Earth Law Center (Twitter)

I chose to follow Earth Law Center, a small organization that advocates in favor of nature’s rights, due to its presence at the WCC and its concern with indigenous rights.

Mission Blue (Facebook)

I chose to follow Mission Blue, a large global organization concerned with the ocean and Marine Protected Areas, because of its presence at the WCC and its frequent postings on marine conservation issues.

Pretoma (Facebook)

I chose to follow Pretoma, a small non-governmental organization, because of their goal of promoting marine conservation while also conducting their own research.  From this organization, I hoped to get information from a small scale organization from another country.  

GEF (Twitter)

GREEN SEA TURTLE MAKES HISTORIC MIGRATION

Sanjay, a male green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), overcame the hostility of the American and Asian fishing fleets in the Pacific Ocean and completed a historic maritime migration. He traveled the distance of 788 kilometers between 2 to 16 June, Sanjay sailed from Cocos Marine Park in Costa Rica, to the Galapagos Marine Reserve in Ecuador. Sanjay became the first to directly connect two protected regions and demonstrate the connectivity (apparently a genetic connectivity) that exists in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.

The odyssey was recorded through its satellite monitoring. In a deploy realized earlier this month at Coco Island, which belongs to Costa Rica, by Turtle Island Restoration Network and Programme of Sea Turtle Restoration (Pretoma)

Pretoma's Jorge Ballestero, who said the correct legal parties have been contacted and that "guilty parties will be duly sanctioned" after fishing inspectors found international fishing vessel, Hung Chi Fu XII, landing shark fins at public docks in Puntarenas. Article 40 of Costa Rican Fishing Law says sharks must be landed with fins attached.

Science Expedition #2

Thursday evening, Randall Arauz and 8 colleagues boarded Sirenuse at Los Suenos, and we immediately departed for the southern part of the Nicoya Peninsula.  Pretoma, the organization Randall heads, deals mostly with marine turtle preservation, but several years ago, a friend gave him a video of a Costa Rican fishing boat finning sharks, and since then he has become a rabble rousing activist for changing laws both about shrimp fishing (endangers turtles and many other creatures) and shark finning.  In fact he won TWO international environmental awards in the last year, one, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the environmental community. 

Randall with the tag he uses on turtles   Photo Christine Guinness

They will be working in three teams—fishing for big shark to tag; putting out nets to catch and tag turtles; and mapping the ocean floor in turtle habitat to document what green turtles food choices are.  There are green turtles in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, but there seem to be differences, and some evidence that the single species has evolved into two.  When North and South America were not connected, they, of course swam together, but the emerging Isthmus of Panama separated them forever and changes have occurred.

More about this soon...

Here are links about Pretoma and Randall's work:

 About Pretoma –

http://www.pretoma.org

About Randall -

http://www.seaweb.org/getinvolved/oceanvoices/RandallArauz.php

Daily blog about  the Pretoma Sirenuse Expedition –

http://www.pretoma.org/campaigns/sharks-and-sea-turtles-census-expedition-in-sourthern-nicoya-peninsula

About the Goldman Prize –  includes a short video by Robert Redford’s group

If you're jonesing for some environmental education and are going anywhere near the metropolitan area next week, the University of Costa Rica is having a press conference in honor of International Wetlands Day. Speakers will include biologist Randall Arauz, head of marine watchdog organization PRETOMA; and Gino Biamonte, president of the environmental organization (and, by far, our favorite Costa Rican acronym)  APREFLOFAS.

Date:  10am Tuesday, February 8 Where:  Social Sciences auditorium, UCR.  Main campus, Rodrigo Facio, San Pedro de Montes de Oca.

For more information, click here, or contact Karla Córdoba Brenes Communication/Fundación Neotrópica representative, at [email protected]

2253.2130, or 8892.5566