Human Edges
The realm of Human Edges encompasses the Nearshore and Coastal zones, those areas closest to and most well known by human society.
Nearshore
The accessible nearshore has been studied in minute detail, in many locales. The nearshore, however, stretches millions of kilometers around all oceans, across latitude, and across climates. Further, because the locales of the nearshore realm are linked, spawning in adjacent or even remote bays influences recruitment in other bays. Testing hypotheses about nearshore ecology requires similarly linked researchers across latitude, climate, and ecosystems, the essential character of CoML.
Two CoML field projects are designed in different habitats of this zone:
Nearshore: NaGISA
An international collaborative effort to inventory and monitor biodiversity in the narrow inshore zone (encompassing tidal and intertidal zones) of the world’s oceans at depths of less than 20 meters.
Coral Reefs: CReefs
An international cooperative effort to increase tropical taxonomic expertise, conduct a taxonomically diversified global census of coral reef ecosystems, and improve access to and unify coral reef ecosystem information scattered throughout the globe.
Coastal
Because 90% of the ocean harvest comes from the coastal shelves between the nearshore and the continental margins, studies have concentrated on it. For a few hundred commercial species national agencies have long surveyed fisheries, and the FAO has collated the catch globally. Recent crises in fisheries forced a reexamination of the management of single species and evolution of new strategies for management, including trans-boundary species in most coastal nations. Governmental agencies recognized at an early stage the potential contributions that the Census of Marine Life could make as an independent research program. CoML recognized that its program for assessing and explaining diversity, distribution, and abundance—especially of non-commercial species—could accelerate and increase knowledge for management of commercial species at the same time CoML added to museum collections and subtracted from sampling cost. CoML initiated two coastal Projects, one in the Gulf of Maine distinguished by assessment from seabirds above down to clams at the bottom and the other in the Northeast Pacific distinguished by tracking migrations along the shelf.
Two CoML field projects are designed in this zone:
Regional Ecosystem: GoMA
A project to identify and collect the biological knowledge necessary for ecosystem-based management in a large marine environment.
Continental Shelf: POST
A program to develop and promote the application of new electronic tagging technology to study usage of marine environments and migration routes of Pacific Salmon and other species.
