Description: An annotated checklist of the sharks and rays of the South China Sea is described, together with some global statistics on the status and use of elasmobranchs. For each of the 156 recorded species, the checklist contains scientific names, synonyms, common names, global distribution, distribution in the area, status of threat, human uses, key references on taxonomy, identification, reproduction, population dynamics, and a list of people who have contributed information. The checklist is a direct printout from FishBase, a global database on finfish, developed at ICLARM in collaboration with FAO, the California Academy of Sciences, and many other partners, and supported by the European Commission (see www.fishbase.org). The goal of FishBase is to further the conservation and sustainable use of fish by bringing together the knowledge of taxonomists, fisheries experts, and conservationists, providing tools for analysing and updating this knowledge, and making it available to concerned people. How a closer link between FishBase, taxonomists and country experts can benefit the specialists, as well as elasmobranch conservation, is discussed

Description: Public fear for environmental and health impacts or potential leakage of CO2 from geological reservoirs is among the reasons why over the past decade CCS has not yet been deployed on a large enough scale so as to meaningfully contribute to mitigate climate change. Storage of CO2 under the seabed moves this climate mitigation option away from inhabited areas and could thereby take away some of the opposition towards this technology. Given that in the event of CO2 leakage for sub-seabed CCS the ocean would function as buffer for receiving this greenhouse gas, rather than the atmosphere, offshore CCS could particularly address concerns over the climatic impacts of CO2 seepage. In this paper we point out that recent geological studies confirm that leakage for individual offshore CCS operations may be highly unlikely from a technical point of view, if storage sites are well chosen, well managed and well monitored. But we argue that on a global long-term scale, for an ensemble of thousands or millions of storage sites, leakage of CO2 could take place in certain cases and/or countries for e.g. economic, institutional, legal or safety cultural reasons. We investigated what the impact could be in terms of temperature increase and ocean acidification if leakage would nevertheless occur, and addressed the question what the relative roles could be of on- and offshore CCS if mankind desires to divert the atmospheric damages resulting from climate change. For this purpose, we constructed a top-down energy-environment-economy model, with which we performed a probabilistic cost-benefit analysis of climate change mitigation with on- and offshore CCS as specific CO2 abatement options. One of our main conclusions is that even if there is non-zero leakage for CCS activity on a global scale, there is high probability that both onshore and offshore CCS could – on economic grounds – still account for anywhere between 20% and 80% of all future CO2 abatement efforts under a broad range of CCS cost assumptions.

Description: During the last decade it has become obvious that the ocean circulation shows vigorous variability on a wide range of time and space scales and that the concept of a "sluggish" and slowly varying circulation is rather elusive. Increasing emphasis has to be put, therefore, on observing the rapidly changing ocean state on time scales ranging from weeks to decades and beyond, and on understanding the ocean's response to changing atmospheric forcing conditions. As outlined in various strategy and implementation documents (e.g., the implementation plans of WOCE, AMS, CLIVAR, and GODAE) a combination of the global ocean data sets with a state-of-the-art numerical circulation model is required to interpret the various diverse data sets and to produce the best possible estimates of the time-varying ocean circulation. The mechanism of ocean state estimates is a powerful tool for such a "synthesis" of observations, obtained on very complex space-time pattern, into one dynamically consistent picture of the global time-evolving ocean circulation. This process has much in common with ongoing analysis and reanalysis activities in the atmospheric community. But because the ocean is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, substantially under-sampled, the burden put on the modeling and estimations components is substantially larger than in the atmosphere. Moreover, the smaller dynamical eddy scales which need to be properly parameterized or resolved in ocean model simulations, put stringent requirements on computational resources for ongoing and participated climate research.

Description: To limit global warming to 1.5°C, vast amounts of CO2 will have to be removed from the atmos‐ phere via Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). Enhancing the CO2 sequestration of ecosystems will require not just one approach but a portfolio of CDR options, including so‐called nature‐based approaches alongside CDR options that are perceived as more technical. Creating a CDR “supply curve” would however imply that all carbon removals are considered to be perfect substitutes. The various co‐benefits of nature‐based CDR approaches militate against this. We discuss this aspect of nature‐based solutions in connection with the enhancement of blue carbon ecosys‐ tems (BCE) such as mangrove or seagrass habitats. Enhancing BCEs can indeed contribute to CO 2 sequestration, but the value of their carbon storage is low compared to the overall contri‐ bution of their ecosystem services to wealth. Furthermore, their property rights are often un‐ clear, i.e. not comprehensively defined or not enforced. Hence, payment schemes that only compensate BCE carbon sequestration could create tradeoffs at the expense of other im‐ portant, often local, ecosystem services and might not result in socially optimal outcomes. Ac‐ cordingly, one chance for preserving and restoring BCEs lies in the consideration of all services in potential compensation schemes for local communities. Also, local contexts, management structures, and benefit‐sharing rules are crucial factors to be considered when setting up inter‐ national payment schemes to support the use of BCEs and other nature‐ or ecosystem‐based CDR. However, regarding these options as the only hope of achieving more CDR will very prob‐ ably not bring about the desired outcome, either for climate mitigation or for ecosystem preser‐ vation. Unhalted degradation, in turn, will make matters worse due to the large amounts of stored carbon that would be released. Hence, countries committed to climate mitigation in line with the Paris targets should not hide behind vague pledges to enhance natural sinks for re‐ moving atmospheric CO2 but commit to scaling up engineered CDR.