You and the Planet: how can we save our seas? | The Royal Society

conservation is a central part of our culture it is what we basically have as the base of ensuring sustainability of our resources both in the ocean and on the land there are a lot of challenges that we're facing we need the science to help support the management that we cannot just say we're going to close an area and then not look at it because there might be other issues that we don't know about that are affecting the area when it comes to planning the future they need a bit more data that data is in all the remote places which is where we fit in using all these different tools from very simplistic to very sophisticated we can paint a picture of the entire ecosystem and kind of tell the story of how the whole ecosystem functions local communities manage their resources much better they're out on the reef every single day and also the eyes on the water every day and these are the people who have the most to gain but also the most to lose by ineffective management and poor resource health [Music] the opportunity that conservation brings has been our livelihood both for food security as well as to generate incomes for families locally [Music] yes [Music] good evening everyone and welcome to the eighth event in the u and the planet series it's so so brilliant to be here and for this event tonight the royal society have teamed up with the global non-profits the national geographic society who of course his mission is to use the power of science and exploration and education to really illuminate stories about our planet about nature and about our world and of course as part of our that mission the national geographic society of course has a long history of exploring there are mysteries of our ocean you know conserving wildlife conserving our precious marine ecosystems and of course expanding the number of marine sanctuaries across the globe including one of the signature projects pristine seas that you just saw a clip of then it's led by national geographic explorer in residence enrique sala and he showed us exactly a bit more about their work and how they work with local communities to protect critical marine ecosystems and of course tonight's event is focusing on our planet's oceans and the opportunities and the the challenges that we face to have a more sustainable a healthier and just better cleaner relationship with our oceans and that clip does exactly that and and shows us how the national geographic society work to explore and protect our oceans and of course another way they do that is uh with national geographic explorers and of course they're scientists and storytellers and filmmakers and conservationists who again are carrying out this critical work for our precious marine environments in fact if you're interested in learning more about some of the work they do covering these marine related issues you can go to natgeo.com oceans and we are lucky to have two of those national geographic explorers with us on our brilliant panel today as well as other fantastic experts who are experts in their own field and in oceanography work and marine work as well they're really at the forefront of what they do and we'll hear from them in just a moment but before we do i just want to say a massive thank you to all of you who have already submitted your questions to the panel in advance i'm hoping to get a few of them tonight in tonight's discussion we actually have live captioning available this evening as well so if you'd like to see these just click the subtitles slash closed captions button in the bottom bar and if you haven't submitted questions already but you'd like to you can do just that so what i've got here is the slido app so slido.com if you head to that website that app you can download it use the code y294 looks a little bit like this and just on there we've got a q a running and a poll section running as well once you type in that code it's y294 it'll ask you to type in your first name that's all you have to do first name login and then we can start chatting away and getting conversation going between you guys is a really interactive kind of plus of having this brilliant discussion here today and we want to hear from you so get your questions in we'll be having polls throughout today's talk so get in touch if you do a tweet or put out anything on socials use the hashtag you and the planet so we do not miss it um and i think it's time we should meet our fantastic panelists so just to introduce myself my name is lizzie daly i'm an animal movement scientist broadcaster and wildlife tv presenter and i love all things marine i should have been born a shark but here we go you can't win it all um but i'm not a marine biologist in fact i'm not a marine expert but we have a brilliant panel here today to tell us more about what they do we're going to start with you diva amon lovely to have you here tell us more about who you are and your background thanks lindsay delighted to be here so i'm a marine biologist focused on the little known habitats and animals of the deep ocean as well as how our actions are impacting them and i found myself weirdly at this nexus of like science policy and communication and have an increasingly deep desire to see stewardship measures applied to the deep ocean as well as the engagement of a broader group of um stakeholders towards that effort brilliant stuff thank you so much and jahawi bertolli hello nice to see you here again um yeah tell us more about your background so i'm a wildlife cameraman and filmmaker but my passion is the ocean um i had the privilege of growing up on the kenyan coastline but i've also seen the changes that are happening so currently my focus is actually on trying to tell stories about the changes of the ocean but told through the eyes of communities on the coastline local communities that have are living through it and to try and get communities on board and educated to be able to champion conservation for their marine environments brilliant stuff and i'd love to delve into that in a bit more detail um as we have some of the questions that have already been sent in so thank you lovely to see here richard thompson hello uh tell us more about kind of what you do so i'm a marine biologist by training um but i spent actually most of the last 30 years looking at plastic in the ocean and that fascinated me early in my career because i found that the shores i was studying and the experiments that i got set up there that litter was accumulating in them every day and i started to get fascinated by it counting it recording it trying to figure out where it had come from and i i made this by chance observation that we weren't studying the small stuff and that led in 2004 we published the first paper to use the term microplastic and since then we've been looking at you know impacts distribution but increasingly the what can we do about it what can we do to stop the challenge that plastic presents in the oceans fantastic stuff and last but not least angela hatton joins us as well hi angela nice to be here um so i'm angelia i'm the director of science and technology at the national oceanography center um my background was actually as a biologist and then i became a ceo and oceanographer but now my job is to oversee a whole range of things from the technology we develop to the observations we take to the understanding of the oceans as a whole and uh and so my job is now to enable a bunch of very very excellent scientists to do what they do really really well no small job for any of our wonderful panelists today absolutely fantastic thanks angela okay so um a whole range of questions have been submitted today so i'd really like to get stuck in but before i do i guess just a general setting up question and this is where i'd like to get your audience watching involved as i can see you are already sending in some brilliant questions and points so thank you so much for that um i'm going to start by asking what do you think are the biggest threats to our oceans and if you go on that app i'll say it again it's slido slido.com enter the code y294 and head on to the q a you will see hopefully the question what do you think are the biggest threats to our oceans please put in uh kind of words uh that you think would be relevant to that big big question and uh we'll be coming back to that at the end after we ask the panelists to look at a bit of a word cloud so while you guys do that i'm going to turn that question to our wonderful panelists richard i'd love to start with you because you mentioned your work of course with microplastics which has transformed our understanding or i guess acceptance in the public eye of actually that the importance of riding of of microplastics but for you is that one of the worlds on our ocean's biggest problems it's certainly a major challenge but there are lots of challenges that face the oceans and i think it's it's it's not really appropriate to try and separate them in some sort of ranking and and and therefore reach a conclusion that we should only focus on a or b whatever that might be the only way that we can really safeguard the oceans is to work across a number of different channels that that threaten the ocean simultaneously and many of these things have synergies between them you know there are synergies between um between the way that we produce design use plastics and climate change for example there are clear links between habitat destruction and biodiversity there are links between plastics and biodiversity so many of these things are interconnected and i you know it's it sometimes worries me when we try to kind of call them off and say you know what are the top five that we we absolutely need to focus on yeah absolutely and it's not kind of a small kind of uh easily digestible issue is it there's there's kind of lots of different areas and variability within that to look at um diva you mentioned the beginning in your intro how you obviously carry out really great work to celebrate the uncelebrated perhaps those species that don't get the limelight like our humpback whales and our sharks so for you kind of what is the main threat to some of the i guess lesser love species or yeah i mean definitely what richard said is absolutely true um especially you know when you think about all of those impacts uh basically having synergistic effects on each other having cumulative impacts on each other um but i think you know in the deep ocean of course we see the litter that um eventually breaks down into microplastics we see litter of debris of all different kinds but there are other issues like um deep ocean fishing bottom trawling that has huge impacts in the deep ocean and also of course there's the increasing effects of the climate crisis having an impact on the deep ocean but of course these places that are you know far from our site it's much harder to see and understand those impacts angela and you have kind of traveled the world and and been on many ocean expeditions throughout your career how about you uh so for me the baseline has to be climate change i think it's so fundamental to so many of the changes that are happening um and the oceans place a really significant role in climate they've taken up about 93 of the excess heat we've generated and about 30 of the carbon anthropogenic carbon and that's kind of changed the ocean both physically and chemically and so the warming in the ocean extreme heat events um they're causing everything from damage to coral reefs to polar systems and actually things like sea level it doesn't just affect us it's actually affecting the organisms in the in the ocean as well particularly those in benthic and coastal environments um but for me one of the other things is that it creates multi-pressures and so the warming in the ocean is then combined with changing carbon in the ocean which is affecting the ph which is combined with the way in which oxygen is being distributed in the ocean and available uh those combination of things puts real pressure on systems that might cope with a little bit of change but when you keep throwing different things at it um but because climate change is affecting every part of the ocean no matter where you are i think for me that's got to be one of the key ones however completely agree with everyone else that the complexity of the ocean is what i love and everything is connected is one ocean completely connected and so we can't really say there's one thing without addressing all things yeah very well said and of course johari your job is to try and find those narratives in this massive range of issues and tell that story and connect with people and as you say build up those relationships with communities who live in these environments so for you what would be the kind of go-to threat or issue for you you know it's one of those things where it's really difficult to say because as everyone said we have the threat of climate change um on a global level we have fishing you know unregulated commercial fishing that's becoming a big issue off the east african coast which is affecting local communities here and it's trying to juggle what to tackle first now from our standpoint is to try and get look stand the bigger issues at hand so that when we're talking about um regulations in terms of fisheries people on the ground know what's happening so they can push for conservation in terms of what they wanted to be able to sustain their livelihoods and but it is difficult because you know we're in the process of trying to set up a new marine protected area and we've been going great and then all of a sudden we've had massive bleaching events so you know there's so many things kind of being thrown at us now that it's quite difficult but i think the minute you have communities understanding their ocean and us understanding their view of conserving their ocean we can start doing smaller changes that hopefully will impact a much greater environment yeah and those kind of incremental changes are so valuable in ultimately that global bigger picture so yeah but very well put um okay well great way to start i think i'm also now going to throw you all in the midst of our first poll and uh i'm sure the panelists will know the answer to this question but the first poll of today is what percent of the ocean has been mapped is it 10 to 15 35 to 40 50 to 55 or a hundred percent can you imagine so that's just gone up on here and i'm sure our panelists know the answers you'll see it kind of up there vote away please and we'll start getting some of your questions on you've been kind of very active on here and wow there's a lot of questions um if we don't mind jahari i'll come to you on this one because emily asked uh just about coastal communities and she has asked how can we best balance the needs of local coastal communities with the need for conservation gina that's a great question because often with current with the way we sort of approach things is we forget that coastal communities have been appropriately managing their environments for a long time and you know changes in the environment changes in technology and all these new things are coming through that it's kind of out of whack and a lot of the times when we sort of go in to try and work with coastal communities you forget that there's a wealth of cultural knowledge there and if you're going to approach communities to try and create you know better fisheries this that the other you need to honor the fact that there's knowledge that they have and that you know it has to be a balance between what we know currently instead of modern knowledge and cultural knowledge and how do you amalgamate that into the best kind of way forward because it has to be both science and um with what we've been seeing you know these communities know they used to have sort of we fished here and we didn't fish here this was a breeding ground this wasn't now fish are a lot harder to find and the current generation that's coming up are losing that ancient knowledge but so in in terms of that the knowledge is there we just need to get it back and we need to foster that knowledge with the communities coming and then from a legislative point of view you know county governments um big governments we need to understand that there is knowledge here and it has to be two ways because all of a sudden you have you know the government comes and says you can't you can't or you can you can't without referencing local knowledge and all of a sudden you've alienated part of your solution and i think it's incredibly important that we value local knowledge and use it as part of you know the story that we're looking at yeah fantastic stuff um i'm going to put the next question to you angela if i may um what does this is from william k hi william and he says what does the panel think is the best thing that members of the public can do as individuals to help protect our oceans so as a very good question i i think it's not one thing so i actually think it's people who can make a massive difference in this way um so the choices you make every day can make a huge difference one of the biggest issues in the ocean is solved on land and solved by the way we think about what we consume the way we think about the waste that we generate uh the way in which we actually uh support um or um influence our governments you know we can we can drive change and we can have cultural change that makes a huge difference so if each one of us does a bit rather than thinking somebody needs to fix it we can make a huge difference so it's the little things in your life every day that shouldn't you shouldn't even need to worry about whether you recycle whether you think about where your food is generated whether you support sustainable development activities you can do an awful lot and on a small scale you can get involved with beach cleaning you can get involved with activities that are actually about supporting promoting health of the ocean so i think there's so much rather than one thing but i would say if you were starting think about your choices you're making every day or whether they're sustainable great advice and of course in the plastic conversation richard this is equally as important as a consumer right well richard sorry you're muted one of us had to do it thank you for taking more time it's all right the host muted me actually and but i and i assumed the host would unmute me but it didn't um so yeah i think what angela said spot on um it is about things that we do on land and actually you know a lot of the key science we need to help the oceans is is science that's based on land it's science about um the choices that we each make and and also how we produce and use things so that we can do that in a way that is more sustainable in in an ocean context so it's it's the absolutely key going forward is is thinking about the planet as a system and the land and the sea are part of that and we can't think about the science of the sea in isolation and hope that that will bring the answers we need science on land and on sea and and we need to connect people and also echo what johari said you know those cultural connections of managing the oceans that we had it worries me that in many many places we've lost them and i see statistics from communities that live within a few kilometers of the coast and yet many of the individuals there haven't visited the coast in in years and and that's part of the tragedy that you know we buy fish from a supermarket and don't think about where it's come from so it's about connecting the land and the sea and collecting communities to the oceans in each of their decisions on a daily basis that's going to be fundamental to tackling this as well as the science to underpin it yeah absolutely brilliant diva if i if i may kind of ask you the same same question if there's somebody listening on here wants to make a change what would be your top tips for them so i'd say two things and of course you know everything that has been said before absolutely but two further things would be um especially with the deep ocean is or just the ocean in general just talk about it you know whether just tell stories about it educate someone else your friend your family your neighbor whatever about something about the ocean whether it is something incredible about it or um a threat that it's facing um that's i think one of the biggest steps as well as you know i think often yes of course we absolutely need that bottom up um that bottom up movement to create change but we also need top down and often i think the political will is missing and there is a big disconnect between um for instance the grassroot organizations the community-based organizations that jahawi and others are referring to with their practices and and the you know the the issues that are being faced there and what for instance governments whether it is in the same country or globally whatever that are um really there's a disconnect between them and um it's about sort of repairing that and i think that the average citizen can help to like lobby for those changes can help to push the government in directions that they themselves would like to see things go brilliant brilliant advice and it's kind of gives you a bit of hope i think is a small part of a massive problem you know we have the power as much as we have seen the negative impacts of the planet we have the power to completely change that so um that's absolutely brilliant we have got lots of questions coming in um so i'm gonna fire this one off to um you richard uh if i may what can we do to stop ocean plastic pollution at the source yeah i mean that's key and to me the challenge here is making sure that we do a much better job of using plastics responsibly it's not plastic per se that's the problem the the litter in our oceans is a symptom of inefficient and inaccurate adequate use you know plastics can actually help to reduce our footprint on the planet and so the answer is about using them more responsibly you think of of uses that can help reduce food wastage in packaging you think of lightweight parts in cars and airplanes reduce carbon emissions all of those things can be achieved without the need for this emission to the ocean so the challenge is to design plastics in a more responsible manner so they can deliver a life in service and i'd absolutely say that it is about the things we've known for decades and that's what frustrates me it is about reduced reuse recycle reduce is going to be key if we don't need the plastic item in the first place and there are some instances of that but then it gets more challenging because there are definitely examples as i've just indicated where plastics are the best material for the job and in those instances we either need to design for increased reuse or we need to design for greater circularity via recycling and yeah it's a frustration to me if i were to take a you know a group of recyclers into a supermarket and show them the products there they'd scratch their heads and it'd be a very small number of them that they'd say they could actually recycle over and over again you know to get the carbon really going around in a circular economy and you know there are many examples we haven't got time to look at them now where actually frustratingly a little bit more thought at the design stage could have made a product that was much more circular and so that's part of the challenge i think is making sure we're designing plastics with end of life in mind as well as life and service in mind and yet that's what we haven't done we've designed plastics to be thrown away and that's the pedigree that's resulted in the littering that we design them to be valueless disposable items that bring us convenience and we can chuck them away without a care and that's what's resulting largely with the escape of plastics as litter to the environment and to the oceans that's what's got to change brilliant thanks richard um we've got a question from mr amaduri who said what are the solutions for saving our planet post covid of course this past year has been unprecedented on so many different levels angela if it's okay to come to you with this because i'm sure it's impacted our oceans communities you know the very fundamentals of all of our lives on here what do you think we need to do moving forward at this pandemic i think with a pandemic um there's a lot of things we've actually learned which is that we can we can work in a way that's more virtual we don't need to travel as much and we can still communicate um i would advocate that many of us still want to get back to some of the ways in which we'd like to meet people and spend time with others but i think we've actually learned that our perception of how we needed to be is that we can adapt and we can change and i think if we can take that feeling of what we've learned about how we can adjust our behavior and change and incorporate that into our everyday life going forward that would be better um to be honest the kobe situation is such a huge thing over the whole world that we we just need to you know think about that as an important priority as well right now and we need to actually understand that the implications for individual people is huge so i don't take away from that but if we can learn a little bit from what we've been doing i think we'll be doing a better much better place in the future yeah fantastic thank you um tahar will come to you for this one this is from tim what's the most amazing thing you've seen in the ocean that's such a hard question it's amazing in the ocean um i mean it's it's a place that we often feel so disconnected with that once you start spending time in it you know you shouldn't and you know for me it was for example i made friends with a trigger fish and on days it was my best friend on days it attacked me i still have bite marks in my fins from when he was on a bad day but it's the realization that it's a complete incredible world with characters that are characters and go about their daily lives by doing things much as what's going on on on land and and it's not like this forgotten place where you know if the things we were doing on land happen in the ocean we'd be in complete uproar about it but because it's hard for people to get to the ocean you know it's kind of out of sight out of mind and from being humbled by swimming with you know a blue whale or a humpback it puts you in your place as a human you realize just how small you are and you are part of that ecosystem we're part of the world we're a tiny part of the world but we're creating a massive impact and we kind of all need to be pushed back to that size to realize you know we're affecting the one planet we have and for me that's what the ocean does is it puts you back in that place of wow this is a massive incredible world and we need to think about it because it's our only home yeah gosh there's nothing more humbling than being in the ocean and you know seeing a even a trigger fish fly by in the ocean it's just um yeah an experience like no other thanks for sharing that story um just to let you all know on the um on the slido app there is currently the next poll which is running so for our panelists especially for you richard do you think that single-use plastic should be banned the answers are yes i don't know or no i've got 79 on discuss would you like me to comment on that now i would actually i think i think you should or anyone well my view is no we shouldn't ban all single used plastics what we need to do is to use them more appropriately than we have done and you know the single use is often picked out but you think of packaging um and that's often picked on but it can very much extend the life of food and drink in our shops and reduce food wastage which is another major environmental challenge you think about all of the fish harvested from the sea if we can't protect that from perishing we're going to waste a lot of it and some of that is going to have to be single-use packaging now the trick here is in not making the packaging so single use and that doesn't mean we all have to take a tupperware tub to be refilled although we could do that it could be reused via a circular economy by designing packaging that can be much more compatible much more widely compatible with recycling so and then to me it kind of ceases to become single use in a way um so i think it's about changing and transforming the way we use plastic but it but the answer isn't to me in banning plastic packaging from our supermarkets and having a plastic free aisle because i think we see much more food perishing yeah well i'm sure lots of people think i mean it's the go-to isn't it you hear it everywhere reduce single-use plastic stop single-use plastic so um yeah but but i wouldn't say it's about eliminating it it's not that simple unfortunately and i was gonna ask richard i mean surely there are medical implications i mean medical uses of single-use plastic as well that are absolutely essential i i just picked on the food use but absolutely in medical use but it's about designing for end of life so in many medical applications it's highly likely that the plastic will be incinerated the single used plastic the gloves the scalpels or any of that so we need to make sure that we're designing that plastic possibly for incineration i don't think that's the answer to everyday plastics that we might buy in a supermarket as packaging i think there's a much better end of life but in some instances it will be incineration and there we need to design the plastic products with that in mind so that we can release the energy from them in a way that won't also simultaneously release lots of very challenging gaseous chemicals and so it's about designing with end of life in mind and it's it really frustrates me when i talk to the product designers they say gosh that was never in the brief we were asked to make plastic products that looked attractive and that functioned while they were in use no matter how short-lived the use and that's the tragedy of it all yeah really complex um thank you richard thank you for answering that um i'm sure lots of people are sat on the pole thinking okay we may be rethinking their answers there um a question from uh ruby booth i'll come come to you if it's all right diva how did members of the panel get into the marine sector university degree internships and what advice would you give to young marine biologists trying to break through diva i'll come to you first for me okay so um like jahawi didn't grow up in the uk i grew up in trinidad tobago in the caribbean and so you know island surrounded by water it was kind of natural um but uh it wasn't until i went to university that that was when i really learned about the deep ocean and the fact that there was this entirely like the largest ecosystem on the planet nearly completely unexplored um so much work to be done and um and that was really that pivotal moment for me um but i think you know in terms of advice i would say that it's an amazing career and we need more of them um and that's just because of the the general health of the planet the general health of the ocean we need more people working to try to understand how the ocean works what lives in it um and how best we can manage and protect it um as well as in doing that in a an inclusive and equitable way fantastic stuff um yeah thank you for that okay um the questions are flying in this is so brilliant to see thank you all so much for sending sending them in and before i move on to the next question we have another poll and this is we've touched on this briefly already in terms of responsibility and where does that lie but the poll is who do you think should be primarily responsible for restoring ocean health and ensuring future sustainability is it individuals communities business and industry government and policy makers everyone none of the above or i don't know so any one of those you can have a look on the poll um on the app i remind you all at slido.com and it's y294 is the code if you haven't already so that's now live why didn't i post that question to any of the panelists who want to take that i feel like it's a really big one but you've all kind of touched on various aspects of that who would be your go-to in terms of responsibility i'm happy to uh start on that one which is um i think the the first of all i think ultimately um world governments are responsible um but they are part of the whole system with us as well um and but it's really important that it's it's kind of managed internationally so it needs to be managed internationally through conventions and we do have some things in place the u.n convention of the law of the sea and we have uh that does a huge amount in terms of determining how we might manage the oceans um governments themselves need to manage their own economic zones but in terms of thinking about the 60 percent of the planet which is or plus which is open ocean deep sea water that has no regulation formally then the governments need to work together internationally in order to make that happen my feeling is governments respond to people and therefore unless we work on it we won't change that and so again i'm going to say it's never one thing it's always a combination of things and i think ultimately governments can put in the right policy the right procedures the right way of monitoring they can actually regulate and determine how we can do things and they can have penalties but unless we help determine what needs to be done then we won't be able to do that and underlying that is always going to be research we don't know enough about the oceans and so if we're going to really determine how to manage them we need to be able to observe them we need to see how it's changing um and you know if you take that at the moment the definition is about only 90 of the the organisms living in the ocean have not even described properly and we don't know enough we've 96 of the habitable space on earth for living organisms is in the ocean and four kilometers deep compared to the surface of the land and yet we know very little about it so if we're really going to do that then there's a whole responsibility for scientists to actually get the evidence and the information that's needed yeah and yeah you did actually but um kind of going back to that first poll that we did it was 10 to 15 of our oceans have been mapped 10 to 15 percent like you say there's so much we really don't know and um 62 of those actually on the app currently um say it's uh oh 63 now say it's everyone's responsibility and 31 then say government and policy makers so i think there's a bit of everything in there and jahawi i mean for you it's like you make a really powerful story and documentary and i'm sure that influences and goes on to inspire lots of people as as consumers to kind of and to decide how they eat how they shop or what decisions they may make so for you who where does the responsibility lie you know going going on for what angela said which is completely true um but we need to make information readily accessible on all grounds into a lot of people so that means scientists talking to government government talking to scientists and then also everyone else so that we can make informed decisions and so without you know without the might of people behind you you know people can influence government and if information that's coming from science is made available and often it's not it's you know these scientific journals and this and that and it's not given in a way for the general population to understand how can they push for something if they don't understand what's going on so it's so important that this information is disseminated in a way that is understandable on all grounds because it's everyone's responsibility you know and we need to be able to give to be given the right information for us to make up our own minds and to understand what's going on so that we can push the government you know we on that's the wrong way so i i think it's all of us and all that information needs to be given in a way that everyone understands so everyone understands what we're what we could lose yeah absolutely that's why a panel like this is just so brilliant because you all come with your own expertise and areas of backgrounds and kind of having that like intersectional approach to making that change is so so important diva for you what would be the the golden nugget i mean there are so many things that have been said already yes yes yes um translation absolutely is essential as scientists we need to help our science to inform policy decisions and political agendas and i want to emphasize like in form rather than um we don't want it to lead to science washing which is sometimes what happens politically um but i think you know in terms of what angela said yes absolutely most of our planet the international waters or the high seas is more or less unregulated and so what we're seeing is that there are lots of different siloed organizations we have the international seabed authority which is related to mineral activities we have regional fishery management organizations which are released and none of them none of them really talk to each other and so there's there's really just sort of this like dis disconnected management and so there is this process happening now the united nations called the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction negotiations and it's thought to be wrapping up its initial negotiations this summer hopefully and that's meant to really rectify some of those key management issues and remove some of those silos so that we can manage in a more holistic way and this is really important given that um this area international waters a lot of what is found within it especially minerals is is called the common heritage of mankind or i prefer the common heritage of humankind um but that means it belongs to not just us on the call not just you know everyone listening but also to everyone on the planet and to everyone who's yet to come and so really we all have a stake and in this in this discussion and i think unfortunately um going back to what jahao you're saying you know i think local knowledge hasn't been present in these discussions cultural um the cultural value of many of these places hasn't been brought into discussions indigenous perspectives haven't been brought into these discussions um and i think that you know that's changing but really we need to make more of an effort to have a again a much more inclusive and equitable conversation in these spaces brilliant brilliant well great summary to that question that's fantastic and lots of people interacting with the poll there so thank you all um lots of conversations about plastic which is so i'm coming back to you if i may or anyone can comment on plastic but um um adam said only nine percent of all plastics are actually recycled how are we still talking about recycling as a solution to the plastic problem when the real issue is the exponentially growing production of plastics by fossil fuel companies and packaging manufacturers how do we address the problem at the source you've touched on this already but please don't go it is absolutely about reduced we do need to drive down our usage but as i've said already there are many applications where plastics are probably the best material to do the job you think of bringing you lemonade you know we can't take it out the tap directly you know i'm kind of against the idea that we should have bottled water when we've got it in our taps but you think if you want to have lemonade and you want to have the freedom to do that plastic bottle is probably the best way to do it the polymer that those bottles are typically made of is potentially highly recyclable and yet i see many examples in the shops where it's not been designed for end-of-life recycling so in answer to the question you write about the statistics it is only about 10 of the current usage that gets recycled but that isn't because recycling per se is a failure it's because we failed to design the plastics in order that they could be recyclable at the end of their lifetime and that's the that's the that's the biggest frustration i mean ironically i've got an example here there's no branding on it don't worry but you know that's a bottle made of a highly recyclable polymer that the recyclers don't want because some designers put a red pigment in it and that's making it not on the recyclable there's the same information to the consumer on it about the end of life but it's going to make it it's going to reduce what the recyclers would say it'll harvest value to them so that makes it really challenging economically to recycle it as a consequence of something that's been added it's not about protecting the drink it's been added to achieve a marketing end so we've got to design this stuff with end of life in mind and so that's why i do actually hold a lot of hope for recycling it isn't the only answer but it clearly is part of the picture but it'll only work if we design with that in mind brilliant thank you so much for that richard um okay we're going to power on through so many questions that are coming in um i'm going to open this up to any one of our panelists um it's from lucy m and she asks what more could be done to encourage scotland to focus on inland salmon salmon farms in order to try and increase the number of wild salmon and it's i guess this just goes to really all salmon farming or large-scale aquaculture fish farming it's something that for me personally i'm very passionate about there's a number of ecological issues and damages as a result of large-scale aquaculture and salmon farming that you see here in the uk but does anyone want to kind of chime in on that and talk about i guess fisheries or salmon farmers in general it's a bit of a specific question yeah um i suppose i i'm happy to kind of say a couple things i think um so so if you think agriculture comes from a concept of trying to reduce the overfishing issues that may have been of the past and so um the idea being that if we actually could uh have aquaculture we could reduce the impacts in the environment and we could reduce the potentially reduced even the carbon effects from fishing um and over time i think in 2016 agriculture actually started to outgrow fisheries in terms of the main source of fish for human consumption um but then we shouldn't think of that as being uh something that doesn't have its own impacts um it's important i mean 20 million people employed in agriculture it's an important source of food if we're talking about net zero nets marine carbon sorry marine protein is going to be a really important thing because compared to what you can grow on land in terms of growing and farming animals then we are much better off to be looking at fish from the sea so we need to balance a number of things and so like everything it's not just about whether you do it it's how you do it yes and so obviously in lots of ways in which we do business we can do it in a way that's quite damaging that has an effect on the environment that doesn't look after the welfare of animals um but we can do it other ways as well and so i think we should instead of assuming that aquaculture is just something we shouldn't do i think we should be looking at how aquaculture should be done in a way that makes it sustainable um and there are lots of changes that have gone on um even simple things like previously they threw a lot more fish feeding which was very polluting underneath and then they realized they could reduce the fish feed if they did it effectively and that saved them money so there's lots of things you can actually do so it's for me it's as much about how we do things can it be sustainable um can we improve it and what's the risk of the benefit as part of that discussion yeah and so i wouldn't like to oversimplify it to yes or no but i do think it's something we need to do sustainably and angela if i can because it's such a big industry as you mentioned it's so vital for livelihoods of coastal communities all over the world from chile to norway to scotland but for such a large and growing industry you know is this really something that we can still label with being sustainable of course there's some brilliant technologies and brilliant advances in transforming it to be better but really are we going to be looking at this as a as a good kind of go-to for the future i think it's like all things it's going to be it's one of the things we're going to have to think about and you have to remember the this is a something that's happened for many years and for lots of coastal communities it was a very sensible way of actually maintaining and getting fish which was safer it was a way of actually being sure you could get food supplies so uh so again i think like lots of things the intensification of what we do whether that's agriculture or agriculture or whether that's mining or thinking about oil and gas the more intensified we are the more we consume in a way that isn't needed then that's when we hit the problems so i think we need to kind of balance that the balance is that we need to regulate we need to make sure it's done properly and we need to make sure we think about animal welfare as well um in terms of sustainability from an ocean point of view actually not taking the stocks out of the ocean is going to be is a better option if that makes sense however that by the downside of that fish in the aquaculture system are not experiencing the life from the ocean so it's always about balance so for a sustainability point of view it's probably better than than actually damaging the environment particularly this is deep sea trawling um from a point of view of where the weeks are acceptable then that's a very different question that maybe has to have a personal answer from anything yeah and we could do an hour on that but we don't have time so um we're going to have another poll and i'm trying to squeeze in a few more questions this has been absolutely brilliant um the next poll is what do you think are the top three things you can do to contribute to saving the seas consuming sustainably sourced seafood only raising awareness of ocean related issues like through social media reducing or not using single-use plastic products reducing your energy use and power consumption supporting eco-tourism over traditional coastal tourism participating in community-driven activities like beach cleanups or other so if you're on slido please jump on to that poll which is now live and let us know what you think i'll have a little um scroll through at the end but we've got so many questions um diva we had some questions coming in for you how does diva feel about she's actually emma fox thank you so much for your question she's fully named you which i appreciate how does divermon feel about deep sea mining potentially occurring in the future yeah so that's i mean a really challenging question um but there are certainly some really big questions around sustainability and ethics um and especially from an environmental standpoint a legal standpoint a social standpoint and even a rights-based standpoint and so i think there's a lot of unresolved issues around deep seabed mining just to start you know it has not happened yet but um it is a growing issue um in international waters and within national jurisdictions and in fact in international waters over one million square kilometers globally have been set aside as deep sea exploration claims as a precursor to mining um if that does happen in the future but certainly you know there's given how little we know about the deep ocean sure we know more than we ever have but it's still comparatively a little um and you know i worked as one of as part of a team that was studying one of these areas where mining might happen um in the future and in 2013 when we went out we were the first team to ever see the seafloor in that area and all of the habitats and animals that live there and so this is really the novel the sorry not the novel the level of knowledge that we are working with in many of these places like we are just exploring them for the first time just trying to catalog what is there for the first time and we and that's much less you know especially trying to understand it's it's one thing knowing another thing understanding and valuing somewhere and so we're just not even close to that yet so i think it would certainly be um premature to think about rushing into the deep ocean to to mine um especially because i think given that it will likely be a very destructive practice um that it could result in you know the loss of species the loss of habitat and the loss of functions and services that we and all of life on earth relies on um so there's a lot at stake and i think we just need some more time to gather science and increase the awareness of this issue so that we can make more informed decisions yeah well put there we are answered perfectly thank you thank you diva um this is a question uh from leah what is the best way to translate discussion to action in terms of ocean biodiversity uh rigid or jahawi would you like to take that one um perhaps we'll start with you richard so i think i mean and it's a little bit like the poll you know for me i think the most important thing is as a scientist that's probably coming towards the the end of their career it's about communicating about communicating the complexity of trying to to preserve the oceans for future generations and so it's to me the most important thing i think i can do is to is to try to pass on knowledge to carry on gaining knowledge but to make sure that i'm passing on and training you know the next generation that's the most important thing i think i can do um i don't know if that does that answer your question yeah same same question to you jihae you know i think a big part is is demystifying the ocean and in essence we talked about you know nutrients recycling and this and that the other on land and we all have a general concept of what that means on land but it's the same thing underwater and to understand that a lot of what we benefit from in terms of oxygen carbon you know sink all of that is equally if not more important when we're talking about the oceans so trying to understand our our effects on the ocean is hugely important and and it has to be sort of disseminated in a way that is understandable in the same way that we're comfortable talking about it on land and so i think that's a big step in in terms of um where we need to be going and it's to finally realize just how important the oceans are because life originated from the oceans we're all products of the ocean you know the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean it's very simple but very powerful facts that we just need to you know be sort of shouting and everyone needs to understand it and then you know then it's easy to make informed decisions because you know the gravity of the situation is understood and yeah the ocean should be demystified and then there's there's so much we don't know about the ocean but there's so much that we don't know about how important it is for our life yeah it's a it's a really exciting time for for people like yourselves and everyone here to kind of really um celebrate and amplify all the necessary narratives and the state of our ocean and actually what we don't know which is to me very exciting we still don't know so much so much to do um okay i wanted to um put this to you diva if i can as somebody who is a passionate conservationist and maybe you may call yourself an eco-feminist i'm not sure um but this is that what are your thoughts this is a question that's coming um what are your thoughts on environment and climate change interlinking with other issues such as feminism or racism eco-feminism seems to be an increasingly popular topic of conversation what do you think wow that is certainly a question i have never ever ever been asked ever in the history of my career but i love it um you know i think that uh the problem we face is that not enough people are involved and and engaged in these issues and helping to push for better decisions and better policies and that is as a result of um various types of discrimination whether it's racism or sexism or um xenophobia whatever it might be but um i think that you know by um trying to systematically dismantle some of those huge issues that will allow many many of many more people to engage in issues like conservation rather than the the sometimes more pressing issues which are just not being discriminated against um so i think they go hand in hand it is again about engaging more of society engaging in again in an inclusive and equitable way like i cannot stress that enough it's not just enough to be like come in and then not not treat people well um so really it is about dismantling these things and and that will really help to put us on the right path in order to begin to think about the world a little differently and put our actions to our efforts towards creating actions i should say that will help to better the planet and so i certainly think they're all linked yeah very linked um deeply linked and huge huge issues around all of those i mean it's not a small question when we have just five minutes left but thank you head on head on um angelo this is a question that's coming where do you think we need more scientific research to understand and protect our oceans going forward i suppose i'd say everywhere um so to be honest um if you think about the fact that about 150 years ago there was the first real expedition that was about oceanography and at that point we thought there was no life below 200 meters and we thought that the bottom of the sea was flat because the surface of the ocean was and since then we have learned vast amounts but we've only touched the surface so uh so uh so i do think we need to understand a huge amount about so in terms of biodiversity we also need to understand what will help so um what difference do marine protected areas make can we regulate them well enough to ensure can we make sure they're adapted to a climate change scenario so that we can see if that's actually affecting the way in which organisms are moving as part of climate change you know so that's a really important area uh the deep sea is so vastly unexplored and there's so much more to be done in that area um but actually just even thinking about the the way in which our our ocean takes up heat and moves and redistributes it and that might be changing so the way in which uh oceanography is actually redistributing heat and nutrients around the planet and if we stop that conveyor of transport then we could completely shift the entire system so it's quite hard for me to pick anything and what i think we need to do is continue to really start to keep that going what i think we need to do though is start doing it slightly differently so we've previously gone out we've done a crew expedition and we've taken samples and come back but it's actually quite hard to do much oceanography in the vast ocean that way so we're moving more towards new sensors new technologies uh ways of getting automatic observations that could come in real time and a data for everybody to use and coming back to what was mentioned earlier we need this to be freely accessible to everybody and so the way in which we might research the ocean um that we need to think about how the infrastructure needs could be separated from the science needs as well and so if we think about satellites you know satellites are put up and the data coming off is used by everybody um scientists don't have to pitch for a bit of a satellite so so i think we need to think about how we're observing the oceans think about how we're modeling the oceans think about the new technology we need and how data is going to be massively generated if we're really going to do it so it's more than just the questions it's the how do we tackle those questions that's kind of key brilliant stuff thank you for answering that angela we have um really just a few minutes left so if i if i may kind of put this question to all of our lovely panelists now starting with you angela are you hopeful do you think the challenges we face will change in the future um yes i am hopeful i'd like to think of myself as a pragmatic optimist um which is actually optimistic when you need pragmatic solutions in place to make the optimism come true so yes absolutely i'm hopeful i do believe that we can make a difference uh let's be honest we already have made a difference whether it's negative or positive so if all the people on the planet can change it they can change it another way as well and if people um start to become aware and i see much more of an interest i see uh i also have teenage kids and i see the younger generation being far more engaged excited by the environment sustainability equality things that really matter and so i i feel very optimistic about the future um and i hope that i get to watch some really exciting discoveries over the next year yes absolutely a bit of outrage fueled by optimism i love that um richard um second on the list of the poll reducing or not using single-use plastic products that's one of the top things what are you hopeful be hopeful about changing the future of plastics in our ocean i'm very hopeful about that i'm definitely an optimist and and at the heart of it is that that that particular challenge it isn't about us not using something it's not about us turning the lights off or stopping using taking a long-haul flight it's about using plastic more responsibly so so it's possible to get the benefits without these largely unintended consequences so i'm very optimistic if we're all prepared to work together right away from design use and disposal it's a problem we can solve and if we could move behind beyond that it would allow us to tackle some of the other issues which which are also incredibly pressing the climate change that we've heard so much more about that is probably much more challenging if we can't fix plastic that's kind of the answer feel the steering is in the face so so yes i'm very optimistic about that but we can only tackle it if we all work together industry government and citizens at large thank you richard same to you diva yeah i just think you know we're gonna see the oceans just herald the most amazing discoveries in the future discoveries that will blow our minds and capture our imaginations and also potentially provide solutions to some of the greatest challenges but you know really it is about us all working collectively towards preserving our oceans so that it can do that in the future fantastic and last but not least jihawi are you an optimist you know i'll echo what everyone said the oceans have such resilience to bounce back and we need to all come together to give them that time to come back because they give us so much and so it's collective thing it's it's us it's us changing the way we see things it's us understanding things it's us pushing governments it's um companies deciding to actually make products that work you know it's what everyone said everyone needs to work together and the oceans will bounce back and we need to be positive about it because it can happen but we all just need to come together and do it brilliant brilliant words to finish on thank you how we and thank you all for your brilliant input today i knew this was going to be a great panel but um i have to say thank you hugely to all of you who've been taking part sending in your questions and voting on the polls on on the slido app i think it's a really exciting way of getting you as part of the conversation such an important conversation so thank you to all my fantastic panelists for your your wonderful contribution today um i'm sure everyone admires you go and follow all their work immediately if you don't already and make sure you subscribe to the royal society youtube channel for more content of course this is the eighth event is part of this you and the planet series so you can catch up on all the previous ones if you have missed them but um make sure you take a few minutes to complete the evaluation survey in the youtube description i hope you've all enjoyed this has been absolute pleasure a massive thank you to royal society for putting this together and we'll see you all very soon bye you

2021-05-07 09:15

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