Global overfishing indicates a need to define fisheries sustainability thresholds and identify social factors promoting successful management, but rates of fishing and factors mediating sustainability over long timescales are largely unknown. Here, we reconstruct fisheries yield for the entire period of human habitation (five to seven centuries) for two coral reef ecosystems with substantially different fisheries histories (Florida Keys and the Hawaiian Islands) and evaluate the management strategies associated with periods of sustainable fishing. This involved a mixed methods approach, in which we estimated yield by fishery sector (commercial, subsistence, recreational and aquaculture) and characterized management strategies associated with periods of sustained high yields. We found differences between the two locations, with Hawai‘i sustaining yields of more than 12 mt km⁻² for four centuries prior to the arrival of Europeans. This period was characterized by adaptive management whose design and enforcement exhibited characteristics of common property resource governance systems, and which effectively protected reef habitat, vulnerable life-history stages for fish, and species with high susceptibilities to overfishing. Reefs in both Florida and Hawai‘i were exploited intensively after European contact, with sequential export-driven depletion evident in Florida over the past century. Today, both exhibit strikingly similar modern catch levels, with landings exceeding 10 mt km⁻² and evidence of overfishing. Our results demonstrate that management strategies and social institutions that support strict enforcement by a local rule-making authority have had substantial impacts on fisheries yields in the past and suggest that long-term sustainability of fisheries is possible, although rare today.

Increasing concerns regarding oil spills, air pollution, and climate change associated with fossil fuel use have increased the urgency of the search for renewable, clean sources of energy. This assessment describes the potential of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) to produce not only clean energy but also potable water, refrigeration, and aquaculture products. Higher oil prices and recent technical advances have improved the economic and technical viability of OTEC, perhaps making this technology more attractive and feasible than in the past. Relatively high capital costs associated with OTEC may require the integration of energy, food, and water production security in small island developing states (SIDSs) to improve cost-effectiveness. Successful implementation of OTEC at scale will require the application of insights and analytical methods from economics, technology, materials engineering, marine ecology, and other disciplines as well as a subsidized demonstration plant to provide operational data at near-commercial scales.

The effect of Ocean Acidification (OA) on marine biota is quasi-predictable at best. While perturbation studies, in the form of incubations under elevated pCO₂, reveal sensitivities and responses of individual species, one missing link in the OA story results from a chronic lack of pH data specific to a given species' natural habitat. Here, we present a compilation of continuous, high-resolution time series of upper ocean pH, collected using autonomous sensors, over a variety of ecosystems ranging from polar to tropical, open-ocean to coastal, kelp forest to coral reef. These observations reveal a continuum of month-long pH variability with standard deviations from 0.004 to 0.277 and ranges spanning 0.024 to 1.430 pH units. The nature of the observed variability was also highly site-dependent, with characteristic diel, semi-diurnal, and stochastic patterns of varying amplitudes. These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO₂, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100. Our data provide a first step toward crystallizing the biophysical link between environmental history of pH exposure and physiological resilience of marine organisms to fluctuations in seawater CO₂. Knowledge of this spatial and temporal variation in seawater chemistry allows us to improve the design of OA experiments: we can test organisms with a priori expectations of their tolerance guardrails, based on their natural range of exposure. Such hypothesis-testing will provide a deeper understanding of the effects of OA. Both intuitively simple to understand and powerfully informative, these and similar comparative time series can help guide management efforts to identify areas of marine habitat that can serve as refugia to acidification as well as areas that are particularly vulnerable to future ocean change.

In 2010, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (“Foundation”) Staff and Board of Trustees initiated a process to look beyond their ongoing ocean conservation efforts and gain a sense of the greater context of needs and opportunities in ocean philanthropy.  The Trustees gathered at a meeting in early June 2010 to review and discuss these opportunities.  In preparation for the meeting, Foundation staff commissioned a discussion paper that presents trends and future issues, surveys various ocean conservation strategies, and provides a qualitative analysis of opportunities, barriers to implementation, and potential for conservation results. This paper was first prepared to help inform and stimulate discussion among the Trustees at the June 2010 meeting. This final version has since been updated and expanded, and is meant to fuel lively discussion into the future.