Document seascape genomics!
Smart restorations and wise conservations start with and are sustained by optimal documentation.
Richard L. Pyle, Ph.D.
Loss of Biota Diversity
Famed diver/researcher, Dr. Richard "Rich" Pyle teaches that less than a third of the ocean's biota has been documented; warning that daily untold numbers of flora and fauna are going extinct without leaving evidence of their existence.
We’re Living Through One of the Most Explosive Extinction Episodes Ever
New York Times, Sept. 30, 2021
By Henry M. Paulson Jr.
Twin crises afflict the natural world. The first is climate change. Its causes and potentially catastrophic consequences are well known. The second crisis has received much less attention and is less understood but still requires urgent attention by global policymakers. It is the collapse of biodiversity, the sum of all things living on the planet.
As species disappear and the complex relationships between living things and systems become frayed and broken, the growing damage to the world’s biodiversity presents dire risks to human societies.
The extinction of plants and animals is accelerating, moving an estimated 1,000 times faster than natural rates before humans emerged. Bugs on our windshields are no longer a summer thing as insect populations plummet. Nearly three billion birds have been lost in North America since 1970, diminishing the pollination of food crops. In India, thousands of people are dying of rabies because the population of vultures that feed on garbage is cratering, resulting in a huge increase in feral dogs that eat these food scraps in the birds’ absence.
Learn More
Mr. Paulson is chairman of the Paulson Institute, which last year published a major study on closing the global biodiversity funding gap. He is also a past Treasury secretary, Goldman Sachs chairman and former board chairman of The Nature Conservancy.
MNMP Biota Diversity Threatened
The MNMP
The MNMP is constituted by four widely separated Monuments; namely, the Pacific Remote Islands, the Marianas Trench, the Rose Atoll, and the Papahānaumokuākea. Although the Monuments were created to protect their respective areas' abundant and diverse coral, fish, and seabird populations, extinctions nevertheless continue unabated.
Documenting MNMP Biota
The MNMP, a vast collection of isolated small, low lying islands, banks, seamounts, and atolls, encompasses an area exceeding 1.6 million square miles of ocean. The sheer cost of recording their respective undocumented biota, especially when ocean class ships are deployed, is sadly cost prohibited. In the meantime, what could prove to be the basis of future miracle pharmaceuticals are disappearing unnoticed.
Learn More
In cooperation with regional authorities, NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintain managerial responsibility for the Marine National Monuments in the Pacific.
Our Post-Funding Vision
We propose to build and to operate a lean, singularly focused, regional class vessel, to be christened the “R/V Ala Iki,” to conduct exploratory scientific research, employing divers and technologies, to optimize the documentation of undiscovered biota residing the Marine National Monuments in the Pacific.
Conducting Expeditions
- Our Institute plans to conduct annually 4 exploratory, scientific research expeditions of the Mesophotic, coral ecosystems throughout the Marine National Monuments in the Pacific, in order to document and to share our findings of newly discovered biota with the public, academics, scientists, and government policy makers.
Aid in Marine Education
- Our Institute intends to incorporate and make part of our expeditions methods to aid in the marine education of students, ranging from elementary to university.
OPI Ecocultural Statement
- The Hawaiian ʻōlelo noʻeau (proverb) “he waʻa he moku, he moku he waʻa” (a canoe an island, an island a canoe) expresses our ecocultural perspective. Firstly, it identifies the interconnectivity and interdependency between our onboard personnel and our ship and of our personnel's working relationship with the natural resources we plan to investigate.
- Recognizing that all natural resources are cultural resources, our ecocultural research protocol shall be threefold: (i) to study, prior to commencing operations, local cultural heritage, customs, and traditions, including, but not limited to those held by indigenous peoples, (ii) to apply where appropriate “local knowledge” to achieve our research goals, and (iii) to credit in social media, broadcast, and publications any local knowledge we employ, using, when appropriate, indigenous language(s).