Some magazines publish a big article, make a quick promotional effort, then move on to the next issue. Not us. At Mother Jones we think a big story deserves a long-term promotional effort. Take our March/April special issue on "The Fate of the Ocean."

Sign up for Ocean Voyager, an innovative, solution-oriented virtual voyage around the sea.

Mother Jones has followed up on "The Fate of the Ocean" with an innovative Web-based project called Ocean Voyager. A virtual voyage to ocean trouble spots around the globe, Ocean Voyager includes tracking fish pirates off the west coast of Africa, watching orcas within touching distance, tracking polar bears, and diving into the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone. At each stop, we highlight solutions and point you to actions you can take to help protect the ocean. Ocean Voyager incorporates videos, audio interviews, web cams, and links to informative web pages created by more than twenty organizations. Sign up here.

Watch PBS's NOW this Friday night, July 21, for a co-production with Mother Jones

We've been working with the PBS show NOW since well before the issue came out, and this Friday NOW will broadcast a segment based on H. Bruce Franklin's article "Net Losses" to 2 million Americans. Check here for your local station and time. Like Franklin's story, the NOW segment will focus on menhaden, the most important fish you've never heard of. Menhaden are small, oily fish unsuitable for human consumption, but they are a crucial source of food for larger fish and effective filterers of the seas. Once extraordinarily abundant, menhaden have long been overfished for their oil and are now endangered.

Take Action

The Magnuson-Stevens Act, the nation's primary law regulating commercial fishing in U.S. waters, is due for reauthorization. The Senate recently passed an ocean-friendly bill that maintains the law's environmental protections, but the House is poised to vote on legislation that would roll the protections back. Pushed by Rep. Richard Pombo, the bill would weaken the MSA by allowing continued overfishing on vulnerable fish populations and ignoring the need for independent scientific input and public participation in the fisheries management. A vote can come any day, so learn more and take action now.