Ocean Conservation & Tidalpunk

The Joides Resolution has contributed to our understanding of climate crisis, the origin of life, earthquakes and eruptions. But funding cuts mean it may have sailed its last expedition

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/16468312

Over the past decade, however, scientists have become reacquainted with the historical reach of Australian flat oyster reefs, which decorated about 7,000 kilometers of the country’s coastline from Perth to Sydney and down around Tasmania. Australian flat oysters—not to be confused with the far more common European flat oyster, commonly known as the native oyster—form gigantic reefs comprised of billions of individuals that can be found as deep as 40 meters. “They’re like the trees in a forest or the coral in a tropical sea,” McAfee says. Besides providing habitat and boosting biodiversity, oyster reefs are known to filter water and bolster fish production.

On the back of this learning, scientists have been working to restore these lost ecosystems—an endeavor that got a major boost in 2020 when the nonprofit the Nature Conservancy Australia teamed up with the government of South Australia on an ambitious project to bring flat oyster reefs back to the coastline near Adelaide, one of the country’s biggest cities. That project, as McAfee and his team show in a recent study, has been a resounding success so far, with the restored reef now hosting even more Australian flat oysters than the last remaining natural reef in Tasmania. “It’s quite astonishing,” says McAfee.

Abstract

Drawing upon interviews with experts involved in mCDR research projects both academic and entrepreneurial, we highlight four thematic tensions that orient their thinking but are often unstated or left implicit in scientific and technical assessments:

1. the relevance of ‘naturalness’ as a criterion of evaluation for mCDR approaches;
2. the perceived need to accelerate research and development activities via alternative paradigms of evidence-building;
3. a framing of mCDR as a form of waste management that will, in turn, generate new (and currently poorly understood) forms of environmental pollutants; and
4. a commitment to inclusive governance mixed with difficulty in identifying specific stakeholders or constituencies in mCDR interventions.

Introduction

The prospect of deploying new technologies for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has gained considerable attention, as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions fail to keep pace with climate stabilization targets (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2023). (...)

Conclusions

(...) Our examination of these tensions leaves us with a number of outstanding questions.

1. If we acknowledge that mCDR cannot return oceans to a pristine or natural state, and that it inevitably introduces significant changes in marine environments, how much change to the oceans is ‘too much’?
2. If we must urgently develop an appropriate knowledge base to decide on mCDR deployment, how do we ensure that research acceleration does not occur to the detriment of understanding the full range of impacts and involving affected groups?
3. Even if we conceive of mCDR as a form of planetary waste management, how do we ensure adequate attention to understanding and mapping the material impacts and byproducts that it will generate, and what mechanisms could prevent burdening vulnerable communities with these new environmental harms?
4. Finally, who should ‘count’ as a relevant public for mCDR projects, and what should be the manner of their involvement in governance processes? None of these questions can be ‘resolved’ simply by expanding empirical research efforts, but they can be formulated with greater precision, and in ways that allow a fruitful dialogue among experts, and between them and the larger public.

Stavanger, Norway – Greenpeace International released a new report "Gambling with the deep sea - Those betting on mining the Arctic" exposing the Norwegian government and companies' efforts to start deep sea mining in the Arctic, today. At the time of release, activists from Greenpeace Nordic launched a protest action against Loke Marine Minerals, a Norwegian company that wants to start deep sea mining in the depths of the Arctic and the Pacific Oceans. Loke has been outspoken in its ambition to become the world's largest producer of controversial seabed minerals.

The International Seabed Authority has issued 29 15-years exploration contracts for developing resources from polymetallic nodule fields (17), seafloor massive sulphides (7), and cobalt-rich crusts (5). Seven contracts for polymetallic nodule fields have been extended for an additional 5 years.

Northeast Greenland is home to the 79° N Glacier—the country's largest floating glacier tongue, but also one seriously threatened by global warming. Warm water from the Atlantic is melting it from below. However, experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute have now determined that the temperature of the water flowing into the glacier cavern declined from 2018 to 2021, even though the ocean has steadily warmed in the region over the past several decades. This could be due to temporarily changed atmospheric circulation patterns.

The UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) is trialling the use of a fossil-free marine diesel to fuel the Royal Research Ships (RRS) James Cook and Discovery.

The BP oil spill decimated miles of habitat in the Gulf, including the unexplored deep-sea coral. Scientists are working to restore its habitat.

Falcón state is not only affected by the oil spills from the Paraguaná Refining Complex (CRP), which is the largest oil processing complex in Venezuela and is made up of the Amuay and Cardón refineries. Oil and gas spills have been recurrent there since November 2019, This have never been accounted for by Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) nor has information been given about an environmental study that began at the end of 2023 as requested by the fishing settlements around the “Golfete de Coro” (Little Gulf of Coro).

Archived link of the article

In the study, researchers reconsider the data, correcting for a gradual shift in Earth’s magnetic field that they say affected the measurements.

The oil and gas industry has been using the North Sea as a free disposal site for decades.

The Metals Company (TMC) has produced high-temperature material (calcine) from polymetallic nodules at PAMCO's Hachinohe facility in Japan.

Relevant article from Grist: Humans know very little about the deep sea. That may not stop us from mining it.

last year, a dive by Oceangate’s Titan sub went tragically wrong. The vessel suffered a catastrophic failure as it neared the sea floor, killing all five people onboard.

On board were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

Rush said he had “grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation” and dismissed warnings that he would kill someone as “baseless”.

Most operators opt to have their deep-sea subs certified - but it is not mandatory.

Rush described his sub as “experimental” and, in a blog post in 2019, he argued that certification “slowed down innovation”.

The passengers on Titan paid up to $250,000 (£191,135) for a place.

A new study highlights the connected nature of the Southern Ocean dynamic system, the research priorities needed to understand its influence on climate change, the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations.