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Kenyans to establish Coast Guard after law passed.

In southeast Kenya, near the border with Tanzania, lies a coral reef in the Indian ocean. The coral reef has degraded due to unsustainable fishing and climate change. WUR PhD student Joshua Wambugu is investigating how the local community and other stakeholders can contribute to restoring the reef and finding a sustainable livelihood.

Deep reefs below 30 m provide essential ecosystem services for ocean health and human well-being such as food security and climate change resilience. Yet, deep reefs remain poorly researched and largely unprotected, including in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO). Here, we assessed current conservation approaches in the WIO focusing on deep reefs, using a combination of online surveys and semi-structured interviews. Results indicated that deep-reef data are sparse and commonly stemming from non-peer-reviewed or non-publicly available sources, and are often not used to inform conservation of WIO marine protected areas. Based on those findings, we co-developed a framework with WIO stakeholders comprising recommendations linked to specific actions to be undertaken by regional actors to improve the capacity of the region to collect and share deep-reef information. We hope this framework will enhance deep-reef stewardship and management throughout the WIO and thus aid sustainable blue economic growth in the region.

The introduction of new Spotter buoys to measure wave height and direction, and temperature in the sea off Victor Harbor in South Australia, provides a timely new resource to monitor fluctuating sea conditions and their effect on coastal environments.

Global climate is regulated by the ocean, which stores, releases, and transports large amounts of mass, heat, carbon, and oxygen. Understanding, monitoring, and predicting the exchanges of these quantities across the ocean's surface, their interactions with the atmosphere, and their horizontal and vertical pathways through the global oceans, are key for advancing fundamental knowledge and improving forecasts and longer-term projections of climate, weather, and ocean ecosystems. The existing global observing system provides immense value for science and society in this regard by supplying the data essential for these advancements. The tropical ocean observing system in particular has been developed over decades, motivated in large part by the far-reaching and complex global impacts of tropical climate variability and change. However, changes in observing needs and priorities, new challenges associated with climate change, and advances in observing technologies demand periodic evaluations to ensure that stakeholders' needs are met. Previous reviews and assessments of the tropical observing system have focused separately on individual basins and their associated observing needs. Here we provide a broader perspective covering the tropical observing system as a whole. Common gaps, needs, and recommendations are identified, and interbasin differences driven by socioeconomic disparities are discussed, building on the concept of an integrated pantropical observing system. Finally, recommendations for improved observations of tropical basin interactions, through oceanic and atmospheric pathways, are presented, emphasizing the benefits that can be achieved through closer interbasin coordination and international partnerships.