News from Across the American Shoreline

WILMINGTON, N.C. – When the long-standing state ban was lifted on terminal groins, a handful of beach towns jumped at the chance to build a case for why a hardened erosion-control structure would be their best line of defense against losing sand.

Shell Oil is continuing its investment in the Terrebonne and Lafourche region with the construction of two new facilities in Houma.

CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe - The Latest on the aftermath of Cyclone Idai in southern Africa (all times local):

Accurately modeling melt rates in specific ice shelf locations is critical for forecasting how Antarctica’s ice sheet will respond to climate change.

Every journey of a thousand miles, the adage goes, begins with a single step. Last week, a state Senate committee took a small step toward protecting our region against the devastation that can be foreseen as the sea keeps rising. Voting 5-0, Republicans and Democrats on the Environment and Natural Resources Committee together passed Senate Bill 78, which would require that state-funded infrastructure projects near the coast be preceded by a sea-level impact studies.

The emission reduction goals of the Paris Agreement demand rapid action at all scales and levels of governance – from individual to international – and cities are no exception. Many urban governments recognise this and are embarking on projects to improve public transport services, mandate efficient buildings, or produce energy from local renewable sources.

Considering future impacts of oil and vessel distress in Alaska marine water

New management schemes needed to maintain stocks in fisheries worldwide -- A new paper by an international team of researchers argues that decision-makers and fishing organizations must recognize the growing role of recreational fishing and the potential pressures it places on fish stocks.

While the US president, Donald Trump, is looking for funds to finance the construction of the controversial wall on the border with Mexico, a US citizen, in just a matter of days, raised a fence in the Mexican state of Yucatan with which he closed the access of a public beach near his home.

One of the ocean's little known carnivores has been allocated a new place in the evolutionary tree of life after scientists discovered its unmistakable resemblance with other sea-floor dwelling creatures.

The $93 million Mississippi Aquarium is coming out of the ground on the East Beach service road in Gulfport, on track to open late this year or by early 2020.

Madison, CT — The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection on Wednesday unveiled the Long Island Sound Blue Plan, which maps out wildlife habitats and human activity in order to protect the environment, and commercial and recreational uses, while fostering harmonious development on the Sound.

NORFOLK, VA - Can Virginia make money off sea level rise? The very idea sounds backwards — usually frequent flooding from bigger and more destructive storms is costly. Remember Hurricane Florence? One study showed a direct hit could have cost the region $5 billion of its gross domestic product in just three months.

Florida Senate leaders are putting up money to keep the state’s tourism arm alive, despite an effort by the state House to scrap the agency.

COLUMBIA, SC - Not only do most South Carolina residents oppose oil drilling off the coast, but they also are against blasting the ocean with loud noises to locate petroleum deposits, a new Winthrop poll says.

The Great Lakes region already is warming and changing faster than much of North America — and will continue to do so as global warming increases. That was the summary finding of a new report, released Thursday, compiled by 18 scientists from across the region, both U.S. and Canadian.

28-day cooling off period now in works after contentious debate about automation; Union reminds officials that ‘robots do not pay taxes.’

BMT has been named a prime awardee on ProTech Oceans Domain, a $3bn multiple-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract serving the National Ocean Service (NOS), part of US-based scientific agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Thousands of people remain without food or shelter days after the storm made landfall on the coast of Mozambique. As communities struggle with the scale of loss, neighboring countries have pledged humanitarian support.

As FEMA works out new NFIP rules, residents and officials look forward to more accurate mapping, but worry that the price of flood insurance for some property owners may significantly increase.

A cadre of 30 oil and gas producers submitted 257 total bids in Wednesday’s Gulf of Mexico (GOM) region-wide auction, with the Mississippi Canyon drawing the highest bid and a unit of Royal Dutch Shell plc far and away outbidding everybody. Of the 78.5 million acres on offer in Lease Sale 252, BOEM received bids on 1.3 million acres.

Every journey of a thousand miles, the adage goes, begins with a single step. Last week, a state Senate committee took a small step toward protecting our region against the devastation that can be foreseen as the sea keeps rising.

There are roughly five times as many recreational fishers as commercial fishers throughout the world. And yet, the needs and peculiarities of these recreational fishers have largely been ignored in international fisheries and conservation policy.

MANATEE FL - The Manatee County Tax Collector’s Office refuted claims that it might be leaving money on the table when it comes to collecting tourism taxes from short-term rentals.

Local funds will match state, federal grants for S. Ponte Vedra, Vilano Beach

A civil case reveals conflict between economic development and environmental concerns.

As entire islands disappear in Chesapeake Bay, the oyster is enlisted as a first line of climate defense. In Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South, Rick Van Noy shows what communities are doing to become more climate-resilient and to survive environmental challenges. Here, he tours Chesapeake Bay off the coast of Virginia Beach, where entire islands are disappearing because of rising sea levels. He finds that, in the shadow of the nearby naval base, the best defense against the effects of climate change may come from an unexpected source: the humble oyster.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler appeared on CBS for the first network interview since his confirmation, and while he acknowledged the human contribution to climate change, he also said most threats are “50 to 75 years out.”

The most expensive coastal restoration project ever attempted in Louisiana will be delayed several months due to a series of permitting, design and engineering setbacks.

For environmental conflict and political drama, it’s hard to beat fishing. Almost all the fish consumed by developed countries comes from industrial fisheries, which generate not just a lot of revenue, but controversy over their impact, such as accidentally harming seabirds or scraping the sea floor. Meanwhile, recreational fishing usually escapes notice. Although it also has a large impact, both environmental and economic, amateur fishing is often ignored by regulators or swept under the same kind of rules as commercial fishing.

SALEM (AP) — Oregon state lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a permanent offshore oil drilling ban as the Trump administration forges ahead with a plan that could open up the Pacific coast for petroleum exploration and extraction.

CAPE MAY – Business leaders, Republican and Democratic officials, environmentalists and busloads of high school students gathered at Cape May Convention Hall March 18, in opposition to offshore oil exploration.

In lieu of the traditional shovel groundbreaking, Miami City Commission chair Ken Russell, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Miami city manager Emilio T. Gonzalez (pictured l-r) perform the ceremonial water toss to mark the start of the first Miami Forever Bond project tackling flooding and sea-level rise. (Photo by City of Miami Office of Communications)

Organs in ‘smart skin’ lead to changes in color and pattern, MBL study find. Organs in ‘smart skin’ lead to changes in color and pattern, MBL study finds

In the coastal bend of South Texas, the future of the global energy market is being constructed one epic infrastructure project at time.

As coastal Louisiana continues to degrade, communities are left increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic storm flooding. The coastal wetlands, a century ago treated as disposable and often dredged for canals or drained and leveed for agriculture, grazing, or development, are actually an ecologically crucial habitat which acts as a natural buffer against extreme flooding. Restoring these coastal wetlands is imperative to protect Louisiana’s coast from further decline due to manmade and natural causes.

The Massachusetts Port Authority announced that $35 million has been secured to help fund the ongoing Boston Harbor Dredging Project. The project is approximately 30 percent complete, and this funding will enable the project to continue on schedule.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Governments as far back as the Roman Empire have recognized it, but New Jersey is trying to enshrine in law the public's right to access waterways and shorelines.

When the herring finally disappear, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.

ALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) – The tourism-marketing agency Visit Florida would only be funded for three months, while Enterprise Florida wouldn’t get any state money as part of a budget proposal released Tuesday by a House panel for the 2019-2020 fiscal year.

It’s been six months since Hurricane Florence made landfall in the Wilmington area, and John Pike and his family are still not living in their home.

The Carteret County announced yesterday that Reach 3 (east Indian Beach and Salter Path) under the Post Florence Renourishment Project was completed last Sunday.

Over the last several decades, cities and other municipal entities (such as water reclamation districts) that own and operate wastewater treatment plants and sewer systems have been subjected to additional and increasingly stringent regulatory requirements under the Clean Water Act (CWA).

The ocean off the West Coast is shifting from several years of unusually warm conditions, toward a cooler and more productive regime that may boost salmon returns and populations of other ocean predators, according to a new NOAA Fisheries report.

Terrebonne District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr. has been appointed to aid a state agency’s investigation of possible environmental damage caused by energy companies hin the parish.

The Trump administration has announced plans to overhaul the federally subsidized National Flood Insurance Program, increasing policy premiums to more accurately reflect flood risk and home values starting in October 2020. The decision comes in the midst of historic flooding that has displaced thousands of people and destroyed homes, farms, and infrastructure across parts of the U.S. Midwest.

Anbaric has filed a request with ISO-New England for a 1,200MW HVDC interconnection to a substation in Brayton Point, Massachusetts, that would collect energy produced by offshore wind projects.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has proposed an August 2019 region-wide oil and gas lease sale for 78 million acres (31.6 million hectares) in all available federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Three members of the state’s Congressional delegation — U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy — have announced that the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council will be recommending changes to the management plan for summer flounder that will dramatically increase the quota for the state’s commercial fishermen.

As Rowan Jacobsen reports in FERN’s latest story, published with Scientific American, research done over the last decade has made clear that “living shorelines” are far better at protecting the coastline from the devastating floods and tidal surges caused by the huge storms of the climate-change era than seawalls and other “armored” shorelines.

Buyer Beware: Oceanfront Homes Keep Going Up Despite Rising Seas

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s cod fishery, once one of the most lucrative in the Northeast, has declined to the point that it had its least valuable year in more than a half-century in 2018.

The tiny coastal community of Stolford has become the first location in the UK to benefit from innovative flood defence technology pioneered in Holland.

Global warming and acidifying oceans are creating an intense competition between coral and algae that both are set to lose.

“Last-chance tourism” is hastening the decline of destinations like the Florida Reef and the Galapagos Islands.

State lawmakers may ease restrictions on the construction of decks and patios next to sand dunes, plus crosswalks over dunes, even as the lead author of NOAA’s Atlantic Ocean hurricane outlooks issued this month a preliminary warning that the upcoming hurricane season will be as dynamic as the one that pummeled Georgia in 2018.

A Record of Decision has been received from the Federal Highway Administration for the Mid-Currituck Bridge, indicating federal approval of a span between Aydlett on the mainland and Corolla on the Outer Banks.

The St. Johns County Tourist Development Council (TDC) and County Commission will look at possible changes to the amount and structure of the county’s tourist development tax.

Climate warming is rapidly altering the physical marine environment in fjords on the west coast of Svalbard towards a more temperate state. Reductions in sea ice cover and increased ocean temperatures are evident, resulting in changes of ice-associated and pelagic ecosystems.

In 2006, a year after hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the U.S. government struck a deal to give states in the region a growing share of offshore drilling revenues to finance projects protecting them from future monster storms.

Plummeting to the bottom of an icy sea bed, divers have completed the final part of a wharf deconstruction on the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) at Rothera Research Station. Two months of deconstructing the old wharf came to an end over the weekend with the first frame of a new 74-metre long wharf being lowered into place.

The U.S. offshore wind industry is expected to grow substantially over the next few years. Several offshore auctions have already taken place, ports have begun restructuring to better serve the market, and the Department of Energy recently announced up to $28 million in funding for offshore wind R&D.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) awarded a $92 million construction contract to Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company, LLC, to deepen and widen the Corpus Christi Ship Channel (CCSC) from the Gulf of Mexico to Harbor Island, as part of the Channel Improvement Project (CIP).

Have you ever wondered what happens to New York City’s subway cars after they are taken out of service? From 2001 to 2010, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), dropped 2,580 cars into the Atlantic Ocean, off the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, to become artificial reefs. This incredible process, which began in the 207th Street Overhaul Shop in Inwood, Manhattan, was documented over the course of two years by photographer Stephen Mallon.

In some ways, Miami Beach is lucky. With high real estate prices and millions in tax revenue from a robust tourist trade, the city has been able to cobble together funds to wage its war with the sea in a way that poorer ones must envy. Under Gelber, it recently appropriated another $140 million, bringing the total program budget to $650 million.

Construction of Texas Brownsville LNG LLC’s proposed LNG project could result in adverse environmental consequences, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said in a Mar. 15 final environmental impact statement. Impacts would be less than significant if the project sponsor’s proposed impact avoidance, minimization, and mitigation measures and the FERC staff’s additional recommendations are implemented, it added.

Climate advocates say an overhaul of the nation’s flood insurance program being unveiled by the Trump administration will spur communities around the country to better plan for extreme weather, but could drive up costs for some homeowners.

Misirlou star and surf pioneer passes away following health issues.

MIDDLETOWN — The salty patches were small, at first — scattered spots where soybeans wouldn’t grow, where grass withered and died, exposing expanses of bare, brown earth.

A piece of Aotearoa technology is being used to support Antarctic scientists to capture fascinating footage of life beneath the ice in McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea. The stunning footage is just a snippet of what was recorded during 21 hours underwater this season.

Record low sea ice in 2018 sent ripples through the entire Arctic ecosystem

A Belgian company, Global Sea Mineral Resources, is set to test a bus-size machine designed to vacuum up metallic nodules that sit on the dark abyssal sea floor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a nodule-rich area between Mexico and Hawaii. During the short trial, a team of independent scientists will deploy more than 60 sensors to monitor the collector's environmental impact.

SAN FRANCISCO — Dozens of species of sea slugs, jellyfish and other marine life from toastier southern waters migrated into the Northern California region over an unusually long two-year period of severe heatwaves, says a new scientific report.

Sky News will broadcast live from 300m down in the Indian Ocean at 8am on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The series will examine the impact of climate change and plastic pollution. It includes the deepest-ever live news programme from submersibles.

While hotels pour money into marketing to try to boost their business, they are acting like they are unaware of the greatest challenge to their business model their industry has ever faced: the conversion of single-family houses into commercial short-term rental “mini-hotels.”

Codes, zoning and infrastructure are more impactful than government-supported insurance policies, according to panel of economists and real estate experts

The Mississippi River has been at flood stage for months. Levees and spillways keep most homes and businesses safe and dry from the flood waters, but the high water still creates headaches for levee districts and industries like oil and gas, and fisheries.

When I was in elementary school in the early ’90s, there was already a clear understanding of climate change and its causes amongst educators — but these individuals weren’t necessarily part of serious political or industry discussions. In any case, there wasn’t serious action taken to address the problem.

Harvard professor and author Sunil Amrith speaks to Rishita Roy Chowdhury about his latest book, Unruly Waters, which looks at the role water has played in South Asian history.

YORK, Maine -- Of Maine’s entire 3,500-mile coastline, only 12 percent is publicly held. The remaining 88 percent, which includes beaches in Kittery, York, Wells, Kennebunk and beyond, is in private hands, with rights to the beach down to the low water mark.

The Gulf of Mannar is along the coastline of southern India bordering Ramanathapuram, Tuticorin, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts in Tamil Nadu. It has rich biological and ecological assemblages with very high levels of productivity. The gulf falls within the Indo-Malayan realm which has rich marine biodiversity on earth.

‘The main take home point is we’re asking for a supplemental EIS’

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a $10 billion plan to push out the lower Manhattan coastline as much as 500 feet, or two city blocks, to protect from flooding that’s expected to become more frequent as global temperatures rise.

The crew of the late entrepreneur Paul Allen’s research vessel, the R/V Petrel, have discovered the wreck of the American aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CV 7), which went down in 1942 after she was fatally damaged by Japanese torpedoes.

A new set of publicly-available guidelines for monitoring plastic in the oceans is expected to help harmonize how the scale of the issue is assessed.

Economists have found that when money is at stake, companies whose future depends on the weather are more likely to tie their decisions to the scientific consensus on climate change.

WASHINGTON, D.C. March 13, 2019 – Environmental groups sued the Trump administration today to challenge an oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico that will open up more than 78 million acres to offshore drilling without fully analyzing the risks to people, wildlife or the environment.

Efforts in Congress to overhaul an embattled insurance program that covers millions of properties against flood damage were jolted yesterday by a plan to make taxpayers pay $20 billion in cost overruns.

With only two-and-a-half months until hurricane season and with most people in the Florida Panhandle still grappling with the damage left over from last year, it’s almost time once again to check preparation kits, stock up on batteries and plan evacuation routes.

The General Land Office’s updated Texas Coastal Resiliency Master Plan, released Monday, is a beauty, with lots of spot color, graphics and maps. It’s worth a look. Spilling out over 234 pages, it includes 123 projects that GLO believes are preferred, in that they can do the most good to “restore, enhance and protect the coast.” Can’t argue with that. Call them Tier 1 projects, which is what GLO does.

The initial plan is to spend $500 million to fortify most of lower Manhattan with grassy berms in parks and removable barriers than can be installed this year when major storms approach. But the mayor and recommendations the city's Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency project calls for a more ambitious long-term plan.

KAHANA BAY, MAUI (HawaiiNewsNow) - A new beach nourishment proposal could help restore a shrinking shoreline along the coast of West Maui — and end a fierce fight over a seawall that’s currently under construction.

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — County officials are scrambling to find $14.8 million to repair erosion damage to south- county beaches after Federal Emergency Management Agency rescinded $9.5 million it had promised for the project.

Tian Kun Hao, a Chinese-built dredging vessel, the largest of its kind in Asia, sails under a sea trial after departing a port in east China's Jiangsu Province, Constructed by Tianjin Dredging Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of China Communication Construction Co., Ltd. (CCCC), the 140-meter-long vessel, with the designed capacity to dredge 6,000 cubic meters per hour, can dig as deep as 35 meters under the sea floor.

BODEGA BAY, Calif. — Marine biologist Jacqueline Sones was strolling along a beach near this Northern California fishing village one foggy summer morning when she spotted an unfamiliar jellyfish bobbing in the surf.

“People want things back to normal sooner rather than later.”

The President’s Fiscal Year 2020 Budget includes $138 million for the 52-foot Charleston Harbor Deepening Project, a milestone that provides an opportunity for the project to receive Congressional funding for construction.

Airbnb Inc. and Expedia Group Inc.’s HomeAway failed to persuade a U.S. court of appeals to strike down a Santa Monica law that makes the companies liable for illicit rentals in the Southern California beach city.

More than a decade ago, the World Bank’s offered the first green bond and a blueprint for what is currently a $500+ billion market (watch a video on the history here).

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has engaged Eastman Aggregate Enterprises to renourish 7.2 miles of critically eroded shoreline along the City of Hollywood, Florida.