13 March 2019 the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL) held its annual Public Policy Forum. The topic was U.S. Ocean Policy: Past, Present, and Future, and used as a point of departure  the 2004  U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy report An Ocean Blueprint for the 21^st Century.  Jesse Ausubel led off and moderated the final hour-long session on future ocean policy, videotaped here.

The Forum began with the superb review of the Ocean Commission report by our close colleague and friend VADM (ret.) Paul Gaffney, with whom we have conducted the Monmouth U – Rockefeller U Marine Science and Policy Initiative since 2015.

An article in the 11 April 2019 issue of Nature magazine discusses the issue of sound in the ocean and notes the role of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE) in studying ocean sound and its effects on marine organisms. PHE has helped conceive and foster the IQOE.

More news is in the March 2019 IQOE Newsletter.

Jesse Ausubel participated in “Looking Back as We Move Forward,” a conference in honor of historian of science Jed Z. Buchwald, at the California Institute of Technology 26-27 April 2019, and contributed a paper on “Microphysics and Macrohistory” to the proceedings. Buchwald is an expert on Maxwell and microphysics.

Exciting news from the Deep Carbon Observatory:

A press release 22 April 2019 just summarized some highlights from a decade of work on abiotic carbon in the Deep Carbon Observatory:

https://deepcarbon.net/rewriting-textbook-fossil-fuels

Coverage here:

Decade-Long Geology Project Rewrites Origins of Earth’s Methane 22 April 2019   Discover

Our old friend Tommy Gold would be thrilled.

A paper by Peter Barry and Co. in Nature magazine explores what happens when biology meets subduction:

https://deepcarbon.net/could-microbes-be-gatekeepers-earths-deep-carbon

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1131-5

An article in the 11 April 2019 issue of Nature magazine discusses the issue of sound in the ocean and notes the role of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE) role in studying ocean sound and its effects on marine organisms.  PHE helped conceive and has helped foster IQOE.

Our close colleague David Thaler serves as a topic editor for Frontiers in Evolution and Ecology on DNA Barcodes.  Please consider a submission. Have a look at: DNA Barcodes: Controversies, Mechanisms and Future Applications.

Science magazine runs a helpful story by Alex Fox on the final report from our 29-30 November 2018 National Conference on Marine eDNA:

The ocean is full of drifting DNA. The United States needs to collect it, researchers say

Also, a good new Japanese research paper is published on eDNA:

Effect of water temperature and fish biomass on environmental DNA shedding, degradation, and size distribution

In December 2018 Jesse Ausubel had the privilege and fun of inclusion in the delegation to Stockholm of William Nordhaus for his receipt of a Nobel prize.  The occasion stimulated Jesse’s recollection, “Getting to know Bill Nordhaus and Climate: On the occasion of his receipt of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for the study of the economics of climate change.“

Jesse Ausubel, Mark Stoeckle, and Paul Gaffney have completed the Summary Report of the 29-30 November 2018 National Conference on Marine eDNA .  A press release also briefly summarizes the report.

Galatee Productions, the company of French producer-director-actor Jacques Perrin, the genius of Winged Migations, Oceans, Microcosmos, The Seasons, and other films, has advanced toward making a film about the American West, The Photographer.  Producer Antoine de Cazotte (Oscar for The Artist) is leading the project development.  The concept of the film is described in a 13 December 2018 article in France-Amerique.  Jesse Ausubel as well as environmental scientist Mark Schaefer have been assisting the effort.