World Oceans Day may be over, but the fun continues!

For nine-year-old Alexa and her mom Cindy, World Oceans Day is a year-round event.  She's constantly thinking about oceans, surrounding herself with books and even Nintendo Games about the ocean, and getting up close and personal with fish from the ocean.

She's also deeply involved in ocean conservation, have written letters to ocean supporters and educators worldwide and created her Oceans 4Ever blog with mom to "get everyone interested and involved in loving and saving the ocean every day.”

We had a splashing good time talking to Alexa about her ocean enthusiasm and her plans for World Ocean Day. You'd be surprised what you can learn from a nine-year old (and a smart ocean-loving one at that!) Enjoy! 

From all of us at The Reef Tank, we'd just like to say...

HAPPY WORLD OCEANS DAY!!

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What a day to celebrate the beauty of the deep blue sea!!

This is the first year that the United Nations is officially recognizing World Oceans Day as a THE day to devote to ocean protection, ocean conservation, ocean enthusiam, and ocean pride! 

In case you didn't notice, aside from being an avid reef aquarist, I'm also a female.  And as a female, I enjoy feminine wiles like shopping, nice jewelry, and the perfect beauty products.  So while decidedly being a girly girl this weekend, I began perusing my favorite beauty sites looking for new deals. 

Who knew that my two great loves--marine biology and cosmetics--would come together in a big way.

Beauty Anonymous recently posted that the incredible skincare company La Mer has begun another partnership with international ocean conservation organization Oceana for the second year in a row to raise awareness.  That means they're in full force for World Oceans Day and have created a limited-edition 250ml "World Oceans Day" Creme sold exclusively at Saks Fifth Avenue and the official website of La Mer from May to June.  

The Ocean Project, working in partnership with the World Ocean Network, is working to build greater awareness of the crucial role of the ocean in our lives and the important ways people can help. World Ocean Day began on June 8, 1992 and has finally been recognized by the UN, which passed a resolution in December 2008 that June 8th would be designated World Oceans Day every year starting in 2009.

What a reason to celebrate our salty seas! 

In honor of the big day, The Reef Tank will be bringing you lots of coverage in the next week from a plethora of personalities.

Here's what's ahead: 

The world pressures of over-fishing and pollution are already a major threat to sea life. Throw climate change into the mix and we’re reading into a whole deeper story.

With oceans covering the majority of our planet, you’d think there would be more attention garnered towards the deep blue mass of beauty that always lies just beyond.

It’s comforting, in a way, to know that we understand so very little about what thrives beneath the ocean’s surface. Science has taken us very far, but the ocean remains a world much larger than our own, that reaches places to which our imaginations can’t yet fathom.

I live on a quiet tidal creek that feeds into the York River, a tributary to the Chesapeake Bay in the same county where Pocahontas was born four fateful centuries ago.  My house is a short crow’s flight from the point where Englishmen first pulled up their tiny ships on the North American coast after their perilous TransAtlantic voyage and decided that this is the place. After everything that has happened across those ages it is still a beautiful place—waterbirds of all sorts haunt the tree-lined creek, bald eagles are seen occasionally.  

But that is all changing, gradually. The carbon that we in the industrialized societies are relentlessly pumping into the atmosphere threatens to do what even four centuries of human occupation couldn’t. We are going to lose this place. Jamestown and the surrounding areas will very likely be underwater when my great-grandchildren, if I’m lucky enough to have some, are grown.  

It’s now well documented that average global temperatures are steadily increasing, and the physical-chemical mechanisms responsible are pretty well understood. We’ve all heard the general story in An Inconvenient Truth, and the details can be found in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What does it mean for the marine environment and for those of us who are linked to it by livelihood or by spiritual bonds? I will focus on what it means for people around where I live, on the Chesapeake Bay, but similar challenges face most any coastal area. Let’s consider sea level rise first. 

The Rising Tide