News Blog

Thursday was spent primarily in concurrent sessions.  Because CSTR's reefs will provide two stakeholder sectors with recreation opportunities, we attended the Marine Spatial Planning sessions to understand how the new National Ocean Policy might affect us.  In addition we attended the session on the Oil Rigs Decommissioning and were able to clarify one of our questions left over from the Rigs to Reefs conference.

We may have located another funding source for our projects, which is very exciting.  Of course, these sessions raised additional questions that we will now have to nail down, but they wouldn't even have been on our radar had we not been here.

Friday is a short day & we are then off to Oklahoma City for the USS Hassayampa Reunion.

I hope you have enjoyed reading these small synopsis of this conference and will follow future blogs on other events or topics.

Today was a really busy day.  The booth opened at 7am with the opening session at 8:15.  The president of Kiribati spoke on how climate change is expected to wipe his island nation off the map.  They are doing everything possible to save their country but time is against them.

Several of the short films from the Blue Ocean Film and Conservation Summit were presented at today's luncheon, along with the 2 winners of the 1st Annual Thank You Ocean Photo Competition.  The winning photo was of a nudibranch from under the Coast Guard pier in Morro Bay.

The afternoon was spent in concurrent sessions about financing ecosystem services and we came away with lots of good information and ideas for the future.

Many people have visited us at the booth and reception to what we are doing by this group of environmentalists is enthusiastic about what we are doing.  The Yukon photos are a big hit.  Thanks to all our photographers for their submissions last year to help us show her off to her best advantage.  Makes telling our story much easier.

Tomorrow is another long day - 7am to 11pm.  Talk to you then.  

Set-up booth & attended Ocean Protection Council meeting.  Announcements included EPA's new authority to regulate some 20 million gallons of treated sewage from large vessel discharge within the State 3-mile water line - an 80% reduction in dumping;  the new 85 units of K-12 science curriculum which will contain ocean instruction.  State Lands Commission's Conference October 18-19 in Long Beach.

The California Seafloor Mapping Project is now 90% complete.  A new fault was located near Diablo Canyon - need to look at that for our PSL & Morro Bay sites.  We can now look at the full 3-mile State lands for the entire state online and obtain detailed information on not only bathymetric information but also biologics.  They located some areas offshore of San Luis Obispo where baby rock fish are found in sandy areas, not near rocky reefs.

The 5-year Program Evaluation for Ocean Protection Council is now available online for review and public comment thru October 5th. 

Today's meeting provided lots of good info for our future decisions.

Tonight we exhibit for 2 hours and the conference officially starts tomorrow.  Talk to you then.