Bermuda's League of Ocean Badasses

🎨🖼️🖍️👩🏽‍🎨👨‍🎨
Calling all artists! There is a new art contest being held for ocean-lovers ages 6 and over.

You could even win a GoPro!

Art Contest | BOPP Bermuda Ocean Prosperity Programme is a community-driven program working to create a comprehensive plan to sustainably use, manage, and protect that ocean to grow the economy and ensure healthy fisheries and marine ecosystems for future generations.

The BLOB is up for the challenge—are you?

Bermuda’s environmental non-profits have joined forces for the second annual Bermuda Earth Day Challenge, but this year there’s a twist.

You have the chance to help the Earth AND give back to your parish! Check it out:

Step 1: Register online at Greenrock.org and commit to as many environmental actions as you can. Choose 1 or choose all 14 (be honest!).
For example, you might choose to:
✅ Plant a tree 🌱
✅ Pick up litter around your neighborhood 🗑️
✅ Purchase local produce 🥬 or seafood 🐟
✅ Cook a meal at home 🍳
✅ Go for a cycle 🚲
✅ Spend time outdoors 🏃🏽

Step 2: Download the Hink app (it’s free!) from the App Store or Google Play.

Step 3: On Saturday, April 22 (Earth Day 🌎) and Sunday, April 23 (aka the day after Earth Day 🌎), take photos of your friends, family, and neighbors (and have them take photos of YOU) taking part in the actions!

Step 4: Follow the directions and UPLOAD your photos to the Hink (www.hink.me) app. Watch in real time to see which parish is completing the most environmental actions.

Who will win? It’s up to YOU!
Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB)
The Bermuda National Trust
BUEI (Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute)
Bermuda Ocean Prosperity Programme
BIOS Arizona State University
BEST (Bermuda Environmental Sustainability Taskforce)
Beyond Plastic Bermuda

Hip, hip, hooray!

The BLOB gives cheers for Northlands!

And a big “thank you” for the staff at Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo supported by Bermuda Zoological Society and Mystic Aquarium for nursing the pup back to health!

Watch: Mystic Aquarium releases rescued gray seal pup into ocean See the Mystic Aquarium animal rescue team re-introduce a gray seal pup named Northlands back to the wild after it was rescued in Bermuda. NBC’s Emilie Ikeda reports for TODAY.

The BLOB ❤️s to amplify voices of the next generation!

It’s not too late to enter Buei Bermuda’s Young Reporters for the Environment Journalism Competition!

Tell your story through writing ✍️, photography 📸, or even a short film 🎥!

Check out details below:

The BLOB isn't afraid of wading into controversial topics, particularly when they involve critical habitats (seagrass 🌱) and endangered species (sea turtles 🐢).

We're also big fans of using science 📊, not anecdotal evidence, to guide decision-making, and avoiding hearsay 🗣 that causes people to jump to conclusions that don't benefit the ecosystem in the long-term.

A herpetologist from Eckerd College, the founder of the Bermuda Turtle Project, and two scientists from the MyFWC Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, co-wrote a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Marine Biology titled "A half‐century of demographic changes in a green turtle (Chelonia mydas) foraging aggregation during an era of seagrass decline"

Some key takeaways:
📌 Turtle response to resource decline is traced back to 1976, well before seagrass loss was first documented.
📌 This response includes a reduction in average turtle size and mass, as well as changes in the groups of turtles that would forage together (smaller group sizes and fewer large turtles).
📌 There are at least 11 stressors that contribute together to seagrass decline. This is the case in Bermuda and in other areas of the world where seagrass decline has been noted.
📌 Given the low rate of seagrass intake, relatively small size and low biomass of turtles, healthy seagrass meadows should have been able to withstand repeated grazing pressure. Because smaller turtles are less reliant on seagrass than larger ones, grazing pressure on seagrasses should have decreased over the last 50 years as a result of decreasing turtle size.
📌 The fact that it didn't indicates that temperature extremes, bioturbation, and phosphorus (a key nutrient) limitation are stressors that may have acted in synergy with grazing in Bermuda.

If there are other factors are play, and seagrasses have been declining long before turtles populations showed impacts, let's not jump to the conclusion that culling turtles is the answer.🚫Instead, let's work on filling knowledge gaps.

Read full paper here:https://bermudaturtleproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/07-Meylan2022_Article_AHalf-centuryOfDemographicChan.pdf

Organisation warns of ecological disaster as turtles disappear An “ecological disaster has unfolded in Bermuda” and stripped the waters of key species, according to a conservation and research group. The Bermuda Turtle Project warned of “what can only be describe...

Check out these ocean badasses!

Learning more about the sources and hotspots of marine debris 🗑is helpful in longer-term efforts to keep Bermuda's ocean healthy and clean. 🌊

The BLOB ❤️s it!
🙏 you KBB,
Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo, and Bermuda Zoological Society!

PROJECT PARTNER SPOTLIGHT! KBB is super excited to be involved with and supporting this phenomenal project with BZS and BAMZ! We 💚 our non-profit partners and thank them for all they do to contribute to a cleaner and more beautiful Bermuda!

Collaboration + Action = Impact

A two-year scheme to study trash build up across Harrington Sound has kicked off with “great success”, the head of the project said.

Project Sound Solution, a joint initiative between the Bermuda Zoological Society and Keep Bermuda Beautiful, will conduct clean-ups to study the waste and determine the best way to keep the area clean.

Andrew Rawson, who was hired to spearhead the project, said: “The first two clean-ups of this new BZS project were a huge success.

“Thanks to the extraordinary positive energy of all those patrolling land and sea, we collected and properly disposed of thousands of pounds of garbage.”

Read more ➡️ https://www.royalgazette.com/environment/news/article/20230331/project-starts-to-study-trash-build-up-in-harrington-sound/