On 27-28 Nov 2018, Andrew Elmore, Alex Fries and I traveled to Sandusky, Ohio for the kick-off workshop for our Western Lake Erie and watershed report card project. We experienced some wonderful Ohio hospitality and had a productive workshop. This was the culmination of a project that I introduced in a previous blog about Lake Erie.

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As part of the Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas (EMECS) conference in Pattaya, Thailand, that I attended with Dave Nemazie, Bob Summers and Vanessa Vargas-Nguyen, a study tour was organized to expose us to the ecology of the Gulf of Thailand. The Gulf of Thailand is commonly divided into two parts, the smaller inner Gulf (10,000 km2) and the larger outer Gulf (350,000 km2).

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Last November 5-8, 2018, I was fortunate to have attended and presented at the 12th International Conference on the Environmental Management of the Enclosed Coastal Seas (EMECS 12) held at the Jomtien Palm Beach Resort in Thailand. EMECS 12 was hosted by the International EMECS Center and co-hosted by the Royal Society of Thailand, several leading Thai Universities, and the UNESCO-IOC/WESTPAC.

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Oyster populations in the Northeastern United States have reached historic lows as a function of overharvesting, disease, and habitat degradation. Considered a keystone species, oysters provide critical ecosystem services. They clean the water, allowing sunlight to reach underwater plants. They support wildlife as food and shelter. Oyster reefs moderate wave action and prevent shoreline erosion.

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The Global Environment Facility (GEF) hosts a biennial International Waters Conference (IWC9 this year), which focuses on international water issues. Sarah Davidson and I were invited to the conference to talk about how ecosystem health report cards could support transboundary water assessments. This year the meeting was held in Marrakech, Morocco, from 5-8 November.

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Dice clatter on a plain table in a quiet room. The truncated, cacophonous collision of plastic and faux wood laminate foretells the destiny of a densely populated urban area. The game master considers the exposed numbers reflected in the light of a computer screen before inputting the next fated event: Power station 3, grid section 6 fails. Pump 617 offline.

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On 4 Oct. 2018, NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold returned to Earth following his 197-day stint aboard the International Space Station (ISS). After watching Ricky’s Soyuz launch on March 21, 2018, the Soyuz docking with the ISS, various space walks, and various interviews that Ricky made with various groups on earth, it was exciting to finally watch the live-stream of Soyuz capsule landing on the Kazakhstan steppe.

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Jamie Currie and I had an exciting meeting with experts on Texas coastal water quality, birds, seagrass, oysters, and fisheries on November 1 and 2 to create the first Texas Coast Ecosystem Health Report Card. We met at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, Texas, which was a great venue for the meeting.

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I’m new to IAN, Horn Point Laboratory, and the East Coast. I came here from the west. The other day my co-worker, Emily, and I took a break to walk around outside a bit. She was telling me a little about what folks do here on campus, which includes “recycling” oyster shells. I didn’t ask follow-up questions and thought she meant that you could take oyster shells and put a new oyster baby in them and the baby would grow up and use those shells as its own shells.

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On October 28th, 2018 Simon Costanzo and I arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, for the beginning of a busy week of workshops and trainings. Healthy Rivers for All (a collaborative effort between the UMCES Integration and Application Network and the World Wildlife Fund) has been facilitating the creation of a river basin health report card for the Tuul River Basin, the major river running through the capital of Mongolia.

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