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bestcommercialfishingpermits · 1 year ago

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Sail Smoothly Through NMFS Permit Applications

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goldcoastdreams · 6 years ago

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Coral scientists look to commercial opportunities for large-scale reef restoration to prevent extinction

Updated June 02, 2018 14:49:12 A dedicated team of scientists believes it could hold the answer to keeping the world's coral reefs safe from extinction. In a concrete hatchery on the north-west coast of the Philippines, a group of researchers is huddled together in the night, witnessing a rare moment of sexual reproduction. Red circles of light pinpoint the darkness as torches are waved over a row of square plastic buckets filled with seawater. "If you shine a white light at them they get shy and they don't have sex," said Kerry Cameron, a Southern Cross University PhD student from Coffs Harbour.

Photo: Coral will only spawn under the cover of darkness, or under red lights. (ABC News: Jess Davis) "This is mood lighting to set the tone." Despite their audience, hundreds of pink egg and sperm bundles slowly break free from their individual coral polyps and rise to the surface in miraculous unison. A bright marine biologist from Manila, Dexter Dela Cruz, is beaming.

Photo: Coral releases its egg and sperm bundles once year. (Supplied: Peter Harrison) "This is an event in nature that few people can see. It's always a magnificent sight," he said. The hatchery is part of the Bolinao Marine Laboratory, a utilitarian building that looks out onto the Lingayen Gulf, about 280 kilometres north-west of Manila. Its empty halls are flagged with algal culture rooms and student marine labs, where dusty fans spin perpetually over beakers and microscopes.

Photo: Coral scientists such as Dexter De La Cruz and Peter Harrison work night and day to collect and distribute coral spawn on the few nights of the year it reproduces. (ABC News: Jess Davis) Restoring a damaged reef Beside the hatchery sits a once-spectacular coastline crippled by decades of dynamite fishing, where cheap explosives are used to stun and kill hundreds of fish, pulverising the fragile coral reef in the process. The practice has since been all but stamped out in this part of the Philippines, but damaging aquaculture techniques, over-fishing and warming ocean temperatures still threaten 95 per cent of the reef system here. "The problem is there are so few live corals on this reef now, they're not producing enough larvae during sexual reproduction to naturally regenerate the reef systems," said Peter Harrison, the Southern Cross University scientist who has been directing the project.

Photo: Fishing communities in the Philippines have been devastated by years of dynamite fishing, a practice that destroys reefs. (ABC News: Jess Davis) But Professor Harrison's ambitions go beyond the mere science; he wants his research to help create an entire economy built around coral restoration. "Just as foresters manage forests for production, then we need to be thinking of managing coral restoration at that larger scale," he said. He sees a future in which an entire economy is built around coral restoration, where companies could rear coral larvae. "Take it out of the research realm, and put it into management and potentially even a commercial activity, where companies might rear hundreds of millions of coral larvae, from a genetically diverse series of different populations of different species."

Photo: Peter Harrison believes his research could be part of the answer to saving the world's coral reefs. (ABC News: Jess Davis) Healthy reef sustains local population The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, under the umbrella of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is funding his experiment, and has paid for the ABC to be here. "What we're doing is capturing millions of larvae and creating a cloud that we put back on the reef during settlement," Professor Harrison said. "That enables more corals to grow more quickly, and therefore start to restore the reef."

Photo: By three years old the restored coral can begin to reproduce itself. (Supplied: Southern Cross University) The results have proven successful on a small scale the most established restoration site is about the size of an Olympic swimming pool. It is a drop in the ocean, delivered through painstaking human intervention, but the evidence is there surrounded by a desolate underwater landscape, hundreds of new coral colonies have begun building a new reef and reproducing for themselves. The work is not lost on Boyet Torino, a third-generation fisherman and caretaker of nearby Tanduyong Island. "It's important because it's what sustains the family, it's what feeds our children," he said. He helps two other fishermen push a brightly-painted raft out from the shore, as his wife and children watch from the shade of a bamboo hut. "There needs to be a lot of coral, so that there's a lot of fish," he said.

Photo: Boyet Torino is the caretaker of Tanduyong Island and a third-generation fisherman. (ABC News: Jess Davis) Expanding the project Now, the research team is spreading its work and testing new techniques on a site nearby the protected and picturesque Hundred Islands National Park. "It's expanding again the scope of what we're trying to do," Professor Harrison said. More than a dozen Filipino divers and volunteers are on hand for the job, working together under the surface to spread metres of netting across the degraded reef, pinning it to the sea floor. Plastic bags filled with filtered seawater and millions of pink, hand-reared coral larvae are then carefully passed from nearby boats to the divers.

Photo: The precious coral spawn cargo on its way to being released on a new reef restoration site. (ABC News: Jess Davis) Mr Dela Cruz is among the crew, distributing the precious cargo into the protective nets to increase its chances of settlement. "We cut the plastic and just squeeze all the larvae out, like doing some icing on a cake," he said with a grin. Idea gaining momentum despite sceptics There has been some scepticism in the scientific community regarding the possibilities of coral restoration, with projects such as Professor Harrison's seen as an admission of defeat in the face of climate change, or a beacon of false hope.

Photo: An Olympic-size swimming pool worth of coral reef has so far been restored in the Philippines. (ABC News: Jess Davis) "We need to find solutions, but I don't think growing corals is part of that," James Cook University professor Terry Hughes has previously said. "I think it's about changing people's attitudes and behaviours and getting carbon dioxide emissions down by transitioning away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible." Nonetheless, the idea is gaining momentum. In April, the Federal Government announced $100 million towards developing the science of coral restoration as part of a $500 million environmental package for the Great Barrier Reef.

Photo: The Hundred Islands National Park in the northern Philippines is the next site of reef restoration for the project. (ABC News: Jess Davis) Marine ecologist Damien Burrows will stage Australia's first serious conference on reef restoration in July. "The environment itself at the moment, with bleaching and rising temperatures and increasing intensity of cyclones, is turning the reef into something different to what it was," he said. "Essentially it's been forced on us, so we really do have no choice but to invest heavily in this direction."

Photo: The egg and sperm bundles are collected by scientists and used to grow new coral colonies. (Supplied: Kerry Cameron) Private enterprise may be the future It would not be the first time private investors have been involved in safeguarding a coral reef. The Mexican state government of Quintana Roo is partnering with the hotel industry and a global insurance firm to protect 60 kilometres of reef off the coast of Cancun. "We know that the loss of 1 metre of reef in a hurricane causes the loss of 3 metres of beachfront on the shore," said Rich Gilmore, the Australian project director for Nature Conservancy, which is behind the Mexican project. "That directly causes a loss of visitation to the region, and that needs to be repaired as quickly as possible so they can get tourists coming back to stay at their hotels and in their restaurants and facilities."

Photo: Local communities in the Philippines rely heavily on reefs for healthy fish populations. (ABC News: Jess Davis) Mr Gilmore said it was not unheard of for private investments to be made into ecological restoration. "You can already invest in farmland, you can already invest in the carbon markets and the water markets. Investing in nature is just about doing those things in a slightly smarter way," he said. Professor Harrison said he had already had interest from the Great Barrier Reef's tourism sector. "Corals have value, and therefore reef restoration will be a valuable process," he said. "If it goes beyond the realm and capacity of individual research organisations to develop this process to the next stage, it may well be there's a commercial opportunity there in the future." Topics:great-barrier-reef,environment,research,mackay-4740,cairns-4870,coffs-harbour-2450,philippines,bundaberg-4670,townsville-4810,rockhampton-4700 First posted June 02, 2018 08:55:39 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-02/coral-restoration-may-save-barrier-reef-from-extinction/9810840

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sweetlifetownsville · 6 years ago

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Coral 'sexpert' wants to turn reef restoration into global business

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symbianosgames · 8 years ago

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Over the course of my senior year in college, I've been hard at work on a visual novel dubbed Streams of Nurture. As both a passion project and academic piece, Streams of Nurture represents an interesting case study for transforming one of my most ancient interests, food production, into an interactive affair that combines the dramatic qualities of an entertainment title with a real-world topic characteristic of serious games. In other words, I wanted to leverage the concept of "learning through play" to create a game that felt both purposeful and engrossing.

With my project officially submitted to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute database, I can now share with you the report detailing the development cycle for the visual novel. Throughout the coming weeks, I shall be publishing a subsection of the paper penned for Streams of Nurture. Each part will focus on a particular design and production aspect of the game, from the way the storytelling was conceived to the iterative art process that governed the title's presentation.

This week's post in a series of design articles explains the general production cycle of Streams of Nurture. If you're interested in reading about the pre-production, narrative and audiovisual phases for my visual novel, feel free to peruse the first, second and third articles I published on my title’s development process.

NOTE: I didn't single-handedly develop the game. Although I handled the narrative design, coding and writing for Streams of Nurture, my partners Liam Miller and Dave Allen were wholly responsible for the art and audio respectively. As such, the pronoun "we" will be used to acknowledge their invaluable contribution to this project.

Project schedule

In terms of scheduling, Streams of Nurture shares some similarities with other projects conducted within and beyond WPI’s game design major, while still embodying its fair share of quirks. On one hand, most of the visual novel’s major development milestones were set and achieved throughout three academic quarters. However, the individual parts that constitute it (story, art, sound, and playtesting) were not built concurrently. Instead, each of us worked full-time on the project without taking any classes across two different academic quarters to plug in the major pieces, with the first half of the spring semester being dedicated to the polish pass.

For the narrative, Michel spent the entirety of Fall 2016 organizing the documentation created for the game’s story and subsequently writing the basic dialog that expounded details about the aquacultural process. The lines Michel penned also contained figments of his personality in the characters that he would further flesh out in future quarters since he wished to get the practical details in first before finding ways to trim it and make the writing tighter and more coherent. In short, he adopted an iterative approach to storytelling so that the revisions to the dialog would not affect the overall structure and pacing of the narrative he wished to impart.

As for the art, the process of designing, developing and polishing was roughly planned to fit within each quarter the team was working on the project. Fall 2016 was when ideas were being formed and set in stone for the following semester to collect photographs, produce drawings, complete the style transfer processes per each image and drawing, then finally polish what was needed. Liam was not officially registered for the project until the end of 2016, but given the project being dependent on just two people (at the time), he felt the earlier the team began work, the better. The busiest quarters were those consisting of developing and implementing the art (late Fall 2016 and early Spring 2017), given the abundant number of scenes and characters. The workload proved more intensive than anticipated, and lasted well into Spring 2017.

Source control and backups

To ensure that the work updated properly across different devices and would not get lost to hard crashes and corrupt drives, the team made use of a cloud-based BitBucket repository, using SourceTree as a Windows client (see Figure 40).

Figure 40. SourceTree, the Windows client used to manage source control.

Original image by Michel Sabbagh

These tools allowed us to upload (“push”) and download (“pull”) changes to the visual novel’s script and assets, based on files stored in a BitBucket folder maintained on our PCs. As an additional precaution, the team and advisors regularly backed up the project folder on several flash drives kept in different locations to minimize the possibility of having our progress vaporized by a mangled repository.

Thankfully, the data for Streams of Nurture worked seamlessly with BitBucket and SourceTree, and we never encountered any issues that stalled development of our project.

Communication

Along with updating changes to the game’s script and audiovisual assets, the team also met at least twice a week throughout the 2016-17 academic year to report any progress with the art, writing and other design elements. Such meetings occurred between the students and advisors in the game design suite in Salisbury Labs on weekdays and solely among the developers at the Gordon Library on weekends.

During those gatherings, we brainstormed potential ideas for our game that could be incorporated further down the line, such as additional visual flourishes and subplots that would flesh out the characters even more (e.g. flashback sequences hinting at the protagonist’s hazy relationship with their dad). The team also relayed concerns about hitting particular milestones within the academic year, such as getting rid of all the placeholder art and polishing all of the character lines to make them sound more natural and dramatic.

Figure 41. Slack, the project management service used for team communications.

Original image by Michel Sabbagh

Outside of the aforementioned meetings, the team also made use of the chat service Slack (see Figure 41) to share updates and comments that would affect the final version of the game, such as last-minute changes to the art and additional information on the salmon industry. The channel we created for our purposes (VN_MQP) included several sub-sections: design, general, look-and-feel, meetings, random and audio. This allowed us to keep the chat box clean and relevant, which led to faster responses to questions about Streams of Nurture’s condition.

Skeleton

During the fall semester, the entire team focused on building the visual novel from the ground-up using the research and references we documented to get a solid sense of how the game would look, sound, and feel as the player progresses through it.

Given the sheer size and scope of the project, we knew that we had to undertake an iterative approach to the development of our title. This meant that we first had to create rough versions of the art and script before we could polish everything so that they matched the vision we laid out from the beginning.

So before we got started churning out the audiovisuals and written content for the title, Professors Moriarty and Sutter sat down with us to discuss the step-by-step process we would go through in terms of creating the basic structure and design for Streams of Nurture. This skeletal framework (see Figure 42), which served as the substrate upon which we would plug in more polished versions of the artworks and dialog, was comprised of placeholder assets and scripted scenes that made the visual novel entirely playable from start to finish.

Figure 42. The game’s skeletal framework, before and after polish.

Original photos by Michel Sabbagh

For the art, we made use of Photoshop to generate grayboxes that had the names of the asset and their (sub)directories explicitly baked onto them. These files would allow us to substitute finalized artworks for the blank images that initially corresponded to the background scenes in Streams of Nurture. This approach also applied to the characters themselves, who were depicted as front-/left-/right-facing black silhouettes standing in their respective onscreen positions.

Narrative-wise, the key was to incorporate as much relevant information about the different farming methods and techniques the player would be exploring (see Figure 43), as well as the various personalities inhabiting the game world. Macro and micro details about the aquacultural appliances such as the real-life Thermolicer and words denoting the kinds of emotions characters would feel rather than outright utter in the final game were par for the course in terms of producing functional dialog that advanced the plot, but had yet to possess more characteristic essence.

Having a skeleton from the outset proved most beneficial for future iterations of the game, as the team was able to make quick and effective modifications to the code without harming the visual novel’s overall story structure and artistic integrity.

Figure 43. Expository scene explaining the use of fish feed pellets.

Original image by Liam Miller.

Polishing

During the holiday break, the team decided to proceed to the next stage in the development process: the polish pass. With the placeholders having served their purpose of getting the title to work from a technical perspective, the time came for us to bring the narrative and artistic components of Streams of Nurture up to a level that would make it attractive to the average player all across the board.

Figure 44. Daphne’s character in the game’s near-final iteration.

Original images by Liam Miller

In terms of dialog, the primary goal was to trim down any unnecessary lines and scenes that bogged down the pacing of the game and made the title feel bloated in parts. Not only that, but the team also wanted to alter the dialect for each of the characters so that they sounded more unique and convincing. Originally, their vernacular was too uniform and sophisticated for them to feel believable, instead sounding pretentious and unnatural. With the help of the character profiles, though, Michel was able to distinguish each individual from one another through their speech patterns and general demeanors (see Figure 44). The process of doing so took a little over two months to accomplish, and the result was a considerably leaner and meaner narrative that communicated information more concisely and, in some ways, wittily.

With the art, polishing backgrounds and characters came down to adjusting minor yet vital details about the subject matter of the scene, tending more specifically to what was being portrayed through the dialog, and of course cleaning up any abnormalities in the illustrations for the sake of achieving a more professional look. To elaborate upon this, any feature in the backgrounds that either did or did not belong in the scene was either added or removed. One mentionable polishing factor that came into play twice while working on the art were the tweaks and changes that Alter was making, which would often change their resolution output or manipulate their algorithms to fine-tune how style was transferred. These changes produced noticeable differences in stylized backgrounds before Alter updates and changes, making it mandatory to redo each of the images we had already finished. Other than that, cleaning a few drawings of character borders was one small yet vital part of the polishing process to produce the most appealing visual novel we could.

For sound and playtesting, Spring 2017 was when both components were being extensively worked on after several months of delay. Like the narrative and art, audio benefited from the same iterative process that defined much of the title’s development cycle. By adding and fine-tuning musical layers for the game’s main theme and sourcing references for the sound effects, Dave was able to put together a compact but potent soundscape that provided the right amount of atmosphere complementing the town of Duntale and its surroundings.

[embedded content]

And that's all she wrote (for Part IV, at least)! As I mentioned before, more parts will be posted on a weekly basis.

Let me know what you think of my article in the comments section, and feel free to ask me questions! I’ll do my best to get back to you as promptly as possible.

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LinkedIn: http://ift.tt/2iKYMac

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Email: [email protected]

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tragicbooks · 8 years ago

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How 2 cousins saved their family's oyster company with underwater farming.

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When Ryan and Travis Croxton decided to bring back their grandfather's oyster company, it coincided with Chesapeake Bay’s lowest oyster harvest ever.

All images via Upworthy.

Their town's once-flourishing industry was collapsing. In fact, things got so bad, their native oyster was almost put on the endangered species list. It was a pretty big dilemma (and inconvenient timing), to say the least. But it only spurred the Croxton cousins' Rappahannock Oyster Company even more to find a solution.

They scoured the internet to see what other countries were doing, how they were producing their seafood. What they found was a more advanced, efficient technique that could help save not just their own business, but Chesapeake Bay's entire oyster industry.

Watch how this amazing journey unfolded right here:

This community of dedicated fishermen is making sure the Chesapeake Bay oyster doesn't end up on the endangered species list.

Posted by Upworthy Video on Friday, March 17, 2017

Rather than just gathering what oysters were left, the Croxtons turned to aquaculture, which is basically the farming and harvesting of anything that lives underwater.

Outside of aquaculture, gathering fish and oysters is just about that — gathering. Get, get, get. Fish, fish, fish. You collect as big a bounty as you can and you sell it for top dollar. The problem with that model is it becomes all about how much you can get, leaving little regard for resources.

In contrast, aquaculture is all about those resources. It focuses on creating a sustainable ecosystem where underwater plants and animals can thrive more naturally.

And when it comes down to it, oyster aquaculture can be a boon to both the environment and the economy.

For one thing, oysters are a natural cleaner and they act as an amazing filter for pollutants, such as nitrogen. "During its duration in the water, it's filtering 50 to 60 gallons of water a day," explained Ryan Croxton.

Promoting a habitat and life cycle that allows these oysters to blossom benefits Mother Nature (and our tummies) even more. "The oysters we grow actually increase the population of the wild oysters," added Travis Croxton. "You see underwater vegetation coming back, which provides sanctuary for marine animals."

When it comes to aquaculture and fish, however, the method does have potential downsides. Installing cages to farm the fish is necessary, and building them can damage a coast's natural ecosystem. On top of that, waste can accumulate in these structures and contaminate an area's water supply.

Aquaculture also has the potential to create countless new jobs. In the U.S. alone, aquaculture production hit just over a billion dollars back in 2012. But when you compare it to the $120 billion worldwide industry that it was valued at that same year, you can see there are still many opportunities for growth.

And it's already happening.

When the the Croxtons first started out, only a few businesses were doing aquaculture in their community. Now? Several hundred. "I've increased my workforce by about 30%," said Richard Harding, owner of Purcell’s Seafood Company. "We're a small business in a small community, so every job counts."

The best part? Aquaculture has the potential to improve food access for people all around the world.

A 2015 report by WorldFish shows how fish consumption is rising in developing nations — and future demand worldwide is only expected to increase in the coming decades. This means that aquaculture is going to play a pivotal role in making sure that everyone gets fed.

In fact, by 2030, it's already estimated that two-thirds of the global fish supply will be produced via aquaculture.

So yes, demand, populations, challenges — they're all rising. But, you know what? So is the know-how of the people addressing this issue. "Aquaculture is one of the rare things in this world that is a win-win for everything," added Travis Croxton.

The next time you grab an oyster platter, think about how that little gooey organism is helping change the world. Then, of course, think about how dang delicious it is.

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