Using hydrophones to eavesdrop on a reef off the coast of Goa, India, researchers have helped advance a new low-cost way to monitor changes in the world’s murky marine environments.

Reporting their results in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), the scientists recorded the duration and timing of mating and feeding sounds – songs, croaks, trumpets and drums – of 21 of the world’s noise-making ocean species.

With artificial intelligence and other pioneering techniques to discern the calls of marine life, they recorded and identified

• a medium sized “grunter,” loudest at dusk, Terapon theraps (photo, right, at eol.org/media/15232663l audio https://bit.ly/41LQmn);
• fish of the Sciaenidae family (audio: https://bit.ly/3KWtawy);
  choruses of plankton-eating fish species (audio: https://bit.ly/3oAsGo5); and
• snapping shrimp (audio: https://bit.ly/3mTQ0gd), including commercially-valuable tiger prawns.

Some species within the underwater community work the early shift and ruckus from 3 am to 1.45 pm, others work the late shift and ruckus from 2 pm to 2.45 am, while the plankton predators were “strongly influenced by the moon.”

Also registered: the degree of difference in the abundance of marine life before and after a monsoon.

The paper concludes that hydrophones are a powerful tool and “overall classification performance (89%) is helpful in the real-time monitoring of the fish stocks in the ecosystem.”

The team, including Bishwajit Chakraborty, a leader of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE), benefitted from archived recordings of marine species against which they could match what they heard, including:

• A cacophony of spawning tiger perch: (audio: https://bit.ly/3LkZYkj), and
• Snapping shrimp (audio: https://bit.ly/41NZWH2), whose sounds baby oysters reportedly like to follow
• Also captured was a “buzz” call of unknown origin (https://bit.ly/3GZdRSI), one of the oceans’ countless marine life mysteries.

A contribution to the International Quiet Ocean Experiment, the research will be discussed at an IQOE meeting in Woods Hole, MA, USA, 26-27 April.

Advancing the Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds (GLUBS)

That event will be followed April 28-29 by a meeting of partners in the new Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds (GLUBS), a major legacy of the decade-long IQOE, ending in 2025.

GLUBS, conceived in late 2021 and currently under development, is designed as an open-access online platform to help collate global information and to broaden and standardize scientific and community knowledge of underwater soundscapes and their contributing sources.

It will help build short snippets and snapshots (minutes, hours, days long recordings) of biological, anthropogenic, and geophysical marine sounds into full-scale, tell-tale underwater baseline soundscapes.

Especially notable among many applications of insights from GLUBS information: the ability to detect in hard-to-see underwater environments and habitats how the distribution and behavior of marine life responds to increasing pressure from climate change, fishing, resource development, plastic, anthropogenic noise and other pollutants.

“Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is an effective technique for sampling aquatic systems that is particularly useful in deep, dark, turbid, and rapidly changing or remote locations,” says Miles Parsons of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and a leader of GLUBS.

He and colleagues outline two primary targets:

• Produce and maintain a list of all aquatic species confirmed or anticipated to produce sound underwater;
• Promote the reporting of sounds from unknown sources
  Odd songs of Hawaii’s mystery fish

In this latter pursuit, GLUBS will also help reveal species unknown to science as yet and contribute to their eventual identification.

For example, newly added to the growing global collection of marine sounds are recent recordings from Hawaii, featuring the baffling

• Mystery fish
• 1 (audio: https://bit.ly/3LjHDUJ),
• 2 (audio: https://bit.ly/3UW24u0), and
• 3 (audio: https://bit.ly/3KWtVpo), now part of an entire YouTube channel (https://bit.ly/3H5Ly54) dedicated to marine life sounds in Hawaii and elsewhere (e.g. this “complete and total mystery from the Florida Keys”: https://bit.ly/41w1Xbc (Annie Innes-Gold, Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology; processed by Jill Munger, Conservation Metrics, Inc.)

Says Dr. Parsons: “Unidentified sounds can provide valuable information on the richness of the soundscape, the acoustic communities that contribute to it and behavioral interactions among acoustic groups. However, unknown, cryptic and rare sounds are rarely target signals for research and monitoring projects and are, therefore, largely unreported.”

The many uses of underwater sound

Of the roughly 250,000 known marine species, scientists think all fully-aquatic marine mammals (~146, including sub-species) emit sounds, along with at least 100 invertebrates, 1,000 of the world’s ~35,000 known fish species, and likely many thousands more.

GLUBS aims to help delineate essential fish habitat and estimate biomass of a spawning aggregation of a commercially or recreationally important soniferous species.

In one scenario of its many uses, a one-year, calibrated recording can provide a proxy for the timing, location and, under certain circumstances, numbers of ‘calling’ fishes, and how these change throughout a spawning season.

It will also help evaluate the degradation and recovery of a coral reef.

GLUBS researchers envision, for example, collecting recordings from a coral reef that experienced a cyclone or other extreme weather event, followed by widespread bleaching. Throughout its restoration, GLUBS audio data would be matched with and augment a visual census of the fish assemblage at multiple timepoints.

Oil and gas, wind power and other offshore industries will also benefit from GLUBS’ timely information on the possible harms or benefits of their activities.

Other IQOE legacies include:

• Manta (bitbucket.org/CLO-BRP/manta-wiki/wiki/Home), a mechanism created by world experts from academia, industry, and government to help standardize ocean sound recording data, facilitating its comparability, pooling and visualization.
• OPUS, an Open Portal to Underwater Sound being tested at Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany to promote the use of acoustic data collected worldwide, providing easy access to MANTA-processed data, and
• The first comprehensive database and map of the world’s 200+ known hydrophones recording for ecological purposes

Marine sounds and COVID-19

The IQOE’s early ambition of humanity’s maritime noise being minimized for a day or week was unexpectedly met in spades when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

New IQOE research to be considered at the April meeting includes a paper, Impact of the COVID‑19 pandemic on levels of deep‑ocean acoustic noise (https://bit.ly/3KZTaIt) documenting a pandemic-related drop of 1 to 3 dB even in the depths of the abyss. With a 3 dB decrease, sound energy is halved.

Virus control measures led to “sudden and sometimes dramatic reductions in human activity in sectors such as transport, industry, energy, tourism, and construction,” with some of the greatest reductions from March to June 2020 – a drop of up to 13% in container ship traffic and up to 42% in passenger ships.

Other IQOE accomplishments include achieving recognition of ocean sound as an Essential Ocean Variable (EOV) within the Global Ocean Observing System, underlining its helpfulness in monitoring

• climate change (the extent and breakup of sea ice; the frequency and intensity of wind, waves and rain)
• ocean health (biodiversity assessments: monitoring the distribution and abundance of sound-producing species)
• impacts of human activities on wildlife, and
• nuclear explosions, foreign/illegal/threatening vessels, human activities in protected areas, and underwater earthquakes that can generate tsunamis

The Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO) funded an IQOE Working Group in 2016, which quickly identified the lack of ocean sound as a variable measured by ocean observing systems. This group developed specifications for an Ocean Sound Essential Ocean Variable (EOV) by 2018, which was approved by the Global Ocean Observing System in 2021. IQOE has since developed the Ocean Sound EOV Implementation Plan, reviewed in 2022 and ready for public debut at IQOE’s meeting April 26.

One of IQOE’s originators, Jesse Ausubel of The Rockefeller University’s Programme for the Human Environment, says the programme has drawn attention to the absence of publicly available time series of sound on ecologically important frequencies throughout the global ocean.

“We need to listen more in the blue symphony halls. Animal sounds are behavior, and we need to record and understand the sounds, if we want to know the status of ocean life,” he says.

The program “has provided a platform for the international passive acoustics community to grow stronger and advocate for inclusion of acoustic measurements in national, regional, and global ocean observing systems,” says Prof. Peter Tyack of the University of St. Andrew’s, who, with Steven Simpson, guide the IQOE International Scientific Steering Committee.

“The ocean acoustics and bioacoustics communities had no experience in working together globally, and coverage is certainly not global; there are many gaps. IQOE has begun to help these communities work together globally, and there is still progress to be made in networking and in expanding the deployment of hydrophones, adds Prof. Ausubel.

A description of the project’s history and evaluation to date is available at https://bit.ly/3H7FCbN.

Encouraging greater worldwide use of hydrophones

According to Dr. Parsons, “hydrophones are now being deployed in more locations, more often, by more people, than ever before,”

To celebrate that, and to mark World Oceans Day, June 8, GLUBS recently put out a call to hydrophone operators to share marine life recordings made from 7 to 9 June, so far receiving interest from 124 hydrophone operators in 62 organizations from 29 countries and counting. The hydrophones will be retrieved over the following months with the full dataset expected sometime in 2024.

They also plan to make World Oceans Passive Acoustic Monitoring (WOPAM) Day an annual event – a global collaborative study of aquatic soundscapes, salt, brackish or freshwater – the marine world’s answer to the U.S. Audubon Society’s 123-year-old Christmas Bird Count.

Interested researchers with hydrophones already planned to be in the water on June 8 are invited to contact Miles Parsons (m.parsons@aims.gov.au) or Steve Simpson (s.simpson@bristol.ac.uk).

* * * * *

Media coverage highlights

BBC, UK (522 million) Future Planet: The people eavesdropping on the ocean https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230815-how-undersea-sounds-help-us-understand-ocean-life

UK Press Association via The Daily Mail (83,490,174), Scientists eavesdrop on underwater creatures to gain insights on ocean life https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-12016539/Scientists-eavesdrop-underwater-creatures-gain-insights-ocean-life.html

Agencia EFE, Spain, via Forbes Mexico (2.84 million) La inteligencia artificial se pone a escuchar los hábitos de la vida marina
(Artificial intelligence listens to the habits of marine life)
https://www.forbes.com.mx/la-inteligencia-artificial-se-pone-a-escuchar-los-habitos-de-la-vida-marina/

Meteoweb, Italy (966,000)
Anche i pesci rispondono alla Luna: lo studio
(Even fish respond to the moon: the study)
https://www.meteoweb.eu/2023/04/pesci-rispondono-luna/1001234154/

Vice / Motherboard, USA (23,547,525) Scientists Recording Ocean Sounds Picked Up a Mysterious ‘Buzz’ They Can’t Identify
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxjdqb/mysterious-ocean-buzz-soud

Visão – Sapo newswire, Portugal Investigadores ‘ouvem’ zumbido estranho no fundo do mar (Investigators hear strange sounds at the bottom of the sea) https://visao.sapo.pt/exameinformatica/noticias-ei/ciencia-ei/2023-04-27-investigadores-ouvem-zumbido-estranho-no-fundo-do-mar/

Yahoo! News Taiwan, Taiwan (10,753,841)海底魚蝦也會發聲？ 科學家號召全球加入水下生物聲音圖書館計畫 (Will fish and shrimp also speak? Scientists call on the world to join underwater biological sound library programs) here

ORF Online, Austria (7,397,979) Unterwassermikrofone belauschen FischeUnderwater microphones eavesdrop on fish https://science.orf.at/stories/3218981/

MSN France, France (244,797) Dans l’océan Indien, des sons non identifiés intriguent les scientifiques (In the Indian Ocean, unidentified sounds intrigue scientists) https://www.msn.com/fr-fr/actualite/technologie-et-sciences/dans-loc%c3%a9an-indien-des-sons-non-identifi%c3%a9s-intriguent-les-scientifiques/ar-AA1argbx

Down To Earth, India (713,481)Sonorous submarine: Technology used to study fish in Goa can help find how sea life responds to climate change  https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/wildlife-biodiversity/sonorous-submarine-technology-used-to-study-fish-in-goa-can-help-find-how-sea-life-responds-to-climate-change-88987

Gazete Duvar, Turkey (7,313,044)
Okyanusta tanımlanamayan bir ‘vızıltı’ keşfedildiAn unidentified ‘buzz’ was discovered in the ocean https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/okyanusta-tanimlanamayan-bir-vizilti-kesfedildi-haber-1615486

Futurezone, Germany (1,076,142)Ozean: Forscher zeichnen rätselhaftes Geräusch auf – niemand hat es je zuvor gehört (Ocean: Researchers record puzzling sound – nobody has ever heard of it before) https://www.futurezone.de/science/article448822/ozean-forscher-zeichnen-raetselhaftes-geraeusch-auf-niemand-hat-es-je-zuvor-gehoert.html

Coverage summary in full: click here

News release in full, click here

The Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has recommended developing a factual record to explore factors contributing to the near-extinction the vaquita porpoise – the world’s smallest cetacean and rarest marine mammal – in the Gulf of California in Mexico. 

The recommendation responds to a submission on Enforcement Matters under Chapter 24 of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA/CUSMA) filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Animal Welfare Institute, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Environmental Investigation Agency. 

The submitters assert that “the Mexican government is failing to effectively enforce several environmental laws and as a result has caused the near extinction of the vaquita porpoise. Approximately only 10 vaquita remain.” The submitters assert that vaquita populations have been declining over the years due to the use of gillnets to fish for totoaba, an endangered fish threatened by illegal fishing for its swim bladder, which is sold in international markets.

The vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus) is the world’s smallest cetacean and the most endangered marine mammal. The vaquita has the smallest range of any whale, dolphin, or porpoise, and only lives in a small 1,500 square-mile area in Mexico’s upper Gulf of California, near the town of San Felipe.

The totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) is a large, schooling marine fish whose habitat partially overlaps with the vaquita.

According to the submission, Mexico is not effectively enforcing the General Wildlife Law (Ley General de Vida Silvestre) and federal regulations issued between 1975 and 2020 banning totoaba fishing and protecting the vaquita.

In response to the submission, Mexico reported having seized 2,363 totoaba swim bladders, issued fines amounting to roughly US$17.5 million, and recovered 384 nets – 73 km long in all – between September 2019 and September 2021. The Secretariat, however, concluded that there are central questions that remain unanswered regarding Mexico’s enforcement of the relevant laws and orders. 

The CEC Secretariat finds that a factual record could provide information on Mexico’s efforts to enforce the 1975 totoaba ban by imposing sanctions and taking measures to effectively implement the ban; including collecting information on organized groups involved in the illegal fishing, storage, distribution, transportation, and commercialization of the totoaba.

The CEC Secretariat also finds that a factual record could present information on

• Mexico’s efforts to implement the 2015, 2017, and 2020 Gillnets Orders aimed to protect the vaquita, including:
• the permanent ban on gillnet use; the characteristics of agalleras and their effects on marine biodiversity;
• effectiveness of devices or monitoring systems for vessels, and
• the launch and landing sites prescribed by the orders.

A factual record could provide information on sanctions; daily number of vessels and detention by port authorities; actions to address recidivism; net recovery; ongoing surveillance and effectiveness, and policies and programs encouraging the sustainable use of natural resources in the upper Gulf of California.

The CEC Council should vote on whether to authorize the Secretariat to prepare the factual record, normally within 60 working days of receiving the recommendation, by 31 May 2022. 

For more detail, please visit Vaquita porpoise (SEM-21-002 in the CEC’s Registry of Submissions.

CEC Secretariat recommendation in full:

English: https://bit.ly/3v1mJQQ

Spanish: https://bit.ly/3KqZru6

French: https://bit.ly/3v1mJQQ

Annex to the recommendation:

English: https://bit.ly/377xk4M

Spanish: https://bit.ly/3KxQ2B9

French: https://bit.ly/3Jp6WjP

* * * * *

About the Commission for Environmental Cooperation: www.cec.org

Media coverage highlights:

Agencia EFE, Spain, Comisión ambiental aconseja abrir un expediente sobre la vaquita marina

Milenio, Mexico, Bajo T-MEC, piden abrir expediente por omisión ante casi extinción de vaquita marina

Excélsior, Mexico, Órgano del T-MEC ordena abrir investigación a fondo contra México por vaquita marina

La Jornada, Mexico, Recomiendan a México elaborar expediente sobre vaquita marina

Yahoo News Australia, The world’s most endangered animal: Who’s to blame for the vaquita’s demise?

Xinhua, China (Spanish), Autoridad ambiental urgen a México elaborar expediente sobre vaquita marina

Coverage summary in full, click here

News release in full, click here

By assembling and expanding first-ever global audio collection of aquatic life, scientists aim to unveil unidentified swimming objects, monitor diversity, distribution, abundance, and more

Of the roughly 250,000 known marine species, scientists think all ~126 marine mammals emit sounds – the ‘thwop’, ‘muah’, and ‘boop’s of a humpback whale, for example, or the boing of a minke whale. Audible too are at least 100 invertebrates, 1,000 of the world’s 34,000 known fish species, and likely many thousands more.

Now a team of 17 experts from nine countries has set a goal of gathering on a single platform huge collections of aquatic life’s tell-tale sounds, and expanding it using new enabling technologies – from highly sophisticated ocean hydrophones and artificial intelligence learning systems to phone apps and underwater GoPros used by citizen scientists.

The Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds, “GLUBS,” will underpin a novel non-invasive, affordable way for scientists to listen in on life in marine, brackish and freshwaters, monitor its changing diversity, distribution and abundance, and identify new species. Using the acoustic properties of underwater soundscapes can also characterize an ecosystem’s type and condition.

The team’s paper, “Sounding the Call for a Global Library of Biological Underwater Sounds,” is published in the journal “Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.”

Says lead author Miles Parsons of the Australian Institute of Marine Science: “The world’s most extensive habitats are aquatic and they’re rich with sounds produced by a diversity of animals.”

“With biodiversity in decline worldwide and humans relentlessly altering underwater soundscapes, there is a need to document, quantify, and understand the sources of underwater animal sounds before they potentially disappear.”

The team’s proposed web-based, open-access platform will provide:

• A reference library of known and unknown biological sound sources (by integrating and expanding existing libraries around the world);
• A data repository portal for annotated and unannotated audio recordings of single sources and of soundscapes;
• A training platform for artificial intelligence algorithms for signal detection and classification;
• An interface for developing species distribution maps, based on sound; and
• A citizen science-based application so people who love the ocean can participate in this project

The wide range of uses for PAM is expanding in step with advances in technology, providing a large volume of easily-accessible data on aquatic life.

Current uses include:

• Monitoring, characterizing and delineating underwater soundscapes
• Investigating aquatic communities
• Documenting distribution and migration patterns of fish, whales, and other marine mammals
• Characterizing marine life responses to changes in, e.g. temperature, salinity or tides, or changes in behavior and distribution in response to climate change, algal blooms, hurricanes and other extreme weather events
• Understanding how prey change their sound production rates or behaviors in the presence of predators
• Observing how human-caused ocean noise pollution – shipping, resource exploration, construction, aircraft or wind turbines, for example – affect aquatic life communication and other behaviors

Many fish and aquatic invertebrate species are predominantly nocturnal or hard to find, the paper notes, making visual observations difficult or impossible. As a result, “PAM is proving to be one of the most effective ways to monitor visually elusive but vocal species in aquatic environments, which can potentially aid in more effective conservation management,” including zoning in marine park areas or fishery closures, the paper says.

Besides making sounds for communication, many aquatic species produce ‘passive sounds’ while eating, swimming, and crawling – often less acoustically complex or distinct than active sounds but important contributions to an ecosystem’s tell-tale soundscape.

“Collectively there are now many millions of recording hours around the world that could potentially be assessed for a plethora of both known and, to date, unidentified biological sounds.”

Says co-author Aran Mooney of the Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institution: “Like a biodiverse rainforest, coral reefs are rich with sounds produced by animals as they seek to communicate, defend territories, and attract mates.”

“Biodiversity and our ocean ecosystems are in trouble, with healthy coral reefs declining at alarming rates. This is a problem because reefs provide billions of US dollars in support, in terms of food, protection from storms, and pharmaceutical products. This developing library is a key way to catalog, monitor and track changes in biodiversity on reefs and other ocean habitats before they are gone but also help us define ‘what a healthy reef is’ as we seek to rebuild reefs.”

Adds Jesse Ausubel, a founder of the IQOE and a scientist at The Rockefeller University: “Human song varieties include love and work songs, lullabies, chants, and anthems. Marine animals must sing love songs. Maybe AI applied to the Global Library can help us understand the lyrics of these and many others.”

Example audio, identified species:

1) Growl of the streaked gurnard (Chelidonichthys lastoviza, recorded by Amorim and Hawkings, 2000 (from FishSounds.net; photos: https://bit.ly/3soVka8 and at the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL): eol.org/pages/51109318)

2) Complex ‘boop, grunt, swoop’ call of the Bocon toadfish (Amphichthys cryptocentrus) recorded by Staaterman et al., 2017 and 2018 (from FishSounds.net; photos https://bit.ly/3gxylnR; EOL: eol.org/pages/46565889)

3) Drum sound of the red piranha (Pygocentrus nattereri), recorded by Raick et al., 2020 (from FishSounds.net; photos https://bit.ly/3BaQykv, and at EOL: eol.org/media/2822570)

4) Kina, a sea urchin endemic to New Zealand (description, photo https://bit.ly/3HI6hu2)

5) Paddle crab, endemic to New Zealand (description, photos: https://eol.org/media/3027555

6) “Boing” produced by dwarf minke whales in Western Australia (Balaenoptera acutorostrata); Erbe et al., 2017 (taken from Marine Mammals of Australia and Antarctica).

What on Earth? Recordings of Unidentified Swimming Objects:

1) Chorus of unidentified fish species in the Indo-Pacific, recorded by Pine et al., 2018 (from FishSounds.net).

2) Unidentified fish species, Azores seamounts, recorded by Carriço et al., 2019 (from FishSounds.net)

3) Growl of an unidentified tropical coral reef fish species, recorded by Staaterman et al., 2013 (from FishSounds.net).

4) A fish call recorded off Austrlia’s western coast, the second half of which reminds scientists of “a section of the Hut of Baba Yaga from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.”

* * * * *

“A database of unidentified sounds is, in some ways, as important as one for known sources,” the scientists say. “As the field progresses, new unidentified sounds will be collected, and more unidentified sounds can be matched to species.”

This can be “particularly important for high-biodiversity systems such as coral reefs, where even a short recording can pick up multiple animal sounds.”

Existing libraries of undersea sounds (several of which are listed with hyperlinks below) “often focus on species of interest that are targeted by the host institute’s researchers,” the paper says, and several are nationally-focussed. Few libraries identify what is missing from their catalogs, which the proposed global library would.

“A global reference library of underwater biological sounds would increase the ability for more researchers in more locations to broaden the number of species assessed within their datasets and to identify sounds they personally do not recognize,” the paper says.

“A global database could serve broader questions, like determining universal trends in underwater sound production, while individual, specialized repositories could continue to inform and detail other topics, such as documenting the presence of soniferous species in a particular region.”

The changing ranges of marine life

The scientists note that listening to the sea has revealed great whales swimming in unexpected places, new species and new sounds.

With sound, “biologically important areas can be mapped; spawning grounds, essential fish habitat, and migration pathways can be delineated…These and other questions can be queried on broader scales if we have a global catalog of sounds.”

Meanwhile, comparing sounds from a single species across broad areas and times helps understand their diversity and evolution.

Numerous marine animals are cosmopolitan, the paper says, “either as wide-roaming individuals, such as the great whales, or as broadly distributed species, such as many fishes.”

Fin whale calls, for example, can differ among populations in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, and over seasons, whereas the call of pilot whales are similar worldwide, even though their home ranges do not (or no longer) cross the equator.

Some fishes even seem to develop geographic ‘dialects’ or completely different signal structures among regions, several of which evolve over time.

Madagascar’s skunk anemonefish (https://bit.ly/3uA6Bad), for example, produces different agonistic (fight-related) sounds than those in Indonesia, while differences in the song of humpback whales have been observed across ocean basins.

“If the observer knows a target species’ signal characteristics, these sounds may be more easily detected, but without prior knowledge of either presence or structure of sounds, listening through the noise can be difficult,” the paper says.

“This has been highlighted by the recent COVID ‘anthropause’ experienced at various aquatic locations around the world.” Early in the pandemic, “removal of the anthropogenic component of some soundscapes has provided an opportunity to observe sounds (and therefore presence) of marine fauna that might otherwise be lost in the noise.”

Just as artificial intelligence has enabled facial or voice recognition, as well as phone apps that identify music or plants or birds, AI can one day help scientists distinguish marine life sounds from noise. However, a large number – ideally several thousands – of examples are needed, the paper adds.

As the library expands, it can form the foundation for AI training, which in turn will also facilitate the mining and extraction of marine life sounds from thousands of previously collected recordings.

Phone apps, underwater GoPros and citizen science

Much like BirdNet and FrogID, a library of underwater biological sounds and automated detection algorithms would be useful not only for the scientific, industry and marine management communities but also for users with a general interest.

“Acoustic technology has reached the stage where a hydrophone can be connected to a mobile phone so people can listen to fishes and whales in the rivers and seas around them. Therefore, sound libraries are becoming invaluable to citizen scientists and the general public,” the paper adds.

And citizen scientists could be of great help to the library by uploading the results of, for example, the River Listening app (www.riverlistening.com), which encourages the public to listen to and record fish sounds in rivers and coastal waters.

Low-cost hydrophones and recording systems (such as the Hydromoth) are increasingly available and waterproof recreational recording systems (such as GoPros) can also collect underwater biological sounds.

The library would help standardize the format in which sounds are reported.

“A library to archive unknown sounds and their recording times and locations will be crucial for guiding future studies of marine bioacoustics and biodiversity,” the scientists say. “This is especially important in areas that are rarely investigated or where source identification is particularly problematic, such as the twilight and midnight zones, where a description of unknown sounds can give us insights on biodiversity in the deep ocean.”

“The changing environment and decreasing biodiversity are compelling the documentation of baseline acoustic observations. Technical advances associated with data collection and an increasing number of researchers and institutes collecting PAM data are providing the ability to create bioacoustic databases.”

“Concurrently, awareness of the importance of acoustic cues to aquatic fauna, the impacts of noise on them and the potential for acoustic communities to provide an indication of ecosystem health has reached a stage where PAM is becoming appreciated as a mainstream data source across more species and ecosystems than ever.”

“Finally, public interest and access to user applications means citizen scientists can drive widespread knowledge sharing.”

“Now is the time to facilitate that progress by gathering the acoustic, ecological, and bioinformatic community together to realize an aquatic-sounds sharing platform.”

* * * * *

The paper, “Sounding the Call for a Global Library of Biological Underwater Sounds,” evolved from the ‘Working Group on Acoustic Measurement of Ocean Biodiversity Hotspots’ of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment, an international program of research, observation and modeling formed to better characterize and understand ocean sound fields and the effects of sound on marine life.

Support for IQOE is provided by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research, Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean, Richard Lounsbery Foundation, Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute, and Rockefeller Program for the Human Environment.

A more detailed discussion, involving a wider network of contributors, is planned through upcoming stakeholder engagement and scoping workshops.

* * * * *

Media coverage highlights:

Wall Street Journal, United States (35,138,925)

1. Listen: Scientists Are Recording Ocean Sounds to Spot New Species, click here
2. Artificial Intelligence and the Race to Master Animal Language, click here

Popular Science, United States (3,505,129) Why ocean researchers want to create a global library of undersea sounds, click here

Agence France Presse, Mysteries and music: listening in to underwater life, click here

The Guardian, United Kingdom, Fish love songs and fighting talk: underwater sound library to reveal language of the deep, click here

BBC World Service, UK, Newshour, click here 

Voice of America, United States, Marine Researchers Collecting Global Symphony of the Sea, click here 

IFL Science, Canada, From Squeaks To Boings: Scientists Plan Global Archive Of The Ocean’s “Underwater Orchestra”, click here

Actu-Environnement, France, Des chercheurs appellent à créer une bibliothèque mondiale de la biophonie sous-marine, click here

Deutschlandfunk, Germany, Bioakustik – Wie Fische und andere Gewässer-Bewohner kommunizieren, click here

ABC News, Australia, Underwater sound library being collated, click here

Schweizer Radio DRS, Switzerland, Muaaah, boong oder gragrag – Was Wassertiere sich erzählen, click here

Mother Jones, United States, Check out these strange aquatic boings, growls, and chatter, click here

InsideClimate News, United States, Warming Trends: The Cacophony of the Deep Blue Sea, Microbes in the Atmosphere and a Podcast about ‘Just How High the Stakes Are’, click here

ABC, Spain, Como zambombas o móviles vibrando: así suenan algunos de los animales marinos más curiosos, click here

Noti-Ultimas, Romania, Canciones de amor de los peces y charlas de lucha: biblioteca de sonidos submarinos para revelar el lenguaje de las profundidades, click here

Tag43, Italy, Dai Pesci al vento, una ricerca racchiuderà tutti i suoni del mare, click here

Nachrichten Welt, Germany, Fischliebeslieder und Kampfgespräche: Unterwasser-Soundbibliothek, um die Sprache der Tiefe zu enthüllen, click here

Klikbulukumba, Indonesia, Lagu Cinta Ikan dan Pembicaraan Pertempuran: Perpustakaan Suara Bawah Air untuk Mengungkapkan Bahasa Terdalam, click here

Natursidan, Sweden, Ny databas ska samla havens ljud, click here

Nederlands Dagblad, Netherlands, Wereldwijde online-bibliotheek van onderwatergeluiden in de maak, click here

Khabar 25, Saudi Arabia, اغاني حب الاسماك والقتال الحديث: مكتبة الصوت تحت الماء لتكشف عن لغة الاعماق | الحيوانات البرية  , click here

In print:

Wall Street Journal

The Guardian  |  18 Feb 2022  |  United Kingdom  |  English  | Page: 31
The Guardian (USA)  |  18 Feb 2022  |  United States  |  English  | Page: 23

Social media posts, click here (highlights: Andrew Revkin, Colombia University, 4 tweets, ~90,000 followers, retweeted by Philippe Cousteau and others.

Full coverage summary, click here

News release in full, click here (with links to existing marine sound libraries)

Reducing marine debris by 50-90% and a globe circling, high-tech system of monitors are two essential aims among several championed today by nine distinguished international experts appointed to help the UN reach the goal of a clean ocean by 2030.

The Clean Ocean International Expert Group of the UN Decade for Ocean Science for Sustainable Development will formally present its short list of activities and goals, and a strategy to reach them, in a “manifesto” at the outset of a three-day online conference on achieving a clean ocean, Weds. 17 to Fri. 19 Nov. (https://bit.ly/3EQHRfQ).

Co-Chaired by Angelika Brandt of Germany, a Southern Ocean / Antarctica biodiversity expert, and Elva Escobar Briones of Mexico, a deep sea biodiversity expert, the group concisely outlines “the challenges and some of the opportunities that the Ocean Decade can provide for a Clean Ocean.”

The statement charts the most direct route to a clean ocean citing these objectives for 2030:

* Enlarge understanding of pathways for spread and fates of pollutants

* Reduce and remove top-priority forms of pollution (e.g., marine debris) by large amounts, as much as 50% to 90%

* To prevent recurrence, reduce sources or emission of pollutants (e.g., anthropogenic noise, discarded plastic and harmful chemicals, farming practices adding harmful sediment outflow)

* Improve dramatically the outcomes of control measures (e.g., to decrease amounts of mercury in tuna, die-offs of marine life, eutrophication)

* Improve monitoring (often as part of the Global Ocean Observing System [GOOS]) for more accurate, precise, timely, comprehensive real-time tracing of spills and monitoring of ocean soundscapes; improve systems to provide timely warning of pollutants emerging and increasing

* Identify and accelerate development and adoption of technologies to promote a Clean Ocean. These could range from cleaner, more efficient motors and fuels to new forms of remediation and waste management; better ways to monitor, track, and map marine pollutants and progress toward a clean ocean (such as aerial remote sensing, genomics, and hydrophone arrays); and better technologies for emergency cleanup

* Improve national mechanisms (legal, regulatory) for control and prevention, better align financial incentives, and lift compliance with international treaties

* Lift public engagement and understanding with access to information associated with behavioral shifts favoring the motto of “reduce, reuse and recycle” and encourage participation in citizen science as part of events involving sailing, surfing, and other activities dependent on a Clean Ocean

With such a framework agreed and in place, specific objectives can be identified and efforts activated, with targets and timetables similar in scope and character to next spring’s anticipated world agreement to protect 30% of the marine environment by 2030, and the completion of high-resolution mapping of the seabed, also by 2030.

Interim objectives for 2025

The expert group underlined that, “This process should aim to define and attract financial and other support to meet an initial set of goals for 2025, followed by goals for the end of the Ocean Decade in 2030.”

And they set out examples of nearer term objectives for 2025:

*Quantify the global harm of marine pollution from all major sources on ecosystems and organisms and on human health; assessment methods need to take into account multiple stressors.

* Survey the totality of anthropogenic chemicals flowing into the oceans.

* Define a Clean Ocean, including acceptable levels of pollution to set threshold values, and define ecological boundaries or maximal levels of pollutants as well as their rates of degradation to maintain well-functioning ecosystems; this includes understanding tolerances of species and ecosystems to pollutants.

* Develop a widely shared vision of a Clean Ocean.

* Identify high-priority geographic challenges such as polar regions and urban coasts.

* Identify barriers to action impeding scaling up solutions for regional and global impact; quantify possibilities for amelioration.

* Identify key partners, including those who might be left behind, and provide engagement strategies for early career ocean professionals, indigenous peoples, and island communities.

* Develop reference scenarios for industrialization of the oceans during the next decade, including tourism, seabed mining, windfarm development, for example, as they relate to a Clean Ocean.

* Develop initial estimates of costs associated with transitions to a Clean Ocean.

* Secure major financial commitments.

“By 2030 we want to achieve measurable improvement in monitoring and clear reduction of emissions and harm through a spectrum of technical and behavioral strategies,” the group says.

The three-day on-line conference Nov. 17-19 will highlight more than 30 activities in place or in development around the world that can make important contributions by 2030 to a Clean Ocean.

These include initiatives to:

*Successfully and consistently monitor marine debris from space as part of an Integrated Global Marine Debris Observing System

* Operate deep sea observatories in the Atlantic that document and publicize multiple stressors

* Observe the vast Southern Ocean to give early warnings of possible pollution hot spots in this relatively pristine ocean

* Instrument 30% of coastal city ocean spaces to report on pollution changes including restoration

* Identify and greatly reduce persistent organic pollutants globally.

The manifesto, which presents the signatories’ views and not official positions of their respective institutions, is also directed at other groups such as the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, the Economist magazine World Ocean Initiative, and the World Ocean Council.

The group plans to share its manifesto with other expert groups, national committees, and with endorsed projects and programs of the UN Ocean Decade to speed development of a strong set of Clean Ocean activities.

Says lead author Jesse Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University, New York City: “We want this decade to transition from increasing to decreasing the environmental problems of the oceans.”

Clean Ocean International Expert Group

Co-Chairs

• Angelika Brandt, biodiversity of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica; Germany
• Elva Escobar Briones, biodiversity of the deep sea; Mexico

Members

• Frida Armas-Pfirter, marine and coastal law; Argentina
• Jesse Huntley Ausubel, technologies for ocean observing; USA, lead author
• Gina Bonne, environment and climate, Seychelles
• Saskia Brix-Elsig, polar seafloor biology; Germany
• Angelique Songco, marine protected areas; Philippines
• Kaveh Samimi-Namin, coral reef ecosystems; Iran
• Sofia Fürstenberg Stott, maritime industry innovation; Sweden

Links

UN Decade for Ocean Science for Sustainable Development
www.oceandecade-conference.com/en/program.html

Creating the Ocean We Want
www.oceandecade-conference.com/en/creating-the-ocean-we-want.html

Clean Ocean Laboratory
www.oceandecade-conference.com/en/a-clean-ocean.html

Ocean Decade Factsheet
www.oceandecade-conference.com/files/Factsheet%20Ocean%20Decade.pdf

* * * * *

In full

Manifesto for Clean Ocean 2030
Clean Ocean International Expert Group,
in anticipation of the Ocean Decade Laboratory
A Clean Ocean, 17-19 November 2021
A clean ocean where sources of pollution are identified and removed

Comprising 71% of Earth’s surface, the ocean encompasses remote trackless seas and heavily trafficked harbors. It spans the seafloor through the water column to the sea surface and extends from coastal zones to mid-ocean. The ocean spans habitats from beaches and rocky shores to reefs and canyons and polar and deep seas. AClean Oceanbenefits both humanity and the spectrum of other forms of life ranging from whales and fish to mollusks, corals, and seagrasses with which we share it.Our Manifesto for Clean Ocean 2030 aims to increase circularity of the economy in the face of increasing industrialization of the oceans and promote mobilization to manage ocean pollution at its sources in ways that enable both a profitable Blue Economy and a Clean Ocean.

Ocean Pollutants

Many forms of pollution threaten or already dirty the ocean:

• Debris, including plastics
• Oil and chemical spills and releases from seafloor extraction, pipelines, and shipping
• Runoff of fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals from agriculture and both rural and suburban areas
• Sewage and other coastal runoff, including pharmaceuticals, from urban areas and harbors, and associated harmful algal blooms
• Contaminants that, although settled in sediments, can be remobilized by disturbances
• Sewage and other improperly discarded wastes from vessels
• Acute and chronic elevation of noise and light
• Radiation from radioactive materials deposited or discharged into the oceans
• Invasive species and other harmful aspects of bilge and ballast water carelessly released
• Construction debris from platform and island building, spoils from channel dredging and pipe-laying, and derelict facilities
• Abandoned and discarded equipment from ocean navigation and research and military activities

Threats to a Clean Ocean

Pollution in the ocean comes from land-based and atmospheric sources and from the sea itself.

• Land sources include agricultural fertilizers (causing deoxygenation or dead zones), herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and other materials employed in the bioeconomy; micro- and macro-plastics from carelessly used and discarded products; non-metabolized medicines and other drugs from human consumption; detergents and many other chemicals that form parts of urban and industrial metabolism; heavy metals from mining; and brine from marine water desalination.
• Atmospheric sources include greenhouse gases (primarily generated on land) associated with climate change and acidification; forms of sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, and other harmful pollutants generated both at sea and on land; noise from aviation and wind farms, and dust from anthropogenic fires.
• Sea sources include spills from extraction, transport, and use of petroleum products; ship sources of waste, including discarded fishing gear and other forms of waste; untreated wastewater from recreational and commercial vessels; deep-sea tailing placements; lubricants and other chemicals from offshore facilities; underwater noise from shipping, mining, fishing, and pile driving; and night-time illumination of vessels and fleets.

Since 1969 the Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) has examined these and other threats to the Clean Ocean and provided authoritative, independent, interdisciplinary scientific advice to organizations and governments to support the protection and sustainable use of the marine environment.

The Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development

Launched in January 2021, theUnited Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development(2021-2030), the “Ocean Decade,” is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for ocean actors across the world to come together to generate knowledge and foster the partnerships needed to support a well-functioning, productive, resilient, sustainable, and inspiring ocean. We propose that the leadership of the Ocean Decade organize Clean Ocean activities in the following way:

• Collect the major Clean Ocean recommendations from the reports of GESAMP and other expert bodies, such as national academies of sciences.
• Consolidate and reduce these and other inputs to a set of not more than ten global goals for a Clean Ocean. New targets and timetables should be similar in scope and character to the Endorsed Recommendations to protect 30% of the marine environment by 2030 and complete the high-resolution mapping of the seabed by 2030.
• Work with the many concerned entities worldwide to coordinate and optimize roles and contributions so the Decade will achieve historic collaborative global objectives for a Clean Ocean.

This process should aim to define and attract financial and other support to meet an initial set of goals for 2025, followed by goals for the end of the Ocean Decade in 2030.

Examples of Clean Ocean objectives for 2025

• Quantify the global harm of marine pollution from all major sources on ecosystems and organisms and on human health; assessment methods need to take into account multiple stressors.
• Survey the totality of anthropogenic chemicals flowing into the oceans.
• Define a Clean Ocean, including acceptable levels of pollution to set threshold values, and define ecological boundaries or maximal levels of pollutants as well as their rates of degradation to maintain well-functioning ecosystems; this includes understanding tolerances of species and ecosystems to pollutants.
• Develop a widely shared vision of a Clean Ocean.
• Identify high-priority geographic challenges such as polar regions and urban coasts.
• Identify barriers to action impeding scaling up solutions for regional and global impact; quantify possibilities for amelioration.
• Identify key partners, including those who might be left behind, and provide engagement strategies for early career ocean professionals, indigenous peoples, and island communities.
• Develop reference scenarios for industrialization of the oceans during the next decade, including tourism, seabed mining, windfarm development, for example, as they relate to a Clean Ocean.
• Develop initial estimates of costs associated with transitions to a Clean Ocean.
• Secure major financial commitments.

By 2025 we aim to identify potential pathways toward solutions for knowing what is manageable. By 2030 we want to achieve measurable improvement in monitoring and clear reduction of emissions and harm through a spectrum of technical and behavioral strategies.

Examples of Clean Ocean objectives for 2030

• Enlarge understanding of pathways for spread and fates of pollutants.
• Reduce and remove top-priority forms of pollution (e.g., marine debris) by large amounts, as much as 50% to 90%.
• To prevent recurrence, reduce sources or emission of pollutants (e.g., anthropogenic noise, discarded plastic and harmful chemicals, farming practices adding harmful sediment outflow).
• Improve dramatically the outcomes of control measures (e.g., to decrease amounts of mercury in tuna, die-offs of marine life, eutrophication).
• Improve monitoring (often as part of the Global Ocean Observing System [GOOS]) for more accurate, precise, timely, comprehensive real-time tracing of spills and monitoring of ocean soundscapes; improve systems to provide timely warning of pollutants emerging and increasing.
• Identify and accelerate development and adoption of technologies to promote a Clean Ocean. These could range from cleaner, more efficient motors and fuels to new forms of remediation and waste management; better ways to monitor, track, and map marine pollutants and progress toward a clean ocean (such as aerial remote sensing, genomics, and hydrophone arrays); and better technologies for emergency cleanup.
• Improve national mechanisms (legal, regulatory) for control and prevention, better align financial incentives, and lift compliance with international treaties.
• Lift public engagement and understanding with access to information associated with behavioral shifts favoring the motto of “reduce, re-use and recycle” and encourage participation in citizen science as part of events involving sailing, surfing, and other activities dependent on a Clean Ocean.

Now is the time for ambitious targets and timetables to elicit the science for the Clean Ocean we want.

* * * * *

Coverage highlights:

Agencia EFE, Spain, via Infobae, Argentina, Expertos piden reducir hasta un 90 % los desechos marinos antes de 2030, click here

Indo Asian News Service, India (via ProKerala.com) Reducing marine debris by 2030: UN panel, click here

SciTech Daily, United States, A Clean Ocean by 2030: UN Experts’ “Clean Ocean Manifesto,” click here

Earth.com, United States, Steps needed to achieve a clean ocean by 2030, click here

中文业界资讯站 (CN Beta), Mainland China, 到2030年实现清洁海洋：联合国专家的“清洁海洋宣言” (Achieving Clean Oceans by 2030: The “Clean Ocean Declaration” of UN Experts), click here

News Track, India, International experts to assist UN in cutting marine debris by 50-90-pc, click here

News release in full, click here

An unprecedented analysis of almost 10,000 Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) events worldwide over the past 33 years was launched today by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

The first-ever global statistical analysis examined ~9,500 HABs events over 33 years and found that the harm caused by HABs rises in step with growth of the aquaculture industry and marine exploitation and calls for more research on linkages.

Conducted over seven years by 109 scientists in 35 countries, the study found that reported HAB events have increased in some regions and decreased or held steady in others. A widely-stated view that HABs are on the rise throughout the world, perhaps due to climate change, isn’t confirmed.

However, the study, “Perceived global increase in algal blooms is attributable to intensified monitoring and emerging bloom impacts,” published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, creates the world’s first baseline against which to track future shifts in the location, frequency and impacts of HABs, which differ depending on which of the 250 harmful marine algae species is involved and where, requiring assessment on a species-by-species and site-by-site basis.

A public webinar on Global HAB Status Report will take place Tuesday Jun 15, 2021 at 1 PM, Paris time. To register: https://bit.ly/3z3kjCB

Databases mined

The scientists mined both the global Harmful Algae Event Database (HAEDAT), consisting of 9,503 events with one or more impacts on human society, and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) database, containing 7 million microalgal observation records, including 289,668 toxic algal species occurrences.

The study found that regionally-recorded HAB events, after being corrected for higher levels of monitoring effort, have

Increased:

• Central America/Caribbean
• South America
• Mediterranean
• North Asia

Decreased:

• West Coast America
• Australia/New Zealand

No significant change:

• East Coast America
• South East Asia
• Europe

The 9,503 events’ impacts on humans break down as follows:

• 48% involved seafood toxins
• 43% high phytoplankton counts and/or water discolorations with a socio-economic impact
• 7% mass animal or plant mortalities
• 2% caused other impacts (including foam and mucilage production)

(As well, in 11% of events, a single incident had multiple impacts, e.g. both water discoloration and mass mortality)

Of the event records linked to seafood toxins:

• 35% were Paralytic Shellfish Toxins (PST)
• 30% Diarrhetic Shellfish Toxins (DST)
• 9% Ciguatera Poisoning (CP)
• 9% marine and brackish water cyanobacterial toxins
• 7% Amnesic Shellfish Toxins (AST)
• 10% others, including Neurotoxic Shellfish Toxins (NST), Azaspiracid Shellfish Toxins (AZA), and toxic aerosols

By region, the largest number of records came from, in order:

• Europe
• North Asia
• Mediterranean
• The east and west coasts of North America
• Caribbean
• Pacific/Oceania
• Southeast Asia

With more limited data sets for South America, and Australia/New Zealand

All geographic regions were impacted by multiple HAB types, but in varying proportions.

• 50% of regional HAEDAT records in the Caribbean, Benguela, Mediterranean Sea, North and South East Asia related to high phytoplankton density problems.
• Seafood toxins and fish kill impacts dominated in all other regions

Among toxin-related impacts:

• Paralytic Shellfish Toxins (PST) prevailed in North America, the Caribbean, South America, South East Asia, and North Asia
• Diarrhetic Shellfish Toxins (DST) were the most frequently recorded in Europe and the Mediterranean (and are an emerging threat in the USA) Neurotoxic Shellfish Toxins (NST) were confined to the US State of Florida, with a single outbreak also reported from New Zealand
• Human poisonings from Ciguatera were prominent in the tropical Pacific, the Indian Ocean, Australia and the Caribbean.

For the most part, however, the impacts were confined to shellfish harvesting area closures; rarely to human poisonings. The exception: Ciguatera event records are almost exclusively based on medical reports of human poisonings.

HAB events over time

Eight of nine regions used in the study showed increases in reports logged via HAEDAT of harmful events per year, of which six were statistically significant.

The OBIS dataset, meanwhile, generally showed an increase in sampling effort in five of the nine regions.

When all the information was combined, the researchers could find no statistically significant global trend overall.

They also found, however, that aquaculture production increased 16-fold from a global total 11.35 million tonnes of seafood in 1985 to 178.5 million tonnes in 2018, with the largest increases occurring in Southeast Asia and South America/Caribbean and Central America, with North America and Europe stabilising.

The number of recorded harmful algal bloom events over time was strongly correlated with intensified aquaculture production in all regions with data suitable for the study.

However, says lead author Gustaaf M. Hallegraeff of the University of Tasmania: Intensified aquaculture clearly drives an increase in HAB monitoring efforts essential to sustaining the industry and protecting human health.

“And, just as clearly, a secondary effect of aquaculture is nutrient pollution. But a major data gap exists here. Conducting a meta-analysis of HABs vs aquaculture we had data on HAB monitoring efforts using OBIS records as a proxy but data on nutrient pollution is inadequate. The relationship between aquaculture-related nutrients and HABs therefore represents an important direction for further research.”

Greater monitoring efforts

The study revealed

• A 4-fold increase from 1985 to 2018 in observations of organisms mainly responsible for Diarrhetic Shellfish Poisoning (84,392 OBIS records)
• A 7-fold increase in observations of organisms mainly responsible for Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning (128,282 OBIS records)
• A 6-fold increase in observations of organisms mainly responsible for Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (9,887 OBIS records)

(Note: Some observations may include non-toxic species or strains.)

In each case, the clear increase in the number of observations of problematic organisms paralleled an increase in records of associated toxic syndrome impacts.

They also found that the presence of toxic HAB species doesn’t always accurately predict cases of human shellfish poisonings, which the study credits to the food safety risk management strategies in many affected countries. Some 11,000 non-fatal events related to Diarrhetic Shellfish Poisoning were reported worldwide, mostly from Europe, South America and Japan, with impacts consisting mostly of shellfish harvesting area closures.

Also, the study says, despite widespread distribution of the responsible algal species, there have been no human fatalities from Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning since the original 1987 incident in Prince Edward Island, Canada (150 illnesses, three fatalities). But ASP-associated mortalities of important marine mammals are of growing concern in Alaska and other parts of western North America, and ASP toxins have been linked to marine mammal calf mortalities in Argentina.

Of the world’s 3,800 human Paralytic Shellfish Poisonings from 1985 to 2018, the largest number (2,555 from 1983 to 2013, including 165 fatalities) occurred in the Philippines, which depends strongly on aquaculture for human food protein.

DNA and other advanced detection methods have improved knowledge of the global distribution of ciguatera- causing organisms. Ciguatera poisonings, rarely fatal but annually affecting 10,000 to 50,000 people, have been decreasing in Hawaii and remained stable in French Polynesia and the Caribbean but constitute a new phenomenon in the Canary Islands.

Farmed fish killed by algal blooms: Largely a human-generated problem.

Aquacultured finfish mortalities account for much greater economic damage than HAB-contaminated seafood. Notes the study: wild marine finfish can simply swim away from blooms but those held captive in intensive aquaculture operations are vulnerable. Recorded losses include US $71 million in Japan in 1972, $70 million in Korea in 1995, $290 million in China in 2012, and $100 million in Norway in 2019.

A 2016 Chilean salmon mortality event caused a record $800 million loss, causing major social unrest.

Again, the presence of fish-killing HAB species doesn’t accurately predict economic losses, the study shows. For example, Heterosigma blooms occur on the west and east coasts of Canada and the US, but fish mortalities are mostly confined to the west coast. In large part, the difference reflects the differences between sites where blooms occur and the relative location and size of aquaculture operations.

A harmful algae species that caused no problems in Australian lagoons killed 50,000 caged fish in Malaysia in 2014. It is now also known in Japan and the Philippines.

The authors note that some troublesome algal species may thrive, others decline, as ocean waters warm and acidify.

Commentary

“There has been a widely-stated contention that HABs worldwide are increasing in distribution, frequency or intensity, so a quantitative global assessment is long overdue,” says lead author Prof. Hallegraeff of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania.

“While some of the HAB literature over the past 30 years has handpicked selected examples to claim a global increase and expansion in HABs, this new big data approach shows a much more nuanced trend,” he adds.

“Our study concludes that the health and economic damages caused by harmful microalgae — seafood poisoning, water discolouration that blights tourism, and the death of finfish in aquaculture operations, for example — differ between regions.”

Adds co-author Adriana Zingone: “We also found that overexploitation acts as a natural multiplier of the effects of HABs, leading to an increase in impacts independent of an actual trend in HABs.”

“It should be noted that over the last 40 years capacity and monitoring efforts to detect harmful species and harmful events have also increased, thus increasing the reporting of harmful events across the world’s seas,” she says.

“The absence of events and decreasing trends, like all negative results, are rarely published. Whether or not HABs are increasing globally, however, their impacts are a growing concern all around the globe.”

Says co-author Henrik Oksfeldt Enevoldsen: “As the human population continues to increase in tandem with resource demands, HABs will predictably constitute a serious threat in terms of seafood safety and security, a hindrance to recreational uses of the sea, and a problem for the tourism industry.”

“Occurrences of harmful species over time and their human impacts can be expected to change locally, regionally and globally alongside the effects that climate, hydrography and human pressure impose on the coastal environment.”

“Understanding the trends and distribution patterns of harmful species and events at multiple spatial and temporal scales will help predict whether, where and when to expect HABs, their frequency and intensity. This knowledge is fundamental for effective management of HABs and to optimise the uses and values of the maritime space in coastal areas.”

Johan Hanssens, Secretary-General Flanders Department of Economy, Science and Innovation, a sponsor of this report, concluded: “This status report is a very timely reminder, at the start of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, that a thorough understanding of natural and ecological processes in the ocean is crucial for the development of the blue economy, now that many coastal countries are turning to the sea for additional resources, including food provisioning. International scientific collaboration is essential and most efficient to address the associated challenges.”

###

New interactive portal

At a new interactive portal (https://data.hais.ioc-unesco.org), also launched today, concerned citizens and scientists can extract data and knowledge about HABs occurrences over time at every scale, from local to global.

Key public databases used

The Harmful Algal Event Database (HAEDAT)

The only existing database of information about harmful algal events from around the world, summarized into ‘events’ associated with a management action or negative economic / ecological impact. Includes cases of non-toxic water discolorations, mucilage, anoxia or other damage to fish. Link: http://haedat.iode.org

HABMAP-OBIS: Database on the geographic range of Harmful Species

The Database provides biogeographic information, as referenced maps, of the microalgal species that are listed in the IOC-UNESCO Taxonomic Reference List of Harmful Microalgae. Because entries concern these taxa regardless of the intraspecific variability in toxicity and impacts, the database provides a worldwide map of potential risks related to the occurrence of toxic species. Link: https://obis.org

The IOC-UNESCO Taxonomic Reference List of Harmful Microalgae

Includes formally accepted names of 150+ planktonic or benthic microalgae that have been proven to produce toxins. The number of species in the list has doubled over the years. Link: http://marinespecies.org/hab

These datasets will help address three main questions in future:

1. The distribution of HAB species, HAB events, and toxins globally
2. How the geographic distribution, characteristic, frequency and intensity of HABs are changing and if these changes attributable to global change
3. How climate change alters impacts from HABs on human health, ecosystems, economics, food and water security

Background

Algae are essential for life on Earth and for fisheries. But when some species “bloom” they can cause harm in various ways.

Some 5,000 species of microalgae form the foundation of aquatic food chains, help control atmospheric CO2 levels, and produce roughly half of the world’s oxygen. The troublemakers are approximately 250 species that can produce potent toxins or cause harm through their sheer biomass.

A harmful algal event is broadly defined as “any event where humans, animals or other organisms are negatively affected by algae.” These include:

• A bioaccumulation of toxins in seafood reaching levels unsafe for human consumption, or a ban on harvesting wild or farmed shellfish or other seafood.
• An abundance of harmful algae causing the closure of e.g. a beach or desalination plant
• A bloom of toxic or non-toxic microalgae causing discoloured water, scum or foam causing damage to tourism

The Global Harmful Algal Bloom Status Report (GHSR) initiative is funded by the Flanders Government through the DIPS-4-Ocean Assessments project (link) as part of the UNESCO/Flanders Fund-in-Trust for the support of UNESCO’s activities in the field of Science (FUST).

Principal authors: 19 principal authors from 15 countries (including two from Australia, two from France, three from the USA)

• Gustaaf M. Hallegraeff, University of Tasmania, Australia
• Donald M. Anderson, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA
• Catherine Belin, IFREMER, France
• Marie-Yasmine Bottein, Ecotoxicology and Sustainable Development Expertise, France
• Eileen Bresnan, Marine Scotland, UK
• Mireille Chinain, Institut Louis Malardé-UMR241, Tahiti
• Henrik Enevoldsen, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Mitsunori Iwataki, University of Tokyo, Japan
• Bengt Karlson, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Oceanographic Research, Sweden
• Cynthia H. McKenzie, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Canada
• Inés Sunesen, CONICET – UNLP, Argentina
• Grant C. Pitcher, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• Pieter Provoost, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, Oostende, Belgium
• Anthony Richardson, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, and University of Queensland, Australia
• Laura Schweibold, Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer, France
• Patricia A. Tester, Ocean Tester, USA
• Vera L. Trainer, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA
• Aletta T. Yñiguez, University of the Philippines, Philippines
• Adriana Zingone, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Italy

About the HAB Programme:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Harmful Algal Blooms (IOC-IPHAB), part of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO, initiated the development of the Global HAB Status Report in Paris in April 2013, developed with the support of the Government of Flanders within the IOC International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) Programme, which manages both the Harmful Algae Event Data Base (HAEDAT: http://haedat.iode.org) and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS: https://obis.org). Partners include the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), The North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

OBIS focuses on the global distribution of all marine species including those HAB species that are toxic to humans and fish as covered by the IOC-UNESCO Taxonomic Reference list of Harmful MicroAlgae (a subset of the World Register of Marine Species), while HAEDAT holds information specifically on the HAB events that have adversely impact on human society, whether by high biomass (clogging of fishing nets, beach closures), aquaculture fish kills, or seafood toxin events leading to shellfish farm closures, human poisonings or even death.

Agence France Presse, here

Agencia EFE, Spain here

IndoAsian News Service, India, here

News sites

Le Figaro, France, L’impact grandissant de la prolifération des algues, here

Deutsche Welle, Germany, Turkey’s ‘sea snot’ is part of a growing environmental threat, here

Deutschlandfunk, Germany, UNESCO-Studie – Toxische Algenblüten führen zu großen wirtschaftlichen Schäden here

BBC World Service Radio, Inside Science: here

Focus Online, Germany, Algenblüten werden folgenreicher, here

Corriere Della Sera, Italy, Studio Unesco: la mucillagine? È causata da allevamenti marini e sviluppo costiero here

Straits Times, Singapore, two stories: Microalgae ‘detective’ developing faster way to identify species that cause harmful algal blooms, here, and More harmful algal blooms expected from intense aquaculture and human activities: UN report, here

Báo Mới, Viet Nam, Thủy triều đỏ gây hại cho hoạt động nuôi trồng thủy sản here

CGTN, Mainland China (12,028,009)Algae blooms harmful to aquaculture: UN global assessment, here

News release in full, click here

Full media coverage summary here

Amid COVID pause in marine activities, growing network aims to monitor soundscapes, assess changes in behavior of marine life; More than 200 widely-distributed non-military hydrophones already listening

Travel and economic slowdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic combined to put the brakes on shipping, seafloor exploration, and many other human activities in the ocean, creating a unique moment to begin a time-series study of the impacts of sound on marine life.

A community of scientists has identified more than 200 non-military ocean hydrophones worldwide and hopes to make the most of the unprecedented opportunity to pool their recorded data into the 2020 quiet ocean assessment and to help monitor the ocean soundscape long into the future. They aim for a total of 500 hydrophones capturing the signals of whales and other marine life while assessing the racket levels of human activity.

Combined with other sea life monitoring tools and methods such as animal tagging, the work will help reveal the extent to which noise in “the Anthropocene seas” impacts ocean species.

Sound travels far in the ocean, and a hydrophone can pick up low-frequency signals from hundreds, even thousands of kilometres away. The highest concentrations of non-military hydrophones are along the North American coasts — Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic — Hawaii, Europe, and Antarctica, with some scattered through the Asia-Pacific region.

For over a century, navies have used sound to reveal submarines and underwater mines and for other national security purposes. Marine animals likewise use sound and natural sonar to navigate and communicate across the ocean.

But the effects of human-generated ocean sounds on marine life remain poorly understood.

“Measuring variability and change in ambient, or background, ocean sound over time forms the basis for characterizing marine ‘soundscapes,'” says collaborator Peter L. Tyack, Professor of Marine Mammal Biology at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

“Assessing the risks of underwater sound for marine life requires understanding what sound levels cause harmful effects and where in the ocean vulnerable animals may be exposed to sound exceeding these levels. Sparse, sporadic deployment of hydrophones and obstacles to integrating the measurements that are made have narrowly limited what we confidently know.”

In 2011, concerned experts began developing the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE), launched in 2015 with the International Quiet Ocean Experiment Science Plan. Among their goals: create a time series of measurements of ambient sound in many ocean locations to reveal variability and changes in intensity and other properties of sound at a range of frequencies.

The plan also included designating 2022 “the Year of the Quiet Ocean.”

Due to COVID-19, however, “the oceans are unlikely to be as quiet as during April 2020 for many decades to come,” says project originator Jesse Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University.

“The COVID-19 pandemic provided an unanticipated event that reduced sound levels more than we dreamed possible based on voluntary sound reductions. IQOE will consider 2020 the Year of the Quiet Ocean and is focusing project resources to encourage study of changes in sound levels and effects on organisms that occurred in 2020, based on observations from hundreds of hydrophones deployed by the worldwide ocean acoustics community in 2019-2021.”

With IQOE encouragement, the number of civilian hydrophones operating in North America, Europe, and elsewhere for research and operational purposes has increased dramatically. With these, IQOE and the ocean sound research community can shed needed light on humans’ influences on marine life and ecosystems.

The existing hydrophone network covers shallow coastal and shelf areas most influenced by local changes in human activity. It also includes deep stations that can measure the effects of low-frequency sound sources over large open ocean areas.

Of the 231 non-military hydrophones identified to February 2021, several have agreed to their geographic coordinates and other metadata being shown on the IQOE website, with organizers hoping to attract many more contributors.

Of the hydrophones identified, most are in US and Canadian waters, with increasing numbers elsewhere, particularly in Europe. Meanwhile, more acoustic instrumentation and measurements are clearly needed across the Southern Hemisphere.

The researchers are working to create a global data repository with contributors using standardized methods, tools and depths to measure and document ocean soundscapes and effects on the distribution and behavior of vocalizing animals.

As part of the effort to create a global time-series, new software under development by a team of researchers across the country and led by the University of New Hampshire (MANTA) will soon help standardize ocean sound recording data from collaborators, facilitating its comparability, pooling and visualization.

The new MANTA software is available at https://bit.ly/3cVNUox

As well, an Open Portal to Underwater Sound (OPUS) is being tested at Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, to promote the use of acoustic data collected worldwide, providing easy access to MANTA-processed data.

Meanwhile, scientists over the past decade have developed powerful methods to estimate the distribution and abundance of vocalizing animals using passive acoustic monitoring.

“Integrating data on animal behavior on soundscapes can reveal long-term effects of changes in ocean sound,” says Jennifer Miksis-Olds, Director of the Center for Acoustics Research and Education, University of New Hampshire.

The fledgling hydrophone network will continue contributing to the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), a worldwide collaboration of observing assets monitoring currents, temperature, sea level, chemical pollution, litter, and other concerns.

“To observe a return to normal conditions as the pandemic subsides, the intensive acoustic monitoring by many existing hydrophones must continue at least through 2021,” says Edward R. Urban Jr, IQOE Project Manager, of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research.

Comparable unintended opportunities for maritime study are rare and important in modern history. They include the start (1945) and stop (1980) of above-ground nuclear testing, creating traces of carbon and tritium, the movements and decay of which have provided major insights into ocean physics, chemistry, and biology.

As well, the terrorist attacks in New York City and Arlington, Va., on 11 September 2001, caused the cancellation of hundreds of civilian airline flights allowing scientists to study the effects of jet contrails (or their absence) on weather patterns.

Those attacks also led to a shipping slowdown and ocean noise reduction, prompting biologists to study stress hormone levels in endangered North Atlantic right whales in the Bay of Fundy.

With their 2001 data, research revealed higher September stress hormone levels over the next four years as the whales prepared to migrate to warmer southern waters where they calve, suggesting that the industrialized ocean causes chronic stress of animals.

Precious chance

Seldom has there been such a chance to collect quiet ocean data in the Anthropocene Seas. COVID-19 drastically decreased shipping, tourism and recreation, fishing and aquaculture, energy exploration and extraction, naval and coast guard exercises, offshore construction, and port and channel dredging.

Data graphed by JP Morgan reveals the impact of COVID in several categories of commercial activity. If true also of maritime activity as suspected, it suggests a relatively short-lived quiet ocean due to COVID — late March to mid-May, 2020.

Says Jesse Ausubel: “Let’s learn from the COVID pause to help achieve safer operations for shipping industries, offshore energy operators, navies, and other users of the ocean.”

“We are on the way to timely, reliable, easily understood maps of ocean soundscapes, including the exceptional period of April 2020 when the COVID virus gave marine animals a brief break from human clatter.”

The end of that break is clear from recent news, he notes, pointing to this from California in mid-March, for example, Port of Long Beach Sets 110-Year Record in February.

Concludes Mr. Ausubel: “We invite parties in a position to help to join this global effort on the variability and trends of ocean sound and the effects of sound on marine life. The shocking global effect of COVID-19 on human additions of noise to the oceans can spur maturation of regular monitoring of the soundscape of our seas.”

###

Coverage highlights:

BBC, UK, Ocean noise: Study to measure the oceans’ ‘year of quiet’
Portuguese: Covid-19: estudo analisa impacto do ‘momento único de silêncio’ nos oceanos provocado pela pandemia

Agence France Presse, Lull in shipping activity gives scientists chance to listen to sounds of the ocean
French: Un réseau mondial d’écoute sur les océans apaisé par Covid
German: Internationales Forscherteam untersucht Tierlaute im Ozean während Corona-Krise

Agencia EFE, Spain, Científicos aprovechan la pandemia para hacer un mapa del sonido de los mares

IndoAsian News Service, India, Amid slowdown, scientists assess changes in marine life behaviour

Gizmodo, United States, International Project Will See How Quiet of Covid-19 Affected Oceans

Down To Earth Magazine, India, What happened when the oceans went quiet during the pandemic? Scientists set to find out

COSMOS Magazine, Australia, Year of the quiet ocean

The National News, United Arab Emirates, Oceans silenced by Covid to reveal impact of human activity on marine life

AllAfrica, South Africa, Covid-19 Gave Us a Chance to Listen to the Silent Seas

Rinnovabili, Italy, Il lockdown ci aiuterà a capire l’impatto dell’inquinamento acustico degli oceani

Time Turk, Turkey, Okyanusların ”sessizlik yılı’

Coverage summary: here

News release in full: here

Additional information:

Eos: Measuring Ambient Ocean Sound During the COVID-19 Pandemic

MANTA: https://bitbucket.org/CLO-BRP/manta-wiki/wiki/Home

JOMOPANS: https://northsearegion.eu/jomopans/news/soundscape-maps-of-north-sea

OPUS: “An Open Portal to Underwater Soundscapes to explore and study sound in the global ocean”
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/53610 and https://opus.aq (TBC)

IQOE publications, including newsletters, available at Products | International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE)

TEDxExeter: Changing the soundtrack of the ocean, Steve Simpson, 2019:
https://youtu.be/Z8XxAfGBcOo

New tool will help census oceans, monitor fish, track shifting marine life; “eDNA makes the ocean a sea of biological information”

• DNA bits in seawater samples drawn during New Jersey government fish trawls reveals relative abundance of fish with a 70% match between the two sampling methods;
• In addition to great concordance, study finds that each method yields information missed by the other
• Research advances novel, inexpensive way to census oceans from surface to seafloor, help monitor fisheries, assess shifts in marine life due to climate change, around coral reefs, aquaculture or wind farms, oil rigs, and more
• Message in a bottle: DNA in 1 litre of seawater = a trawl sweep of 66 million litres, enough to fill a sports stadium to top of goalposts
• Proposed “Great American Fish Count,” involving citizen scientists collecting waters samples, could set stage for 2nd global Census of Marine Life during upcoming UN Oceans Decade

Humanity is a step closer to answering one of the most ancient of questions — “how many fish in the sea?” — thanks to newly-published proof that the amount of fish DNA collected in a water sample closely corresponds to kilos of fish captured in a trawl with nets.

In a breakthrough study, scientists report that floating bits of DNA found in small water samples reveal the relative biomass of fish in the sea roughly as well as a “gold standard” US state government trawl with nets.

The researchers drew seawater samples during New Jersey government fish trawls and tested the water for fish DNA. Analysis of the water was able to reveal the relative abundance of fish with a 70% match in results between the two sampling methods. In addition to the great concordance between methods, the study found that each sampling method yielded information missed by the other.

While environmental DNA (“eDNA”) has been proven before as a reliable way to determine the variety of fish in an area of water, the new study is the first to show that bits of eDNA floating in seawater also disclose the relative abundance of the species swimming through it.

Published by the prestigious ICES Journal of Marine Science, the paper certifies “fishing for DNA” as an inexpensive, harmless complement to nets, acoustics and other established ways to monitor the health of fish stocks and/or the shifting diversity, distribution and abundance of aquatic life.

The paper, a collaboration between The Rockefeller University, Monmouth University, and the New Jersey Bureau of Marine Fisheries, says the information about the diversity and relative abundance of fish available in a one-litre sample is comparable to a 66 million litre trawl sweep, enough seawater to fill a football stadium to the top of the goalposts.

During four voyages by the New Jersey Ocean Trawl Survey in 2019 aboard the research vessel “Sea Wolf,” scientists led by Dr. Mark Stoeckle, Senior Research Associate at The Rockefeller University Program for the Human Environment, drew one-litre pop-bottle sized water samples from various depths just before the trawler’s nets were lowered.

The finding has profound implications for improving global fisheries management and has led to early proposals for a “Great American Fish Count” in rivers and coastal waters, aided by millions of citizen scientists, comparable to Audubon’s Great Backyard Bird Counts.

Fish and other organisms shed DNA like dandruff, Dr. Stoeckle explains, leaving an invisible trail wherever they swim. This environmental DNA can be skin cells, droppings, urine, eggs, and other biological residues that last in the ocean for a few days.

One year of eDNA sampling, out-of-pocket costs: $12,000

The eDNA process is straightforward and extremely inexpensive compared with traditional marine life monitoring methods, which involve ships with large crews and hand counts.

Co-author Zachary Charlop-Powers at The Rockefeller University, lead developer of the software used in the DNA analyses, explains that eDNA testing involves collecting and filtering a water sample, extracting and sequencing the DNA in a laboratory, then matching the results found in an online DNA reference library.

“The bioinformatic tools used by the team are the same ‘barcode’ analysis pipelines commonly used by microbiologists but were adapted for the study of marine vertebrates.”

He notes too that the year of sampling and DNA extraction required an investment of just $12,000, exclusive of salaries.

“The applications of environmental DNA in the marine realm are vast,” says Dr. Stoeckle, a Harvard-educated MD who helped pioneer DNA “barcoding,” the identification of species from a small region of the animal’s DNA sequence.

“eDNA offers a low-cost way to monitor the effectiveness of a marine protected area, for example, or whether efforts to restore a coral reef are succeeding. It could reveal the ecological effects of marine industrial activities, including offshore wind farms, oil and gas rigs, and commercial and recreational fishing.”

Adds Dr. Stoeckle: To put this in perspective, if we thought of a trawl as a full medical CAT or MRI scan, then eDNA can be thought of as a pocket ultrasound–it can be carried and used anywhere in the hospital, without the time and expense of scheduling a full-scale exam. And eDNA surveys will become better and more informative every year as the technique improves and the DNA reference library grows.

Says co-author Dr. Jason Adolf, Endowed Associate Professor of Marine Science, Monmouth University: “eDNA could also be used to identify life in ocean regions hard to access with trawls, such as very rocky areas, or places too deep or too shallow.”

Monmouth co-author Dr. Keith J. Dunton, an expert on endangered fish species, notes that the results are promising for rare as well as common fish species.

“eDNA along with other technologies like acoustic telemetry offers a sensitive, non-extractive way to monitor declines and revivals of rare, threatened, and endangered species,” he says. “We do not have to put them through stressful capturing to know that they are there.”

Trawl surveys, the main tool used to monitor fish populations, have carefully established protocols and yield rich information but are costly, time-consuming, and require special equipment and fish identification experts. Due to the crew size needed, such trawls have been limited recently by COVID-19.

The New Jersey surveys every season involve deploying a bottom trawl, similar to that used in commercial fishing, behind a vessel over a predetermined pattern. The catches in the nets are hauled up and sorted on tables where the weight of each identified species is recorded. Between 30 and 40 trawls are done about every three months.

To compare the trawl survey to the eDNA survey, one-litre water samples were collected at the surface and at depth before the trawls were done. However, samples were only taken before every fourth trawl. When the data from the two surveys were analyzed, the eDNA survey found most of the same fish species, and also found species not captured in the trawl. And it did so with only one-quarter of the samples taken and a fraction of the effort involved.

The paper says most (70% to 87%) species detected by trawl in a given month were also detected by eDNA, and vice versa, including nearly all (92% to 100%) abundant species. Conversely, most dropouts were relatively rare taxa.

Trawl and eDNA peak seasonal abundance agreed for about 70% of fish species.

In other comparisons, monthly eDNA species “reads” correlated with the monthly weight, or biomass, of that species recovered in the trawl.

The eDNA reporting “largely concorded with monthly trawl estimates of marine fish species richness, composition, seasonality, and relative abundance,” the paper says.

“It’s important to understand that the results of both methods are true, and complementary,” noted Stoeckle. “They catch a lot of overlapping, concordant information as well as some information unique to each method.”

Gregory Hinks of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, who co-authored the paper with Bureau of Marine Fisheries colleague Stacy M. VanMorter, adds: “During times like COVID when it is unsafe to conduct surveys with large crews, the eDNA method might allow us still to maintain some continuity in our surveys. In any case, piggybacking eDNA onto an existing survey may eventually provide an affordable way to improve marine fish stock assessment.”

The new paper lays out further research required, such as better calibration of eDNA “reads” to fish body mass — how much DNA is shed by 1,000 anchovies weighing 1 kilo, for example, compared with a one kilo sized sea bass? — and how to account for eDNA reads that may be the result of injury due to a predator attack.

Since collecting water for eDNA is so quick and easy to do, research or oceanographic vessels and commercial and recreational vessels can collect samples as they travel from place to place. Even drones could be deployed to collect water samples.

And with the benefit of additional studies in marine and freshwaters, estimates of animal numbers using eDNA will continue to improve as well as the DNA reference data banks that allow reliable identification of aquatic species.

eDNA opens the way to surveys of unprecedented value, quality, and affordability, says Jesse Ausubel, Director of The Rockefeller University’s Program for the Human Environment, who developed and helped oversee the first international Census of Marine Life, a decadal (2000-2010) collaboration of about 2,700 scientists in 80 countries.

“eDNA makes the ocean a sea of biological information,” he says. “In the USA we could organize a Great American Fish Count in which millions of citizen scientists might collect water for eDNA testing spanning all our waters. Globally, the incipient UN Decade of the Oceans could include a Great Global Fish Count sampling from sea floor to sea surface and near shore to mid-ocean all during a single day or week.”

Tony MacDonald, Director of the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute, says “Our institute and scientists were excited to support this innovative work, one of several partnerships in recent years between UCI and The Rockefeller University Program for the Human Environment.”

“We hope to have the opportunity to continue and expand our collaboration with New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection Marine Fisheries and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on future fish trawls to further advance eDNA research.”

Comments Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D., Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.) Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Deputy NOAA Administrator: “NOAA is rapidly advancing ‘omics technologies, including eDNA, to improve our ability to monitor and understand biological communities in our oceans and the Great Lakes.”

“Important applications include monitoring endangered and invasive species, assessing biodiversity for ecosystem health, tracking aquaculture pathogens, and augmenting fisheries surveys.”

“Through the NOAA ‘Omics Strategy‘ and our forthcoming Implementation Plan, we have defined goals and actionable steps to integrate modern ‘omics technologies to help meet our mission. Collaboration with Rockefeller University and other partners will allow us to expand and advance ‘omics research and eDNA in direct support of the American Blue Economy.”

(‘Omics refers to a suite of advanced methods used to analyze material such as DNA, RNA, proteins, or metabolites.)

Marine eDNA’s potential applications include

• Exploration: discovering species previously unknown in certain ranges
• Discovering rare species and others unknown to science (or absent from genome databases)
• Sampling remote, difficult-to-reach, and intriguing places
• Assessment of the size of fish stocks
• Identifying the range of marine animals
• Determining the effect of protected area designation on fish and other marine animal populations and other forms of ecological restoration
• Monitoring the effect on native species of fish farming operations, offshore oil and gas operations, or wind farms
• Determining the effects of artificial reefs, of severe storms and other disturbances to marine ecosystems including harmful algal blooms
• Monitoring vulnerable, threatened or endangered species, invasive species, or the presence of species dangerous to swimmers
• Gauging the impacts of climate variability
• Mapping marine animal diversity, distribution, migration and abundance, including invasive species, and species popular with sport fishers

###

Coverage highlights

Science Magazine, United States, Fisheries in a flask? Loose DNA in seawater offers a new measure of marine populations, click here

Agencia EFE, Spain, El análisis del ADN ambiental permite saber el número de peces de los océanos, click here

Inside Science, United States, DNA Floating in Ocean Water Reveals Fish Abundance, click here , via ABC News, USA, click here

New Indian Express, India, Experts find trick to count fish in sea, click here

Coverage summary, click here

News release in full, click here

19 Oct 2016

• 
  

  Portable observatories and new marine vehicles: The hinge of historic change in deep sea exploration

  
  
• 
  

  Yet to be found worldwide: A million species, a million wrecks in “world’s largest museum”

  
  
• 
  

  Transformative new technologies opening “citizen science era of ocean exploration”

  
  
• 
  

  100 experts convene for national Forum: Beyond the Ships, Marine Exploration, 2020-2025

  
  
• 
  

  Little known of “submerged America” – the half of US territory that lies under the sea

  
  
• 
  

  Complete mapping of “Gurgle Earth” achievable

  
  
• 
  

  Year of purple sea creatures celebrated with disco ball orb, vampire squid

  
  

Five hundred vents newly discovered off the US West Coast, each bubbling methane from Earth’s belly, top a long list of revelations about “submerged America” being celebrated by leading marine explorers meeting in New York.

“It appears that the entire coast off Washington, Oregon and California is a giant methane seep,” says RMS Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard, who found the new-to-science vents on summer expeditions by his ship, Nautilus.

The discoveries double to about 1,000 the number of such vents now known to exist along the continental margins of the USA. This fizzing methane (video: http://bit.ly/2egtF7F) is a powerful greenhouse gas if it escapes into the atmosphere; a clean burning fuel if safely captured.

“This is an area ripe for discovery,” says Dr. Nicole Raineault, Director of Science Operations with Dr. Ballard’s Ocean Exploration Trust. “We do not know how many seeps exist, even in US waters, how long they have been active, how persistent they are, what activated them or how much methane, if any, makes it into the atmosphere.”

Further research and measuring will help fill important knowledge gaps, including how hydrocarbons behave at depth underwater and within the geological structure of the ocean floor.

Expeditions this year include also NOAA’s Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas Trench – a 59-day voyage with 22 dives into the planet’s deepest known canyons in the Pacific Ocean near Guam.

NOAA explorers added three new hydrothermal vents to the world’s inventory and a new high-temperature “black smoker” vent field composed of chimneys up to 30 meters tall – the height of a nine-story building.

Also revealed: a tiny spot volcano (the first ever discovered in US waters), a new mud volcano, thick gardens of deep-sea corals and sponges, a rare high-density community of basket stars and crinoids (a living fossil), and historic wreckage from World War II. (Photo, video log: http://bit.ly/2cTjp0a)

Bizarre purple animals

Scores of spectacular, rare and sometimes baffling unknown species encountered on this year’s first-ever voyages to new deep ocean areas include several purple animals such as:

• A bizarre purple “mud monster”: the “acorn worm.” Photo: http://bit.ly/2dytSnW, video: http://bit.ly/2d6FQ6a,
  credit: NOAA

Swimming purple sea cucumber, reminiscent of a flying Mary Poppins. Photo: http://bit.ly/2dQdURC, video: http://bit.ly/2d6FQ6a,
credit: NOAA

Beyond being spectacularly photogenic, such animals help scientists better understand the web of life that sustains all species, including humans.

As well, understanding how “extremophile” lifeforms survive in such conditions (piezophiles, for example, thrive in high pressure; pyschrophiles, aka cryophiles, live in water as cold as ?20 °C, as in pockets of very salty brine surrounded by sea ice), is usefully relevant to food and pharmaceutical preservation technologies, medical technology, nanotechnology and energy science.

Ocean exploration undergoing historic transformation

Dr. Ballard and about 100 other leading figures in marine science meet Oct. 20-21 to compare thoughts on the future of marine exploration at the 2016 National Ocean Exploration Forum, “Beyond the Ships: 2020-2025,” hosted in New York by The Rockefeller University in partnership with Monmouth University. The Forum is also supported by the Monmouth-Rockefeller Marine Science and Policy Initiative, NOAA, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and James A. Austin, Jr.

Ocean exploration has arrived at a historic hinge, Forum organizers say, with profound transformation underway thanks to new technologies, led by increasingly affordable “roboats” – autonomous or remotely controlled vehicles that dive into the ocean or ply the surface laden with sensors collecting information from instruments suspended beneath them.

ROV SuBastian, for example, is a new eco-friendly 3,100 kg (6,500 pound) deep-sea research platform for the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor, equipped with ultra high-resolution 4K cameras, mechanical arms that move seven ways and can sample to depths of 4,500 meters (2.8 miles), with a lighting system equivalent to the lamps of 150 car high-beams. (SuBastian sea trials video: http://bit.ly/2dn17as; High-res photos, b-roll: http://bit.ly/2dMBeQs).

Says Wendy Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Ocean Institute: “With ROV SuBastian we will help make life on the ocean floor real to people who will never visit the sea, so they, too, can begin to appreciate the importance of ocean health and make the connection between life in the deep sea and life on land.”

“You don’t have to be a scientist at sea to recognize the importance of the marine environment, and we are only at the beginning of our understanding. We never anticipated discovering the world’s deepest living fish, the ghostfish (video: http://bit.ly/2cNNvSo), back in 2014, and are excited about the life we will discover next.”

ROV SuBastian will have that opportunity this December during its first science cruise, in the Mariana Back-Arc in the western Pacific. (Cruise details: http://bit.ly/2dXOMvA. All dives will be live-streamed on Schmidt Ocean Institute’s YouTube page: http://bit.ly/2dB5Neg).

Contributing as well to the transformation: Modern communications and sampling techniques, including eDNA, big data analysis and other high-tech advances that automate and vastly accelerate the work, opening the way for experts and the public to reach, see, chart, sample and monitor formerly secret depths of the seas.

Building “curious” roboats

Innovations include portable observatories for underwater monitoring and a “curious exploration robot,” programmed to focus on everything unfamiliar to its data bank brain (photo: http://bit.ly/2dXV9fz, video: http://bit.ly/2dq4eA3, credit WHOI).

According to innovator Yogesh Girdhar of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in a recent test off the Panama coast, the suitcase-sized swimming robot discovered a startlingly enormous population of crabs.

Other engineers, meanwhile, are developing “game changing” unmanned undersea and surface vehicles tricked out with an array of sophisticated sensors to perform a suite of underwater tasks, enabled to run for months by recent improvements in battery technology. (See video, for example, of Boeing’s 51-foot Echo Voyager: http://bit.ly/2crlznh).

Such “roboats” can be programmed to conduct deep sea exploration or searches using a lawn mower pattern, surfacing regularly to report data back to shore via satellite, or to patrol a coastal area, returning to port after one or two months to recharge and redeploy.

These technologies will enable today’s generation to “explore more of Planet Earth than all previous generations combined,” predicts Dr. Ballard, whose celebrated career will be recognized at the Forum with the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute’s Champion of the Ocean award.

The technologies will not only help discover and monitor new mineral and living resources, they could help secure interests vital to the world’s economy or identify the best paths for communications cables that span the ocean floor – the veins of the Internet.

Ships transitioning to multi-vessel research hives

Until recently, ocean exploration has involved ships operated like fishing vessels, dipping sensors and hauling up data.

Forum participants such as John Kreider of Oceaneering International envision such ships in future serving as hives from which flotillas and squadrons of autonomous underwater, surface and aerial vehicles are launched – robots guided by experts on board or remotely, such as from a distant university campus via “telepresence,” returning with images and data orders of magnitude larger than ever before.

Thanks to modern communication technologies, schoolchildren, their teachers and indeed any interested members of the public can, and do, now follow expeditions online in real time.

Among the many compelling interests and pursuits of marine scientists and historians in the public, private and military sectors:

• The changing Arctic environment, including the impact on sea ice edge formation of waves on newly opened water, and by new intrusions of warm water from the neighboring Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which also disrupts Arctic Ocean water column stratification
• The discovery of rare earth and other minerals, caches of methane and new oil deposits, and new species of marine plants and animals, some of which have already led to new pharmaceuticals with high expectations of many valuable discoveries to come
• Better understanding the food chain – monitoring the distribution and abundance of marine life, finding species new-to-science, and detecting invasive or endangered species.
• eDNA (environmental DNA) techniques, a water sample can now be used to discern what species recently passed through, based on the DNA left behind in metabolic wastes, skin cells, and damaged tissues (the subject of a paper by NOAA-funded ocean explorer Shirley Pomponi. And, thanks to new acoustic techniques, marine biologists can also discern biodiversity levels on coral reefs just by listening (the subject of a paper prepared for the Forum by Jennifer L. Miksis-Olds of the University of New Hampshire and Bruce Martin, Dalhousie University, available at http://bit.ly/2dwUxzA)

Finding historic wrecks of aircraft and ships, such as the recent discovery 2,800 feet underwater of the WWII era aircraft carrier USS Independence (photo: http://bit.ly/2d4leYD), a Bikini Atoll nuclear test target last seen when it was scuttled off San Francisco’s shores 65 years ago. Other major recent finds include the USS Conestoga, found at 200 feet depth near San Francisco, ending a 95-year military mystery about the fate of her 56-man crew; Sir John Franklin’s ships Terror and Erebus, lost while searching for the Northwest Passage; whaling ships from the 1870s found crushed off the coast of Alaska; and the skeletons of 2,000 year old mariners in waters off Greece

Says scientist James (Jamie) A. Austin, Jr. of the University of Texas, “the slow, time consuming and expensive way we’ve done ocean exploration forever – one ship doing one task at a time – is giving way to autonomous systems that net massive hauls of data, with advances in big data analysis enabling scientists to make sense of it rapidly.”

Dr. Austin envisions installations on the seafloor – measuring tremors or helping scientists estimate the rate at which Earth swallows carbon into its mantle through plate tectonics, for example – with data delivered by a device periodically flying up and down to the surface.

Gurgle Earth

Simply mapping the ocean floor is an important goal. While satellites have fully charted the seafloor in low resolution, only 10% is mapped in detail.

At an estimated cost of $2.9 billion – or about $9 per square kilometer ($23 per square mile) – a “Gurgle Earth” map of the deep oceans could be completed at high resolution using swath like, multi-beam sonar.

The hazard of uncharted oceanic mountains, trenches, volcanoes and other features was dramatically underscored in 2005 when a nuclear attack submarine, the USS San Francisco, struck a seamount in the Pacific at high speed, killing one crew member and injuring 97.

Over 50% of US territory lies beneath the ocean surface and such mapping could also expand American territorial and resource claims.

With documentation of the continental shelf, America’s Exclusive Economic Zone, 11.3 million square km in size today, could extend a further 2.2 million square km – a 20% enlargement, representing an underwater area larger than Alaska. (See http://bit.ly/2cTU7lG).

World’s foremost ocean discoveries

According to Dr. Ballard, key marine discoveries to date include:

• In the Galapagos Rift, hydrothermal vents, “which may well explain the origin of life on Earth”
• On the East Pacific Rise, other black smokers “which explained the chemistry of the world’s oceans and their poly-metallic sulfide deposits of copper, lead, silver, and gold”
• On the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a Lost City of carbonate chimneys towering 60 meters, “which revealed the depth of seawater circulation into the earth”
• Along the continental margins of the world massive methane seeps, “that were not included in our modelling of global change”
• In the Black Sea, highly preserved wooden ships, “which showed that the deep sea is the largest museum on earth,” and
• Near Newfoundland, the RMS Titanic, “which created a massive interest in the history of the human race hidden beneath the sea.”

Other recent finds of ancient shipwrecks and even ancient human remains, he adds, reveal that early mariners didn’t simply hug the coastline but sailed courageously great distances from shore, and make it possible to determine who they were.

While these and countless biological discoveries represent things discovered underwater, the intent of future exploration campaigns include measuring more, sampling more, and better understanding physical, geological and living processes – knowledge of vital importance for security, responsible ocean use and sustainable resource management.

Asked what he thought might yet be discovered underwater, Dr. Ballard compares that to asking Lewis or Clark what they thought they’d find on their historic traverse of America. The reply, he says, would have been “I don’t know. I’m getting into a canoe and I’m going to paddle.”

In one of several papers written for the Forum, meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Cameron Hume adds that, beyond exploring and the initial characterization of an ocean area, humanity also needs to pursue subsequent research and long-term observing.

In his paper, Dr. Jerry Schubel of the Aquarium of the Pacific, lamenting the relatively low level of public attention accorded to ocean exploration, points to new opportunities for awareness raising created by social media.

“Understanding life on other planets,” he says, “may help us understand the origins of life in the universe, but it can’t match the relevance and importance of ocean exploration to the future of life on this planet.”

Hidden in the seas: A million unknown species, a million shipwrecks

Says organizer Prof. Jesse Ausubel, faculty member at The Rockefeller University: “SuBastian and the Roboats sounds like a rock band, but it is the future of ocean exploration. One million marine species and one million shipwrecks may remain to be discovered. Let’s use new approaches to multiply exploration.”

Says Forum organizer Vice Admiral Paul Gaffney, former President of Monmouth University and Urban Coast Institute Ocean Policy Fellow: “America is the greatest maritime nation in the history of the world, yet we scarcely know submerged America and only about 10% of the global oceans. At this Forum, we are encouraging ocean technology leaders to join the discussion and support more comprehensive exploration campaigns indispensable for sustainable use of the oceans and inspiring ocean stewardship.”

The Forum will use three example priority ocean exploration areas to flesh out new ideas:

• the Southeast US Atlantic Bight
• the Gulf of Mexico and
• the Arctic

Maps in high resolution: http://bit.ly/2e2lIQ7; credit Matt King and Mashkoor Malik

The ultimate aim: to formulate compelling, feasible campaigns to be carried out by the participants in the 2020-2025 timeframe.

At the Forum, Dr. Jyotika Virmani will share the roster of teams for the $7 million Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a global competition to promote unmanned ocean exploration.

NAS President: new technologies can open “citizen science era of ocean exploration”

In a letter to the Forum (in full: http://bit.ly/2dA7uqT), the President of the US National Academy of Sciences, famed ocean explorer Marcia McNutt, says “a number of events have underscored how essential our mission is to vastly improve knowledge of the marine environment.”

Inadequate knowledge of ocean terrain and currents hampered the search for flight MH 370 in 2014, for example.

CubeSats, she notes, have “‘democratized’ space, providing access for pennies on the dollar. Similarly, new commercial tools, although still in their infancy, hold the promise of ushering in the citizen science era of ocean exploration.”

“The task we face is simply too large to continue to use 20th century tools if we hope to make a dent in the problem.”

###

2016 National Ocean Exploration Forum, “Beyond the Ships: 2020-2025”
Oct. 20-21
Venue: The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Ave, New York, NY.
Website, including Forum programme and speaker biographies: http://phe.rockefeller.edu/noef
Supporters: the Monmouth-Rockefeller Marine Science and Policy Initiative, NOAA, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and James A. Austin, Jr.

Papers

Positioning Ocean Exploration In a Chaotic Sea of Changing Media
Jerry R. Schubel (Aquarium of the Pacific)
http://bit.ly/2dJ2VNJ

Exploring the Ocean through Sound
Jennifer L. Miksis-Olds (University of New Hampshire) and Bruce Martin (Dalhousie)
http://bit.ly/2dwUxzA

New National Leadership for Ocean Exploration
US Ambassador Cameron Hume
http://bit.ly/2dAgr1p

Discussion Paper on Marine Minerals
Mark Hannington, University of Ottawa, and Sven Petersen, GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research
http://bit.ly/2djAMgJ

Emerging Technologies for Biological Sampling in the Ocean
Shirley Pomponi, Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, & Technology [CIOERT], Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Florida Atlantic University
http://bit.ly/2e1R5KM

The Forum is the latest in a series mandated by Congress (Title XII of Public Law 111-11) in March 2009 when it officially established the NOAA ocean exploration program. This law requires NOAA to consult with the other federal agencies involved in ocean exploration, as well as external stakeholders, to establish a “coordinated national ocean exploration program” that promotes data management and sharing, public understanding, and technology development and transfer. The law also requires NOAA to organize an “ocean exploration Forum to encourage partnerships and promote collaboration among experts and other stakeholders to enhance the scientific and technical expertise and relevance of the national program.”

The 2016 Forum convenes approximately 100 experts from academia, government, and the private sector to discuss adaptation and integration of technologies that can be employed in ocean exploration campaigns in the 2020-2025 timeframe.

The Forum will look to a future of expanded exploration activities by making more platforms capable of measuring, sampling, or imaging yet-to-be-explored areas – employing a suite of technologies that have been dubbed “flyaway systems.”

Expanding spatial coverage and reducing cost of data collection are key ocean exploration priorities over a ~10 year time horizon. These priorities can be realized by creatively adapting and assembling existing technologies, and deploying them onboard autonomous devices, buoys, various so-called ships-of-opportunity, and other platforms, in addition to the existing fleet of dedicated ocean exploration vessels.

The Forum will help federal funding agencies and foundations define and prioritize exploration technology investment options for 2020-2030, and stimulate a vision among leading explorers of what it might be like to conduct expeditions in this time frame.

Forum sub-themes:

• Acoustics-based exploration including bathymetric data collection and the precise navigation issues that surround collection of accurate bathymetric data from remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs)
• Biological/chemical discovery; sampling and sensing
• Geological/geophysical discovery (e.g., gravity, magnetics, seismic); sampling and sensing
• Telepresence (real time and non-synchronous) including, but not limited to, discussion of “fly away” possibilities and the impact of the proliferation of IT/visualization technology among the public — from smart phones to virtual reality. Also related systems for integration/command-and-control.
• Off-board measuring, sensing and sampling technologies (vehicles, sensors, installations, and samplers/collectors)
• Command and control of unattached vehicles (communications, accurate positioning, non-synchronous data transmission issues)

Forum advisory panel:

James A. (Jamie) Austin Jr., University of Texas
Robert Ballard, Ocean Exploration Trust and University of Rhode Island
Frank Herr, Office of Naval Research, US Navy
John Kreider, Oceaneering International
Alan Leonardi, NOAA Ocean Exploration and Research
Shirley Pomponi, Florida Atlantic University
Rick Rikoski, Hadal Inc.
Jerry Schubel, Aquarium of the Pacific
Lance Towers, The Boeing Company
Victoria Tschinkel, 1000 Friends of Florida

Invitees represent the academic, government, non-profit, and for-profit communities, with expertise in both the engineering aspects of creating relevant equipment, and in exploratory and scientific applications of such equipment.

Beyond the Ships: 2020-2025 is the first of four annual Marine Science & Policy Series conferences that will be organized by Rockefeller and Monmouth, with events taking place on alternating campuses in New York City and West Long Branch, New Jersey.

* * * * *

Media coverage highlights:

International newswires 

The Associated Press, USA (via Daily Mail, UK), Images from the deep unveil weird and wild sea critters, click here

Spanish (via El Nuevo Herald, USA), Profundidades marinas revelan criaturas extrañas y salvajes, click here 

Reuters, UK, Scientists find 500 U.S. seabed vents of powerful greenhouse gas, click here 

Agencia EFE, Spain, Los robots marinos y la captura del ADN son el futuro de exploración oceánica (Marine robots and capture DNA are the future of ocean exploration), click here 

Austria Presse Agentur / Deutsche Presse Agentur, Austria / Germany, Hunderte neue Methan-Quellen vor US-Westküste entdeckt (Discovered – hundreds of new methane sources along US West Coast), click here 

News sites

New Scientist, UK

Hundreds of deep-sea vents found spewing methane off US coast, click here 

Gizmodo, USA, There’s an Enormous Natural Gas Seep Along the West Coast, click here 

N-TV, Germany, Unmengen Methan lagern vor US-Westküste (“A gigantic source;” Vast amounts of methane stored along US West Coast)=, click here

RT (Russia Today), Новые виды животных, вулканы и метановые источники: что скрывает Мировой океан (New species of animals, volcanoes and methane sources: it hides the Oceans), click here

* * * * *

News release in full, click here

Coverage summary, click here

12-Mar-15

World registry, nearing completion, confirms 228,450 known marine species; consolidation relegates 190,400 other “species” as duplicate identities

Champion of taxonomic redundancy: “Rough Periwinkle” sea snail had 113 scientific names

Over 1,000 new-to-science marine fish species have been described since 2008 – an average of more than 10 per month – according to scientists completing a consolidated inventory of all known ocean life.

Among fish species newly-described worldwide are 122 new sharks and rays, 131 new members of the goby family, and a new barracuda found in the Mediterranean.

All are contained in the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), a landmark international effort to unite all existing knowledge of sea life.

In the past eight years, the effort has identified as redundant aliases almost half the names assigned over two and a half centuries to ocean dwelling creatures.

Merging scores of global databases, the more than 200 editors of WoRMS found almost 419,000 species names in literature worldwide, of which 190,400 (45%) were deemed duplicate identities.  One species of sea snail alone had 113 different names (see elaboration below).

WoRMS editors have contracted to 228,450 the number of species currently known to science. About 195,000 (86%) of them are sea animals, including just over 18,000 species of fish described since the mid-1700s, more than 1,800 sea stars, 816 squids, 93 whales and dolphins and 8,900 clams and other bivalves.  The rest are species of kelp, seaweeds and other plants, bacteria, viruses, fungi and single cell organisms.

Based at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) in Belgium, WoRMS is a collaborative scientific triumph, constituting a single, authoritative reference list of all marine species described since the pioneering work of Carl Linnaeus.

In 2014 alone, some 1,451 new-to-science marine creatures were added to WoRMS – an average of four per day.

“Though a few relatively minor gaps remain, we consider the register now virtually complete with respect to species described throughout scientific history,” says WoRMS co-chair Jan Mees, Chair of the European Marine Board and Director of VLIZ.  “And, of course, we are constantly updating with newly-described species, revisions of taxonomy, and adding occasional species that have been overlooked.”

Dr. Mees adds that an estimated 10,000 or more new-to-science species are in laboratory jars around the world today waiting to be described.

Amazingly, says WoRMS fish specialist Nicolas Bailly of the Hellenic Center for Marine Research, new species of relatively large animals are still regularly discovered and described.

Added just last month, for example: A new species of sea dragon, the ruby red Phyllopteryx dewysea(link is external) from southern Australia, distinguished via DNA analysis from two other sea dragon species.

The Gobiidae family of goby fish boasts the most new species added since 2008 with 131, followed by the Liparidaefamily of snailfish with 52.

Other new fish curiosities since 2008 include:

• Sphyraena intermedia: A new third species of barracuda found in the Mediterranean

• Protanguillidae: A new basal eel-like family discovered in Palau (species: Protanguilla palau)

• Histiophryne psychedelica: An Indonesian frogfish with “psychedelic” colouring 

• Chlamydoselachus africana: A particularly homely (http://bit.ly/1EAkUL8) frilled shark species in African waters genetically split from the wide-ranging Chlamydoselachus anguineus

• ​Salmo kottelati: A new species of trout found in Turkey

New to science ocean species in 2014 include two dolphins, 139 sponges

Other forms of ocean life described in 2014 include two dolphins and 139 new-to-science sponges.

Some previously-discovered sponges have yielded valuable cancer-fighting agents.  Studies foresee more than 200 oncology drugs derived from marine life compounds passing clinical trials – pharmaceuticals with an estimated value of at least US$560 billion.

The two new-to-science dolphins:

• Sousa sahulensis: Australian humpback dolphin

• Inia araguaiaensis: a long-snouted river dolphin from Brazil, a rare river mammal included in the WoRMS marine species database as an exception

Scientists last year also described  12 new marine life families and 141 new genera (family and genus ranking higher than species on the eight-rung ladder of life’s scientific classification).

A new genus of animal (Dendrogramma, with two associated species (Dendrogramma enigmatica and Dengrogramma discoides) does not readily fit into an existing phylum – the top classification in the animal kingdom. Further research will resolve the issue but could lead to the historic addition of a new life classification.

Other curiosities among the class of 2014:

• Areospora rohanae: A new genus and species of parasite, first noticed by Chilean fisheries workers, that invades and causes lesions on the valuable King Crab.  The taxonomist dubbed the little critter after his daughter.

• Keesingia gigas: A new genus and species of giant jellyfish – venomous and tentacle-free – named in honour of renowned Australian biologist John Keesing

• Litarachna lopezae: A species of mite collected in the waters of Puerto Rico and named for entertainer Jennifer Lopez, who likewise hails from that US territory

• Mysidopsis zsilaveczi: (high-res photos, credit Guido Zsilavecz): A ‘star-gazing’ shrimp in South Africa, so-called because its eyes are fixed in an upward direction

• Phoronis emigi: The first new horseshoe worm discovered in over 60 years, named in honour of distinguished French marine scientist, Christian C. Emig

• Nitzschia bizertensis: An alga causing harmful blooms of Domoic acid, the neurotoxin that causes amnesic shellfish poisoning

• Sierradiadema kristini: A new species of sea urchin identified from a fossil specimen

The champion of taxonomic redundancy: Littorina saxatilis

After consolidating all marine life databases, WoRMS experts have crowned a new champion of taxonomic redundancy: Littorina saxatilis (popularly known in English as the Rough Periwinkle; photos, credit Antonio França), a sea snail with a shell that ironically resembles the Horn of Plenty.  It has been assigned 113 names in all.

The taxonomist who finds and describes a new species earns the right to name it.  And in 1792 young scientist Giuseppe Olivi first described and named Littorina saxatilis in a catalog of animals in the waters around Venice.

Subsequently, other taxonomists worldwide have reclassified the species, misspelled, or discovered a variety and mistakenly described it as a new species, leaving it with a cornucopia of Latin identities (all listed here, with links to maps of its location and other information).

In all instances of a species found to have a superfluous description and name, WoRMS accords precedence to the oldest work (though to aid research all synonyms are noted).

Daunting challenges remain

Formal scientific taxonomic description involves a slow, exacting process recently accelerated by DNA identification techniques and other new technologies.

And there’s a daunting challenge ahead: Researchers with the Census of Marine Life of 2000-2010 (within which WoRMS was a major component) estimate that  between 500,000 and 2 million marine species remain to be discovered and described.

Even at today’s rate of roughly four per day, describing every marine inhabitant thought to exist would take at least 360 more years.

“Indeed, it is humbling to realize that humankind has encountered and described only a fraction of our oceanic kin, perhaps as little as 11%,” says Dr. Mees, who underscores that the remarkable pace of discovery and species description does not imply a growing abundance of marine life.

“Sadly, we fear, many species will almost certainly disappear due to changing maritime conditions – especially warming, pollution and acidification – before we’ve had a chance to meet.”

The bulk of new fish species descriptions are based on recent discoveries, studies of museum collection specimens, and reassessments of species with wide range distribution, says Dr. Bailly.

For example, many new marine fish descriptions come from a reassessment of species ranging both in Red Sea and Indian Ocean, with a recent tendency to separate the Red Sea populations as new species.

Coral reefs still provide 30% of new marine fish species described (mostly Gobiidae and other small size families); another 30% are from the deep sea.  Very few are described from the pelagic zone in the middle of oceans between surface and 200 meters depth.

Says WoRMS chair Geoff Boxshall of the Natural History Museum, London: “I am very proud of what WoRMS has achieved. It represents the collective effort of well over 200 editors distributed around the world and it is now a truly global resource.  The inspirational support we have had from our hosts at VLIZ has been vital to our success, as has the continuing financial support from the European Union via a succession of projects (e.g. LifeWatch), but I especially want to pay tribute to the taxonomic specialists – without their expertise and their commitment, WoRMS wouldn’t exist.”

WoRMS also includes a rapidly-expanding collection of 50,000 images – a nine-fold increase from 2008 – along with hyperlinks to original taxonomic literature and other information.

WoRMS forms an important backbone in LifeWatch, the E-Science European Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, which aims to standardize and consolidate species data from different component databases.

Thanks to the financial support of LifeWatch, WoRMS has since 2012 filled many previously identified gaps and can continue to grow at its current pace.

* * * * *

World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) (most recent statistics available on www.lifewatch.be/en/worms-stats)

Statistics:

• 228,445 accepted species
• 418,848 species names, including synonyms
• 50,000 images

Of the “accepted species”:

• 195,000 (86%) are in the taxonomic kingdom animalia
• 20,300 (9%) are in the kingdom chromista (e.g. algae)
• 8,800 (4%) are in the kingdom plantae
• 1,700 (<1%)  are in the kingdom bacteria
• 1,360 are in the kingdom fungi
• 623 are in the kingdom protozoa (a diverse group of mostly unicellular organisms)
• 120 are in the kingdom archaea (single cell microbes)
• 111 are in the kingdom of viruses

*******

News release in full: click here

Nederlands / Dutch

Coverage summary, click here

Example coverage:

* BBC, UK, WoRMS catalogue downsizes ocean life, click here

* The Guardian, UK, Seaside snail most misidentified creature in the world, click here

* Reuters, UK

In English, Oceans yield 1,500 new creatures, many others lurk unknown, click here

In German, Volkszählung der Ozeane: Forscher entdecken 1451 unbekannte Spezies im Meer, click here

In French, Près de 1.500 nouvelles créatures identifiées dans les océans, click here

In Chinese, 全球海洋特搜 發現1451個新物種, click here

In Indonesian, 1500 Makhluk Baru di Lautan Dunia Tercatat oleh Ilmuwan, click here

In Norwegian, Oppdaget 1500 nye arter i havet, click here

In Polish, Odkryto 1500 nowych gatunków, click here

* Washington Post, USA Nearly 200,000 ‘new’ marine species turn out to be duplicates, click here

* UK Press Association, 1,000 unknown sea fish identified, click here

* Nature, UK, Dolphins, diatoms and sea dragons join census of all known marine life, click here

* Daily Mail, UK, From a frilled shark to the frogfish, we’re finding four new sea creatures every day: Scientists uncover 1,451 new species in the ocean in the past year alone, click here

* Belga newswire, Belgium, Dutch, Voorbije acht jaar meer dan duizend nieuwe zeevissoorten ontdekt, click here

* Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP newswire), Netherlands, Dutch, Ruim duizend nieuwe zeevissoorten ontdekt, click here

* Agencia EFE newswire, Spain, Spanish, Científicos reducen a casi 230 mil el número de especies marinas reconocidas, click here

* Europa Press newswire, Spain, Spanish, El 45 % de las especies marinas estaba duplicado, click here

* ABC Radio News, Australia, Marine census: plenty of fish in the sea, click here

* Australian Associated Press, More than 1000 unknown fish identified, click here

* SingPao, China, Chinese, 海洋再發現千五種新生物, click here

* Iltalehti, Finland, Finnish, Merestä löytyi viime vuonna liki 1 500 uutta lajia, click here

* Irish Examiner, Ireland, We have discovered more than 1,000 new fish species in the last 8 years, click here

* CIHAN newswire, Turkey, Turkish, Okyanuslarda Bi̇r Yilda 1500 Yeni̇ Canli Türü Keşfedi̇ldi̇, click here

* Vietnam News Agency, Vietmamese, Phát hiện thêm hàng nghìn sinh vật biển mới trong năm 2014, click here

* Belgien/TT-Reuters newswire, Sweden, Swedish, Haven är fulla av oupptäckta arter, click here

* Philenews, Cyprus, Greek, H απογραφή της θαλάσσιας ζωής δεν έχει φτάσει ούτε στα μισά του δρόμου, click here

9-Oct-2014

Some 340 European scientists, policy-makers and other experts representing 143 organizations from 31 countries spoke with one voice today, publishing a common vision of today’s most pressing marine-related health and economic threats and opportunities.

In a declaration concluding a three day meeting in Rome, EurOcean 2014 participants also released an agreed, five-year roadmap to achieve expanded, more integrated and effective policy-oriented ocean scrutiny.

EurOcean 2014 was convened by the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Marine Board, the European Commission and three esteemed Italian partner institutions: the National Research Council, National Inter-university Consortium for Ocean Science (CoNISMa) and the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (OGS).

In addition to a rising tide of ocean-related threats to human health and economics, the conference statement points to major opportunities in such areas as marine biotechnology, offshore energy, and sustainable aquaculture to create much-needed jobs after one of the worst economic crises in recent history.

Making such “blue growth” sustainable, however, requires a greater investment in science —research to deliver knowledge, tools and advice on sustainable management of marine resources and a better understanding of ecosystems underpinning the maritime economy.

Demands on the seas for food, energy, raw materials and transport are steadily increasing, the statement notes. And while oceans “can provide solutions to many European and global policy challenges … (they) are neither inexhaustible nor immune to damage. In the context of rapid global change and human population growth, it is imperative to balance economic benefit with environmental protection and human wellbeing.”

“As a research community, it’s now time to reassess and reinvigorate our efforts to support these policy ambitions.”

Says Jan Mees, Chair of the European Marine Board: “To truly progress our knowledge, European scientists across a broad range of disciplines and domains must make a quantum leap towards holistic approaches and integrated research on a scale which will help us to much better understand, protect, manage and sustainably exploit the seas and oceans which surround us. This is a Grand Challenge; not just Europe, but for human society as a whole.”

He notes that the estimated gross value added of the European maritime economy is €500 billion per year. An investment reflecting just 1% of that value would equate to €5 billion in research in Europe, more than double the current level of €2 billion.

Participants identified four high-level policy goals:

1. Valuing the ocean

Promoting a wider understanding of the importance of the seas and oceans in the everyday lives of European citizens.

2. Capitalizing on European leadership

Building on our strengths to reinforce Europe’s position as a global leader in marine science and technology

3. Advancing ocean knowledge

Building a much greater knowledge base through ocean observation and fundamental and applied research

4. Breaking scientific barriers

Addressing the complex challenges of blue growth and ocean sustainability by combining expertise and drawing from a full range of scientific disciplines.

Among top priorities in the 18-point action plan:

A coordinated interdisciplinary and integrated programme on Oceans and Human Health, understanding and managing the risks and benefits of our interactions with the seas

A major increase in the promotion of ocean education and literacy, using best practice in communication, training and social marketing. (A recent study of 700 Canadian students showed better informed citizens are also more interested in learning about maritime jobs and careers.)

Advanced and agreed mechanisms for attaching monetary and non-monetary value systems to marine ecosystem services and benefits for use in management and decision-making;

• A coherent blend of fundamental research and industry-driven and policy-oriented research;
• A significant further investment in collaborative marine research in Europe, designed to address complex challenges to sustainably manage our ocean resources;
• Fast-tracked funding support, combining a diverse range of funding mechanisms, for the construction and long- term operation of key marine research infrastructures, addressing identified gaps, in particular the further development of a technologically advanced and integrated European Ocean Observing System (EOOS), compatible within the global observing infrastructure;

A recognition that seas and oceans research cuts across all research domains which requires cross-cutting research initiatives to address complex challenges;

Practical incentives for researchers to engage and work with colleagues in different disciplines and sectors (including industry) across the full range of natural, social and economic sciences.

Says the declaration: “With a coherent and targeted support from the EU and members States, it is possible to achieve an integrated research effort, supported by world-class infrastructures and data, delivering knowledge, tools, solutions and policy options towards achieving GES, driving Blue Growth and cementing Europe’s global leadership in marine and maritime science.

“With this vision, the European marine science community calls on the support of Member and Associated States, the European Commission and Parliament to shape together the future agenda for marine research.”

Appended: Text of the statement in full

Linking Oceans and Human Health

In a recent paper, European Marine Board scientists point to a host of emerging human health issues requiring accelerated research.

The increase in man-made toxic nanoparticles and micro-plastic marine pollution as well as concerns emerging about higher seawater temperatures leading to the transformation of chemical pollutants into degradation products that may represent an additional problem with regard to toxicity, are among new perils to human health cited.

On the other hand, rising water temperatures may reduce the toxicity of some organic pollutants, such as pesticides and aromatic hydrocarbons through more rapid “ageing” by oxidation in the environment or in living organisms.

“This complex antagonism between the positive and negative effects of increasing water temperatures requires significant further research, not least to assist in the generation of more accurate predictions on the future consequences of climate change in the marine environment and the implications for human health.”

More familiar water temperature-related concerns include the changing distribution of fish stocks, impacting livelihoods and diet, and more frequent and intense harmful algal blooms.

Micro-plastic pollution, also called “plastic dust,” fragments less than 5mm in diameter now found throughout the marine environment.

“In a recent investigation by the University of Ghent, mussels retrieved from the North Sea contained about one particle of microplastic per gramme of tissue. Particles can enter the human blood circulation and can even be transferred through the placenta after consumption of mussels with microplastic contaminants.”

Chemical pollution of the sea: Of the approximately 100,000 chemicals produced for sale in Europe, about 30,000 are produced in volumes of one tonne or more per year and have been on the market for more than 20 years.

“The list of substances classified by the American Chemical Society as toxic includes more than 282,000 compounds. Yet, the number of chemicals normally analyzed during characterization campaigns is around 100-120 compounds.”

Nanoparticles: “The toxicity of a new class of emerging contaminants called nanoparticles, i.e. particles with a size ranging from 1nm to 100nm in at least one dimension, is based not only on their chemical composition but on their physical characteristics of shape and size. Nanoparticles (both inorganic and organic) have been shown to be toxic for animals, plants and microbes.”

Toxic phytoplankton: Phytoplankton organisms can harm human health in two ways: through the production of potent biotoxins, or through the production of massive blooms which result in oxygen depletion leading to mass mortality of marine life.

“To date, of the 5000 known algal species, more than 300 have been listed as being toxic or harmful.”

Ocean-related extreme events, including tsunamis, hurricanes and cyclones, leading to trauma, drowning, starvation, water and vector-borne disease, mental illness and malnutrition.

Sea-level rise and acidification, destroying fish habitats and nursery grounds, decreasing nutrition and occupational opportunities, saltwater intrusion into freshwater supplies and the release of toxic and other wastes caused by inundation of coastal landfill sites.

Viruses: A large, diverse group of viruses in the ocean cause human gastroenteritis; others such as poliovirus or Hepatitis A virus, grow in the human gut but produce their main clinical symptoms elsewhere. “Unlike bacterial and protozoal pathogens, the viruses which are recognized to be potentially transmitted via seawater are generally human in origin. Thus the role of the sea is in recycling human viruses back to humans.”

Aquaculture: Concerns include the impact on human health of replacing fish oil feed aquaculture with alternatives due to declining pelagic fish oil sources.

Blue Gym: The paper underscores that a healthy marine environment is the source of health benefits, of course: healthy food, pharmaceuticals and related products derived from marine organisms, and recently-documented contribution to physical and mental well-being from a close association with the coastal environment — the “Blue Gym” effect.

According to the European Marine Board, needed to produce a coordinated, integrated and interdisciplinary programme on oceans and human health are community and human capacity building, greater international cooperation, strategic analysis and policy assessment, and stronger stakeholder engagement.

Rome Declaration 

Setting a vision for seas and ocean science:

Delivering impact, global leadership and sustainable blue growth for Europe

Europe is emerging from the worst financial crisis in recent history. Rebuilding our economies demands that we identify sustainable opportunities for economic growth and jobs. The ocean is a source of food, energy and raw materials, a medium for tourism, transport and commerce, and can provide solutions to many European and global policy challenges. But the ocean is neither inexhaustible nor immune to damage. In the context of rapid global change and human population growth, it is imperative to achieve human wellbeing by combining economic benefit with environmental protection. This presents a highly complex challenge. Collaborative and cross-disciplinary European research is the key to providing the knowledge and tools that we need to achieve ecosystem-based management and protection of valuable marine resources.

Connecting science, policy and people

Since the launch of the European Research Area in 2000, substantial progress has been made in integrating European marine science. This progress is based on a simple premise: that we can achieve greater impact if we work together, transcending national barriers to scientific cooperation. EU policy developments have significantly advanced an integrated approach to managing maritime space and resources. The EU integrated Maritime Policy, its environmental pillar, the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, and the recently reformed Common Fisheries Policy, have provided a powerful basis for Member State cooperation in addressing shared maritime challenges and responsibilities. Furthermore, the Blue Growth Strategy has set in context the contribution that science can make to developing a sustainable European maritime economy.

A recent policy statement by the new European Commission President, highlights the need to focus on the key challenges ahead for our economies and societies, “be it with regard to the digital age, the race for innovation and skills, the scarcity of natural resources, the safety of our food, the cost of energy, the impact of climate change, the ageing of our population or the pain and poverty at Europe’s external borders.”

This Declaration is a statement of intent by Europe’s marine scientific community for how we can work together in the next five years to undertake more integrated science; underpinning policy needs, environmental sustainability, targeted societal impact and advancing European leadership in a global context. We call on Member and Associated States, the European Commission and Parliament, the European Investment Bank, and the private sector to support us in promoting the following four high-level goals and associated actions:

1. Valuing the ocean

Goal: Promoting a wider awareness and understanding of the importance of the seas and ocean in the everyday lives of European citizens.

With the global population set to reach 9 billion people by 2050, we need new ways to provide food and energy and to ensure a safe and sustainable use of marine space. But many people have little awareness of the importance of the seas and ocean in their daily lives; the impact these have on human wellbeing; the importance of the maritime economy; the rich natural and cultural heritage; and the need to protect vital ocean resources. By achieving a transformation in appreciation and understanding of the ocean’s role across society as a whole, we can create better conditions for investment and sustainable blue growth.

We call for:

• Sustained support for ocean literacy and best practice in science communication and knowledge transfer to be embedded in marine research projects and programmes;
• A coordinated, cross-disciplinary and integrated programme on Oceans and Human Health, targeted at understanding and managing the risks and benefits of human interactions with the seas;
• Further initiatives towards advanced and agreed methodologies for the evaluation and use of monetary and non-monetary (e.g. cultural, recreational, health promotion, etc.) value systems and indicators for marine ecosystem services and benefits;
• Recognition that regional seas diversity from the Baltic Sea and North Sea to the Atlantic and Black Sea, and outermost areas, is a European asset to be valued to promote Blue Growth. The specificity and sensitivity of the Mediterranean Sea calls for particular attention which is acknowledged by the proposed Blue Growth Research and Innovation Initiative for the Mediterranean.

2. Capitalizing on European leadership

Goal: Building on our strengths to reinforce Europe’s position as a global leader in marine science and technology

Europe is a truly maritime continent with an ocean jurisdiction that includes the largest part of the world’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). We are world leaders in shipping and ship-building, dredging, subsea drilling and mining technologies, ocean energy technologies, coastal tourism, seafood production systems, and have significant potential in blue biotechnology and ocean renewables. We are also developing and implementing advanced policies and practices for responsible management of our seas.

In the research domain, we are leaders in key fields in marine and maritime science and engineering. European nations own and operate the most advanced research fleet in the world and we are continually expanding our ocean observation capacities, a key goal of the EU Marine Knowledge 2020 initiative. Added to this, through EU Framework Programmes and coordinated national investments, Europe has built an unparalleled know-how in organizing research at international scale. With European leadership and expertise comes an opportunity and responsibility to foster a global perspective, engage in international dialogue, and exercise influence for the sustainable management of global ocean resources. To maintain our leadership and competitive advantage will require advanced knowledge and innovation.

We call for:

• A detailed assessment of whether the current level of European investment in marine and maritime research is sufficient, given the high value and importance of the European maritime economy;
• Support for the development of public-private partnerships in research and innovation, focusing on strategic technologies, including data sharing, to underpin growth and jobs in crucial sectors for a resilient knowledge-based European blue economy and society;
• Increased support for collaborative research with partner countries, overcoming barriers to joint funding and capacity building, taking account of the progress already made by the Transatlantic Ocean Research Alliance
• Further development of transparent mechanisms for the use of science in supporting evidence-based policy-making.

3. Advancing ocean knowledge

Goal: Building a greater knowledge base through ocean observation and fundamental and applied research

Recent advances in our knowledge of the marine environment have served to illustrate the sheer complexity of the ocean, the enormous and changing diversity of marine life, and the interplay between ecological, biogeochemical, physical and social processes which regulate the ocean ecosystem. There remains a significant challenge to understand and quantify the role of the ocean in the Earth system and its influence on human populations on timescales from days to centuries, and on spatial scales from local to global. We urgently need to further map marine environments, to understand complex marine processes, to study the complex interactions between the ocean, seafloor and sub-seafloor, land, ice and atmosphere, to predict and prepare for future changes and cumulative impacts resulting from human and natural pressures. Moreover, actions are needed to address the rapidly-growing opportunities and challenges in advanced ocean measurement technology and effective management of increasing volumes and diversity of information and data from marine observing systems.

We call for:

• Recognition that regional seas diversity from the Baltic Sea and North Sea to the Atlantic and Black Sea, and outermost areas, is a European asset to be valued to promote Blue Growth. The specificity and sensitivity of the Mediterranean Sea calls for particular attention which is acknowledged by the proposed Blue Growth Research and Innovation Initiative for the Mediterranean.The inclusion of marine and maritime research topics across the full range of societal challenges in Horizon 2020 and across multiple thematic levels in national and regional research programmes;
• A significant further investment in collaborative cross-disciplinary research, designed to address complex challenges towards sustainably managing our ocean resources, identifying scenarios of change and associated adaptive strategies, and achieving Good Environmental Status in European regional seas;
• Better alignment and more effective use of a diverse range of funding and coordination mechanisms (including ESFRI, EU investment and structural funds), for the construction and long-term operation of key marine research infrastructures and facilities, addressing identified gaps.
• A fully operational EMODnet, ensuring collected data are well managed and freely available, to support science, industry and policy, and further development of the European Ocean Observing System (EOOS), integrated at the global level (including GOOS, GEO, Copernicus).

4. Breaking barriers

Goal: Addressing the complex challenges of blue growth and ocean sustainability by combining expertise and drawing from a range of scientific disciplines and stakeholders.

By charting an ambitious course and continuing to break down barriers (disciplinary, practical, cultural, financial, legal and political), the European seas and ocean research community can set a standard for the broader European research community. We already have a strong track record in working together, but we aim to go further by transforming the way we do training and research; focusing on impact, engaging with stakeholders, creating a platform for sustainability, and boosting jobs. Innovation in the provision of undergraduate and postgraduate training and enhancing skill sets and career pathways for marine professionals will be essential, in line with the EC Communication on Innovation in the Blue Economy.

We call for:

• Education to encompass and foster cross-disciplinary training, the ability to work across science-policy interfaces, team-based approaches, entrepreneurship, and the broad range of specialist technical and ICT skills needed to underpin modern marine science;
• Improved support, incentives, and recognition from higher education and research institutions, funding agencies, and professional bodies, for established researchers to undertake
• cross-disciplinary research and to engage with stakeholders and society;
• Europe to be the most attractive place for top talent by offering an internationally competitive environment, innovative career pathways across sectors, mobility, and blue jobs.

###

The EurOCEAN 2014 legacy: A vision for seas and ocean science in Europe

The European marine science and technology community can provide a crucial service to wider society, directly addressing the most pressing questions, including food, water and energy security, climate change and human wellbeing. Marine and maritime science can contribute towards advancing UN sustainable development goals, supporting new jobs and growth, promoting resource efficiency, including the circular economy, and achieving Good Environmental Status in European waters. A more detailed analysis of strategic research priorities in seas and oceans science is set out in the Navigating the Future IV paper, a key reference for the next research programmes at EU, macro-regional and Member State level.

With this vision, the European marine science community calls for an augmented, coherent and targeted support of Member and Associated States, the European Commission and Parliament, and the European Investment Bank and private industry, to shape together the future agenda for seas and ocean research.

News release in full, click here

Example coverage:

UK

New Scientist, click here

EcoDaily, click here

Norway

Forsknings Radet, click here 

Sunnmørsposten, click here

Spain

Agencia EFE, click here

Italy:

Rinnovabili, click here

Coverage summary: click here