbs. Although socket-type fluorescent bulbs are more expensive, they last about thirteen-times longer and save about-three times what they cost over the life of the bulb.

• The Sacramento Municipal Utilities District removes ozone-harming CFCs from old refrigerators, returns the coolants to the manufacturer for recycling, and sells the metal for scrap.

Ocean Planet Exhibition Floorplan

gene carl feldman (gene@seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov) (301) 286-9428

Judith Gradwohl, Smithsonian Institution (Curator/Ocean Planet)