This study included funding and research partners from the U.S. and Canada. These partners were from multiple sectors, namely, Federal and state governments, academia, private sector, and tribal organizations in both nations. The creation of MARES included intense planning and coordination work, both before and after its solicitation. The novel partnership model used for MARES is modular and allows for the integration of its components during the life of the project while concentrating management and funding in a single focal point. This embedded flexibility and early planning increased the resilience of the group when facing unforeseen events and allowed the study to be completed within the originally planned time window.

The marine research partnerships explored in the preceding chapters represent different partnership models of varying duration, different geneses and visions, and different funding regimes and implementation. Some of their goals were related to ocean sustainability, others explored additional horizons such as citizen science, co-production, and resilience of socio-ecological systems. This chapter extracts fundamental lessons from these very different approaches to partnering and explores some of the key pillars of successful partnerships such as vision, leadership, trust, flexibility, communication, and time. We then place these into a broader context of socio-ecological systems to allow for a framed analysis of key partnership elements within the different phases of the partnership adaptive cycle and highlight key factors of partnership sustainability and resilience, such as connectivity, flexibility, redundancy, and diversity. Either by design or circumstance, all nine case studies presented had the necessary resilience characteristics and resources available at the right times to make their programs successful and sustainable. We recommend that future partnership efforts carefully examine these key characteristics and components to enable their successes.

The current discourse addressing the need for sustainable development in the blue economy is necessary to promote effective mitigation and adaptation responses in times of rapid climate change. However, thus far, said discourse lacks foundational and specific principles to provide critical pillars able to shed light on socio-economic processes needed to achieve sustainable development across sectors and scales. This article discusses ten recently-described nature-based principles for achieving and sustaining a regenerative blue economy while advocating for an age of factuality. These scientifically-derived principles are built on well-accepted concepts of socio-ecological system dynamics and undergird a healthy blue economy.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is responsible for managing the development of US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) energy and mineral resources. Because oil spills may occur from offshore oil and gas activities, BOEM conducts oil spill risk analysis (OSRA) prior to oil and gas lease sales. Since the 1970s, BOEM has developed and applied the OSRA model to evaluate the risk of potential oil spills to environmental resources. This paper summarizes some of the OSRA model progress and applications in the past decade: (1) calculation of the risk of catastrophic oil spills (with a volume over one million barrels), which concludes that the return period of a catastrophic oil spill in OCS areas is estimated to be 165 years; (2) a more efficient way to estimate the probability of oil spill contact to environmental resources in the Gulf of Mexico; (3) weathering calculations in OSRA, which enhances the accuracy of the OSRA model results; and (4) application of OSRA to the Ixtoc I oil spill as an example of how the OSRA model simulates large oil spills for oil spill preparedness and response.

The Environmental Studies Program (ESP) at the United States Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is funded by the United States Congress to support BOEM’s mission, which is to use the best available science to responsibly manage the development of the Nation’s offshore energy and mineral resources. Since its inception in 1973, the ESP has funded over $1 billion of multidisciplinary research across four main regions of the United States Outer Continental Shelf: Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic, Alaska, and Pacific. Understanding the dynamics of oil spills and their potential effects on the environment has been one of the primary goals of BOEM’s funding efforts. To this end, BOEM’s ESP continues to support research that improves oil spill modeling by advancing our understanding and the application of meteorological and oceanographic processes to improve oil spill modeling. Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, BOEM has invested approximately $28 million on relevant projects resulting in 73 peer-reviewed journal articles and 42 technical reports. This study describes the findings of these projects, along with the lessons learned and research information needs identified. Additionally, this paper presents a path forward for BOEM’s oil spill modeling and physical oceanographic research.

This essay was published in March of 2021 as a chapter in the book "Whither the Arctic Ocean?" and attempts to broadly visualize possible socio-ecological states of the future Arctic. To enable a sustainable Arctic system, an international adaptive strategy is advocated to include specific governance and policy styles, as well as specific resource management and regenerative economy practices. These are broadly discussed in the context of a fastly changing planet in order to identify vulnerabilities and desirable socio-ecological pathways leading to a flourishing Arctic. A simple conceptual model summarizes perspectives and recipes.

Turbidity currents deliver sediment rapidly from the continental shelf to the slope and beyond; and can be triggered by processes such as shelf resuspension during oceanic storms; mass failure of slope deposits due to sediment- and wave-pressure loadings; and localized events that grow into sustained currents via self-amplifying ignition. Because these operate over multiple spatial and temporal scales, ranging from the eddy-scale to continental-scale; coupled numerical models that represent the full transport pathway have proved elusive though individual models have been developed to describe each of these processes. Toward a more holistic tool, a numerical workflow was developed to address pathways for sediment routing from terrestrial and coastal sources, across the continental shelf and ultimately down continental slope canyons of the northern Gulf of Mexico, where offshore infrastructure is susceptible to damage by turbidity currents. Workflow components included: (1) a calibrated simulator for fluvial discharge (Water Balance Model - Sediment; WBMsed); (2) domain grids for seabed sediment textures (dbSEABED); bathymetry, and channelization; (3) a simulator for ocean dynamics and resuspension (the Regional Ocean Modeling System; ROMS); (4) A simulator (HurriSlip) of seafloor failure and flow ignition; and (5) A Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) turbidity current model (TURBINS). Model simulations explored physical oceanic conditions that might generate turbidity currents, and allowed the workflow to be tested for a year that included two hurricanes. Results showed that extreme storms were especially effective at delivering sediment from coastal source areas to the deep sea, at timescales that ranged from individual wave events (~hours), to the settling lag of fine sediment (~days).

An effective and efficient stewardship of natural resources requires consistency across all decision-informing approaches and components involved, i.e., managerial, governmental, political, and legal. To achieve this consistency, these elements must be aligned under an overarching management goal that is consistent with current and well-accepted knowledge. In this article, we investigate the adoption by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management of an environmental resilience-centered system that manages for resilience of marine ecological resources and its associated social elements. Although the framework is generally tailored for this Bureau, it could also be adapted to other federal or non-federal organizations. This paper presents a dynamic framework that regards change as an inherent element of the socio-ecological system in which management structures, e.g., federal agencies, are embedded. The overall functioning of the management framework being considered seeks to mimic and anticipate environmental change in line with well-accepted elements of resilience-thinking. We also investigate the goal of using management for resilience as a platform to enhance socio-ecological sustainability by setting specific performance metrics embedded in pre-defined and desired social and/or ecological scenarios. Dynamic management frameworks that couple social and ecological systems as described in this paper can facilitate the efficient and effective utilization of resources, reduce uncertainty for decision and policy makers, and lead to more defensible decisions on resources.

Professionals who collect and use traditional knowledge to support resource management decisions often are preoccupied with concerns over how and if traditional knowledge should be integrated with science. To move beyond the integration dilemma, we treat traditional knowledge and science as distinct and complementary knowledge systems. We focus on applying traditional knowledge within the decision-making process. We present succinct examples of how the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has used traditional knowledge in decision making in the North Slope Borough, Alaska: 1) using traditional knowledge in designing, planning, and conducting scientific research; 2) applying information from both knowledge systems at the earliest opportunity in the process; 3) using traditional knowledge in environmental impacts assessment; 4) consulting with indigenous leaders at key decision points; and 5) applying traditional knowledge at a programmatic decision level. Clearly articulating, early in the process, how best to use traditional knowledge and science can allow for more complete and inclusive use of available and pertinent information.

SUMMARY The Mississippi River delivers 96% of the fluvial sediment flux (480 MT/y) to the Northern Gulf of Mexico. The Northern Gulf of Mexico is characterized by low ocean energy (0.9m average wave heights, low tidal range of 0.3m). During extreme events, wave heights exceed 10m in deep water, and near shore waves reach 16m. Large waves can re-suspend seafloor sediment and liquefy the seafloor, both being viable mechanisms for inducing turbidity currents. The outer continental shelf region is a mature offshore oil and gas production area generating more than 1.7 million of barrels of oil per day, through 3,500+ oil platforms. The northern GOM currently has more than 28,000 miles of underwater pipes. Most of the structural damage to this network is associated with extreme oceanic and atmospheric events. 5% of the underwater pipes are broken or damaged by sudden and violent cascading of sediments. A shelf-slope modeling workflow is developed to model these rare sediment transport events based on the following models (WBM, WaveWatch III, ROMS, Hurrislip, and RANS-TURBINS). A second modeling workflow is designed to address the near shore environment using Delft3D and SWAN models. Here the focus is on inland propagating storm surge that inundate and erode large sections of the coast. When we compare the rare but extraordinary hurricane events with the more numerous but less severe winter storms, winter storms are seen to be more important from a geological perspective. Discussion will focus on why complex modeling schema is important in solving real world problems.

The United States is an ocean nation-our past, present, and future are inextricably connected to and dependent on oceans and marine resources. Marine ecosystems provide many important services, including jobs, food, transportation routes, recreational opportunities, health benefits, climate regulation, and cultural heritage that affect people, communities, and economies across the United States and internationally every day. There is a wealth of information documenting the strong linkages between the planet's climate and ocean systems, as well as how changes in the climate system can produce changes in the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of ocean ecosystems on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. There is relatively little information on how these climate-driven changes in ocean ecosystems may have an impact on ocean services and uses, although it is predicted that ocean-dependent users, communities, and economies will likely become increasingly vulnerable in a changing climate. Based on our current understanding and future projections of the planet's ocean systems, it is likely that Marine ecosystems will continue to be affected by anthropogenic-driven climate change into the future. This review describes how these impacts are set in motion through a suite of changes in ocean physical, chemical, and biological components and processes in US waters and the significant implications of these changes for ocean users and the communities and economies that depend on healthy oceans. US international partnerships, management challenges, opportunities, and knowledge gaps are also discussed. Effectively preparing for and responding to climate-driven changes in the ocean will require both limiting future change through reductions of greenhouse gases and adapting to the changes that we can no longer avoid.

A high-resolution ocean model and hydrographic observations are used to characterize the shelf circulation of the northern Argentinean shelf during the study period (1993–2008) and ultimately to explore possible linkages among atmospheric, oceanic, and biological climatic variability. Abundance of larvae and eggs of the local anchovy species, Engraulis anchoita, exhibit a spatial and temporal variability similar to those stocks found in other parts of the world and that we interpret in the context of the particularities of the local circulation and hydrography. Two (statistically) coupled modes of wind stress-surface velocity are described and interpreted in terms of historical and new information. A complex picture emerges in which the intensity of both a thermal shelf front, the alongshore flow, and larvae abundance would be connected and forced by local wind stresses. For all areas examined on the shelf, the larvae/egg abundance would not be very sensitive to short-lived climatic fluctuations (e.g., year-to-year) but they would be indeed to regime shifts. The shallow shelf area bounded by the 39°S and 41°S parallels would expose a clearer linkage between physical and biological variables than that north of 39°S. We attribute this fact to the particular physical conditions found in the southernmost area, which would favor an increased habitat quality for Engraulis anchoita.

The California Current System is described in its regional setting using two modern datasets. Argo provides a broadscale view of the entire eastern North Pacific Ocean for the period 2004–2010, and the High Resolution XBT Network includes transects from Honolulu to San Francisco (1991–2010) and to Los Angeles (2008–2010). Together these datasets describe a California Current of 500–800 km width extending along the coast from 43°N to 23°N. The mean southward transport of the California Current is about 5 Sv off Central and Southern California, with about 2.5 Sv of northward flow on its inshore side. Interannual variations are 50% or more of the mean transports. The salinity minimum in the core of the California Current is supplied by the North Pacific Current and by freshwater from the northern continental shelf and modified by alongshore geostrophic and across-shore Ekman advection as well as eddy fluxes and air–sea exchange. The heat and freshwater content of the California Current vary in response to the fluctuating strength of the alongshore geostrophic flow. On its offshore side, the California Current is influenced by North Pacific Intermediate Waters at its deepest levels and by Eastern Subtropical Mode Waters on shallower density surfaces. In total, the sources of the California Current, its alongshore advection, and its strong interactions with the inshore upwelling region and the offshore gyre interior combine to make this a rich and diverse ecosystem. The present work reviews previous contributions to the regional oceanography, and uses the new datasets to paint a spatially and temporally more comprehensive description than was possible previously.

Long‐term changes in global mean sea level (MSL) rise have important practical implications for shoreline and beach erosion, coastal wetlands inundation, storm surge flooding, and coastal development. Altimetry since 1993 indicates that global MSL rise has increased about 50% above the 20th century rise rate, from 2 to 3 mm yr−1. At the same time, both tide gauge measurements and altimetry indicate virtually no increase along the Pacific coast of North America during the satellite epoch. Here we show that the dynamical steric response of North Pacific eastern boundary ocean circulation to a dramatic change in wind stress curl, τxy, which occurred after the mid‐1970s regime shift, can account for the suppression of regional sea level rise along this coast since 1980. Alarmingly, mean τxy over the North Pacific recently reached levels not observed since before the mid‐1970s regime shift. This change in wind stress patterns may be foreshadowing a Pacific Decadal Oscillation regime shift, causing an associated persistent change in basin‐scale τxy that may result in a concomitant resumption of sea level rise along the U.S. West Coast to global or even higher rates.

The harvest guideline for Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax) incorporates an environmental parameter based on averaged surface temperatures at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography pier (SIO pier) in La Jolla, California, USA, which would be invoked after a series of cool years to reduce commercial catches using a precautionary decision rule. We revisit the stock-recruit and temperature-recruit relationships underpinning the currently used environmental parameter for sardine assessment and found that the temperature-recruit relationship no longer holds for the SIO pier when time series are updated with data from more recent years. The significance of the correlation between temperature and recruitment was also artificially increased by autocorrelation in the time series. In contrast, the stock-recruit relationship was still valid when recent data were added. SIO pier surface temperatures are warmer than 10 m-depth Southern California Bight (SCB) temperatures where the sardine spawn, and the difference has increased since the late 1970s. Sardine recruitment was also not related to offshore temperatures in the SCB. We demonstrate that the environmental proxy derived from SIO pier temperature, which has never affected the harvest guideline since its implementation, no longer predicts recruitment of Pacific sardine, and should be removed from sardine management.

Reports of hypoxic conditions (oxygen <1.5 ml L−1) off the U.S. west coast over the last two decades led us to investigate hypoxia in the Southern California Bight (SCB) and its potential impacts on fisheries. The secular trend in hypoxia in the SCB over the last 57 years is not monotonic, and reversed trend in the mid‐1980s, bringing oxygen concentrations back to levels measured in the late 1950s to early 1960s. Thirty‐seven percent of the rockfish (Sebastes spp.) habitat in the Cowcod Conservation Area at 240–350 m depths suffers exposure to hypoxia in the summer of normal years. If current trends in shoaling of low oxygen water continue for another 20 years, rather than reversing as happened previously, we predict loss of 18% of the habitat with 55% of the total habitat exposed to hypoxia.

Llamas (Lama glama) are South American camelids described as intermediate hosts of Neospora caninum, Toxoplasma gondii and Sarcocystis aucheniae. Due to the potential role of these protozoan infections as a cause of economic losses, the aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence for T. gondii, N. caninum and Sarcocystis sp. in llamas from Argentina. Serum samples from 308 llamas (>2 years old) were collected between 2005 and 2007. A total of 55 farms located in six departments of Jujuy province, Argentina were sampled. Presence of antibodies to N. caninum, T. gondii and Sarcocystis sp. was determined by the indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT). For Sarcocystis, 2 different bradyzoites-based antigens were prepared using S. aucheniae and S. cruzi. Sera were tested at dilutions 1:25 and 1:50. Antibodies to N. caninum were found in 4.6% serum samples. Fifty percent of departments and 14.5% of farms had positive animals. Antibodies to T. gondii were found in 30% of samples, distributed in 66% of departments and 43.6% of farms. Antibodies to Sarcocystis sp. were detected in 96% of samples and all departments and farms had positive animals, suggesting frequent contact between llamas and canids. Co-infection with N. caninum, T. gondii and Sarcocystis sp. was also recorded. Low seroprevalence of N. caninum in llamas detected in this study could be related to climatic and geographical conditions that limit cattle breeding activity, reducing the source of infection for definitive hosts. Seroprevalence of T. gondii and the positive animal distribution suggest frequent contamination of grass with felid faeces. In conclusion, this is the first report of combined seroprevalence for N. caninum, T. gondii and Sarcocystis sp. in llamas. Further studies are needed to determine the potential role of these protozoan infections as cause of abortion in Argentina as well as presence of these protozoans in llama meat used for human consumption.