ReefBase :: News & Updates

WorldFish provides overview of Marine Protected Area management in Malaysia

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:22:15 GMT

Malaysia is home to spectacular and diverse marine life, protected and managed by its Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The WorldFish CT Atlas team hosted a Marine Protected Area (MPA) Management Effectiveness Assessment Tool (MEAT) training workshop last week to demonstrate how MPAs can be evaluated.

The workshop was held in, Penang on 21-22 February 2013. Participants included over forty men and women responsible for gazetting, monitoring, and managing MPAs all around Malaysia. Collectively they are the custodians of Malaysia’s stunning marine parks, and their associated biodiversity, which are of global significance.
Managing MPAs is a considerable challenge and it’s important to know how effectively it’s being done. Good management of MPAs can have many benefits, including improving the supply of fish for local people, and increasing revenues from tourism.

During the workshop, training was provided in the use of a specific MPA assessment tool, developed in the Philippines. The tool provides an objective assessment methodology for summarizing MPA management effectiveness across all socio-economic and ecological dimensions. A by-product of the training exercise undertaken during the workshop is a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of MPA management in Malaysia.

Coral Triangle Atlas October 2012 Training Workshop

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 14:25:45 GMT

ReefBase, a key partner and host of the Coral Triangle Atlas, has conducted the first GIS and MPA management effectiveness (MEAT) training in collaboration with The Board of Trustee Sabah Parks on 4th-5th October 2012. This training bring together Sabah Park Marines managers and Parks rangers for all six marine parks, the Sabah Park’s GIS officer and IT officer together with GIS officer from University Malaysia Sabah and also participant from WWF Malaysia . This training is part of the Coral Triangle Atlas activity of providing in country capacity building.

Proceedings of the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium, 2012 is now available in ReefBase

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:55:48 GMT

12th International Coral Reef Symposium, 2012 is now available in ReefBase. The 12th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS 2012), held in Cairns, Queensland, Australia from July 9-13th, 2012, was attended by nearly 2000 delegates. The program included over 1500 talks and posters. The Proceedings contains almost 200 contributions from scientists around the world arising from the Symposium. Full papers having been peer-review by experts in the field. The Procceding is now available online in ReefBase publication and ICRS2012 proceedings section.

The Proceedings encompass a broad spectrum of coral reef science, and demonstrate a growing expansion from the biological and earth sciences to non-traditional disciplines, including the social sciences and economics. The trend in earlier ICRS Symposia, towards a larger contribution from the fields of conservation planning and management, continued in Cairns in 2012. The Symposium also included an increased focus on climate change and ocean acidification, as well as reef management and governance issues including the Coral Triangle Initiative.

ReefBase hopes that the Proceedings will provide a helpful reference and encourages this information to be shared. The publications may be downloaded through the ReefBase website and ICRS 2012 proceedings section.

Coral Triangle Atlas will be at Cairns 2012

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:49:13 GMT

The 12th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS 2012) will begin Monday, July 9-13, in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. The symposium will bring together international scientists, policy makers, managers, and conservationists to present the latest findings on coral reef science and management. Part of the official scientific programme of the ICRS 2012 is the mini-symposium on the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI).

The Coral Triangle Atlas will be well represented during the symposium! It will be featured both in the oral presentation during the CTI mini-symposium and at CTI booth. Please find the details of the presentation as below:

Title: Marine resources Management data gaps in the Coral Triangle

Date: Monday, 9 July 2012
Time: 3.30 pm
Venue: Sebel Bluewater room

If you are in Cairns next week, you are welcome to the presentation and visit the CTI booth to find out more about CT Atlas and CTI activities in Coral Triangle Region.

To get more information on Coral Triangle Atlas, please visit the website http://ctatlas.reefbase.org

The first Coral Triangle Day, 9 June 2012

Tue, 22 May 2012 15:45:06 GMT

The first-ever Coral Triangle Day is set to be launched on 9 June 2012 in conjunction with World Oceans Day. This event will be celebrated at several locations around the Coral Triangle region to highlight the importance of marine conservation and to raise awareness on this global center of marine biodiversity. This year’s theme is “Shared Waters, Shared Solutions: Coming Together as One for the World's Centre of Marine Life—The Coral Triangle.”
The Coral Triangle Day will brings together individuals, organizations, and establishments from different parts of the region on one special day to celebrate the beauty and uniqueness of this region and to promote the importance of oceans through varied activities including: beach clean-ups; sustainable seafood dinners; educational exhibitions; marine-themed bazaars; and beach parties.People and organization are encourage to do one special thing, no matter how small, that will contribute to saving the Coral Triangle and let the world know how we care about it.

SocMonitor's April 2012 newsletter is released

Thu, 17 May 2012 17:28:19 GMT

The April 2011 issue of the SocMonitor has now been released. Click here to view the details. The issue includes the following topics:

- Preparations for 2012 SocMon Global Report
- SocMon in Honduras: The Mosquito Coast
- Philippine SocMon project in final year
- Socio-economic monitoring field trials and baseline surveys in South Asia
- Caribbean Challenge SocMon update

SocMonitor is an electronic bulletin about the Global Socio-economic Monitoring Initiative developed by Maria Pena and Christy Loper to update everyone on what is happending with socio-economic monitoring through the SocMon and SEM-Pasifika initiatives. The issues of the SocMonitor was available for access through SocMon website at publication page.

Coral Triangle Atlas Beta Version is launched

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 10:22:52 GMT

The Coral Triangle Atlas (CT Atlas) is an online GIS database, providing governments, NGOs and researchers with a view of spatial data at the regional scale of Coral Triangle region. Data on fisheries, biodiversity, natural resources, and socioeconomics have been collected for decades by scientists and managers working in different parts of the Coral Triangle region.The CT Atlas can be a tool to improve the efficiency of management and conservation planning in the region by giving researchers and managers access to spatial information while encouraging them to share their data to complete the gaps, therefore reducing duplicate data collection efforts and providing the most complete and most current data available and particularly useful in the design and planning of MPAs and MPA Networks throughout the region. The updated and new launched CT Atlas has improved features include

• Easier Home Page navigation.

• A new Forum page dedicate to help GIS practitioners and managers to come together and answer questions or exchange ideas on spatial planning in the Coral Triangle.

• A new CT Database interface which easier for users to find layers they would like to download or visualize on the online GIS interface.

• New features in the Online GIS Interface. The GIS interface has been re-organized with new categories to match the CT Database and new layers have been added. New features such as creation of polygons have been added according to user’s demand.

To get more detail on the CT Atlas website please click to this link

http://ctatlas.reefbase.org

The 2nd Coral Reef Management Symposium on Coral Triangle Areas

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:43:55 GMT

The Coral Triangle Area, consisting of the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and Timor-Leste is recognized, not only as the center of world marine biodiversity, but also as the most important refuge for the world’s marine life. The region is home to more than 500 species of corals and 3,000 species of reef fishes. Most importantly, this area supports more than 200 million people.

Indonesia is located at the heart of the "The Coral Triangle" and has the largest coral reef area of any country in the world. Unfortunately, human activities have placed substantial pressures on these fragile ecosystems and have caused serious coral reef degradation, mostly through destructive fishing, overfishing, global warming, coral mining, pollution, sedimentation and nutrient depletion. As a result, only around 6 percent of the coral reefs in the country remain in very good condition.

The 2009 Manado Ocean Declaration and CTI Leaders Declaration on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security stressed the need for national strategies for sustainable management of coastal and marine ecosystems that deliver valuable goods and services and that have significant potential for addressing the adverse effects of climate change. The negotiations at Manado were contentious and focused on the environment and its relationship to national economies. The balancing of interests between economic development and natural conservation is very challenging; and requires the appropriate guidance of science, technology, and management.

The Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, through the Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program Phase II (COREMAP II), in conjunction with "Sail Wakatobi-Belitung 2011", will conduct an international symposium to discuss the abovementioned challenges on 28-30 September 2011. The symposium will bring together policy makers, scientists, NGOs and the private sector to identify solutions for coral reef issues; and be in tangent with the theme "Coral Reefs: Global Threats and Opportunities".

Detail information on the event please go to the event website:

The 2nd Coral Reef Management Symposium on Coral Triangle Areas

1st anniversary SocMonitor issue

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 08:43:52 GMT

Catchment Management and Coral Reef Conservation

Thu, 26 May 2011 11:21:49 GMT

Catchment Management and Coral reef Conservation: A practical guide for coastal resource managers to reduce damage from catchment areas based on best practice case studies. By Clive Wilkinson and Jon Brodie was released at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Victoria BC Canada on 16 May. The book aims to assist coastal resource managers deal with the problems arriving at the coast from rivers and streams. To date there has been no guide book for managers. The stimulus was that many coral reef managers reported on problems of sediment, nutrient, pesticide and litter pollution damaging their reefs and they did not know where to start

This 112 page book is an ideal training manual for catchment (watershed) management capacity building. It is based on 33 case studies of best practice catchment management from 70 authors and 22 countries from Brazil to Thailand. These case studies were used to develop 11 Major Recommendations in which there are 47 specific action suggestions. The case studies discuss how managers have tackled the major threats: sediments, nutrients, heavy metals, pesticides and litter; and also how to put climate change threats within this framework.

The suggestion for this book came from Dr. Veerle Vandeweerd who was the Director of the GPA office (Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities of UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). Funding support came from ICRI members, especially from Department of State and National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration of the USA; UNEP; IUCN; ICRAN; IOC-UNESCO; and CRISP. Additional funding support came from James Cook University, Reef and Rainforest Research Centre (RRRC), Wildlife Conservation Society and the Townsville City Council.

This book is produced as a contribution to the International Coral Reef Initiative by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network and James Cook University Catchment to Reef Research Group, with the aim of conserving coral reefs for the future benefits of the world. Copies are free from the GCRMN or through some ICRI Partners around the world.

This publication can be downloaded from GCRMN and ReefBase websites.