Conserving Habitats
When Titans Collide: The Hidden Environmental Cost of Shipping Disasters
Introduction The vast blue highways of our global ocean carry nearly 90% of global trade, with massive vessels traversing international waters day and night. While these maritime thoroughfares are essential …
Ticking Time Bombs Beneath the Waves: Racing to Prevent Catastrophic Pollution from WWII Shipwrecks
Maritime meetings in Malta have a unique historical context—the island’s recorded maritime history stretches back more than 7 thousand years. Some say that the design of traditional Maltese fishing boats, …
ForestSplat: Proof-of-Concept for a Scalable and High-Fidelity Forestry Mapping Tool Using 3D Gaussian Splatting
The Ocean Foundation’s Blue Resilience Initiative collaborated on a proof-of-concept, led by Coolant, that introduces a new accurate and affordable forest mapping tool, ForestSplat. The team evaluated their approach by …
The Ocean Foundation’s Strategic Value to U.S. National Interests
Introduction On January 22, 2025, Secretary of State Rubio issued a press statement on the “priorities and mission of the Second Trump Administration’s Department of State.” In it, he said, …
Nature’s Shield: Lessons from the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami
Reflecting on the importance of restoring coastal ecosystems on the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.
Three Threats, Three Books
The Ocean Foundation has a new project that aims to bring awareness about the threats of bottom trawling, potentially polluting wrecks (PPWs) and deep seabed mining (DSM) to Underwater Cultural …
A Turning Tide in the July 2024 International Seabed Authority Negotiations
The 29th Session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) continued this month in Kingston, Jamaica, with Council and Assembly meetings. The Ocean Foundation’s Deep Sea Mining lead, Bobbi-Jo Dobush, and …
Underwater Cultural Heritage at the International Seabed Authority (ISA)
The Ocean Foundation (TOF) has been involved with the conversation on Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) since the beginning — TOF’s expertise on physical UCH …
Please Don’t Let Them Go
It seems at once hopeful and dramatic: Dozens, even hundreds of brightly colored balloons released by the celebrants and their guests, drifting off into the sky. But it is not …
Dive into Underwater Cultural Heritage
What is Underwater Cultural Heritage? UNESCO defines underwater cultural heritage (UCH) as all traces of human existence of a cultural, historical or archaeological nature which, for at least 100 years, …
Potentially Polluting Wrecks: First Steps Towards Remediation
Our Ocean Heritage is expansive. It includes physical objects on the seafloor like shipwrecks and submerged coastal settlements, and also non-physical connections to the sea, including Indigenous and local customs …
Invest in Ocean Health, Not Deep Seabed Mining
Advocates for deep seabed mining (DSM) claim it promises a gilded, sustainable future chock full of electric vehicles, but at what cost? Between breakthroughs in new battery technology, technical risks, …
