SOI AT OCEAN SCIENCES – OSM22

SOI AT OCEAN SCIENCES EVENT DESCRIPTIONS

WK26 Launching The Ocean Decade: Challenges and Lessons Learned

On 5 December 2017, the United Nations proclaimed a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, to be held from 2021 to 2030. This Decade will provide a common framework to ensure that ocean science can fully support countries’ actions to sustainably manage the Oceans and to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. One of the greatest challenges associated with the Decade is crafting communications around a campaign that is globally inclusive yet regionally focused. The Decade is an ever-evolving and dynamic program, which presents a unique case study on how to engage and communicate the campaign goals, phases, and achievements. This presentation will share the lessons learned in early communications from the Ocean Decade preparatory phase and launch year, and go into detail explaining how GenOcean campaign and the Global Stakeholder Forum effectively opened the Ocean Decade to all sectors of society. Discussion will center on balancing between institutional communications and social impact, generating behavior change, and some of the struggles in identifying user needs. Learn how the IOC and global partners, Communications Advisory Group members, and communication professionals have come together to make this everyone’s Decade.

TH28 Turbulent Seas – Addressing Caregiving Challenges in Ocean Science Careers

Juggling a career and family can be difficult in the best of times, and the global pandemic amplified these challenges and struggles. The field of ocean science intensifies these strains with extended schooling creating a late start to careers, remote and lengthy fieldwork, and atypical hours that can bleed into evenings and weekends. These trials have impacted both men and women with dependents, as well as their families and coworkers. Addressing caregiving challenges in ocean science careers has yet to be discussed as an industry-wide issue. This town hall will aim to hear from the community directly in a positive forum to provide guidance, support, and suggestions for ways universities, government offices, and non-profit organizations in the ocean sciences can better encourage and retain key professionals and specialists in the workforce. A series of short talks from mixed career participants will highlight experiences, lessons learned, and how they have overcome challenges while working pre-pandemic and virtually during the pandemic. A group discussion will be had addressing solutions to some of the largest issues for career professionals with dependents, their managers, coworkers, and staff. This gathering aims to foster greater community involvement and gather thoughts that will contribute to a suggestion guide, to better support staff in the ocean sciences. The session will be family-friendly with activities for kids and offer hybrid viewing for those participants who cannot be present in person.

ED06 Enabling Remote Ocean Science and Educational Opportunities, Lessons Learned During a Global Pandemic and Benefits for the Future 01

Recent technological developments have allowed ocean scientists to push frontiers. In addition to broadening scientific capacity, these advances are reflected in ocean education and outreach. The pandemic shifted these ocean science operations, and related outreach and education. Innovative adaptations were made to continue advancing ocean science and education while adhering to public health guidance. This session will highlight how programs executed remote science, education, and outreach amidst pandemic challenges using remote technologies. Many conducted operations using various levels of telepresence for remote participation and access to critical technology. This included a variety of platforms such as research and exploration vessels, cloud technology, uncrewed systems (UxS) such as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), autonomous surface vessels (ASVs), and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), as well as traditional laboratories, and ocean science programs. This session will encourage discussion of how remote opportunities can enable more equitable access to participation in ocean science and education to foster an ocean-literate generation through dynamic spaces created from formal and informal learning environments (e.g. providing experiential learning opportunities to communities without access to local marine environments or to individuals who are unable to participate in field work). Presentations may focus on observations (e.g., change in audiences), give feedback on virtual versions and possible effects (e.g., interactions, multidisciplinary approaches), and/or highlight creative or unexpected outcomes. Finally, the session will explore plans for incorporating remote participation and learning into future endeavors. In addition to sharing novel adaptations, participants will have the opportunity to identify connections and relationships that were forged during this experience and discuss methods for future collaborations within the Ocean Decade.

DS02 Wonder and Discovery in the Great Barrier Reef, Coral Sea, and Beyond: New Research and Exploration from Australia

“Schmidt Ocean Institute’s (SOI) research vessel Falkor recently spent 16 months, from January 2020 to April 2021, operating and exploring the waters surrounding Australia, such as the Coral Sea, Great Barrier Reef, and Ashmore Reef. Until Falkor’s arrival, Australia did not have a dedicated science ROV for video and sampling of waters below 200 meters. The waters around Australia and within its many Marine Parks, are rich with biodiversity and iconic features. SOI’s work allowed for some of the first visualizations of these deep-sea environments resulting in astounding ROV footage of glass sponge gardens, massive gorgonia forests, a natural whale fall, and coral graveyards. New discoveries such as a 500 meter tall coral reef, yielded a wealth of new knowledge that has important implications for the protection of these ecosystems and similar habitats worldwide.

During the course of its operations, SOI made many wondrous discoveries such as the world’s longest known sea creature, a new species of black coral, and rare sightings of a scorpionfish, short-tail catshark, ram’s horn squid, and pygmy seahorse. The many species reported in Australian waters for the first time will impact ocean policy for years to come. Additionally, ROV exploration extended the known range of many species, including the Faceless Cusk Eel, Whipnos anglerfish, Leptoseris coral fields, Pumpkin star, and Deepwater spike fish.

This session will focus on the wondrous new discoveries and impacts made, including identifying new species, observing the unexpected presence of some species, mapping new seafloor features, technological innovations, and other exciting scientific results in the deep waters of Australia. Presentations that highlight groundbreaking scientific and technological developments being used to study and monitor the changes taking place in and around the country’s waters, as well as policy implications, will also be included.”

IN12 Ocean #SciArt: What can ocean scientists and artists learn by working together?

“Artist residencies within scientific institutions are nothing new. But they have often been implemented in a way that assumes the artist will merely be watching, learning, interpreting science, rather than including the artist in the active process of scientific discovery. In this session, we will consider this second, less-travelled path, loosely defined as transdisciplinary research.

In transdisciplinary research, responses to research questions can move freely between various modalities emerging from the collaborator’s disciplinary and cultural practices. These multimodal approaches often lead to highly innovative solutions, but also require participants to deepen their listening practice and invoke a sense willingness to see their assumptions challenged and certainties displaced.

Drawing on our experiences with the Ocean Memory Project and other ocean-related Art-Science collaborations, this session will seek to bring together participants from any number of disciplines, cultures and points of view, to explore ways in which such multiplicity can be convened within a research framework, helping to broaden potential responses to a variety of challenges.

The session will involve both presentation, discussion, and hands-on activities — such as research object modelling techniques (3D and 4D modelling) — drawing from the toolkits of art, music, science, social science and the humanities to propose a hybrid and consensual model for collaboration.”

OD07 Sharing the Wealth: Overcoming Barriers and Finding Opportunities for Community-Based Solutions to Data Sharing

“While oceanographic data is increasingly being made publicly available, significant volumes of data remain inaccessible and difficult to integrate/re-use. This session will explore the challenges and opportunities for increasing the availability and usability of interdisciplinary oceanographic data and other information products that may meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders. We will also aim to address how to motivate data holders to share and increase the reusability and value of their data by openly discussing the barriers preventing effective data sharing, and the motivations behind, and benefits of, data sharing and enabling re-use. Brief presentations and open discussion will amplify the friction points and opportunities we face as an interdisciplinary global community if we are to deliver truly actionable, holistic solutions for the ocean.

Barriers to oceanographic data sharing, which span from how data are initially packaged and distributed, to ensuring that FAIR data standards are met, will be touched upon, yet this session will also seek to establish a user-centric perspective on barriers that inhibit scientific re-use of data.

Choosing how and where to improve upon current data sharing capabilities, and identifying where the opportunities lie, is the first step toward implementing community-based solutions. It is also important to look at those learning opportunities, success stories, or solutions that might already exist around the world, such as the Seabed 2030 Initiative, Pangeo, and Ditchley Conferences. This session will aim to interact with attendees by asking for direct participant feedback via slid.do, to help to develop community-based suggestions as we look forward to the opportunities of the coming decade. This session also seeks to identify potential ways that professional societies, foundations, funding agencies, and global initiatives can help in these endeavors.”

IN05 Exploring the Science-Technology-Innovation Interface for the Ocean Decade

“To achieve its vision of ‘the science we need for the ocean we want’, the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) (‘Ocean Decade’) seeks to create a paradigm shift in ocean knowledge and to provide a framework to catalyze transformative ocean science solutions, thereby connecting people and the ocean. One of the central tenets of the Ocean Decade is to move beyond ‘business as usual’ in ocean science. Technology and innovation have a crucial role to play in both informing research directions and in moving from science to solutions. Technological innovation that is accessible, relevant and scalable is necessary for achieving the vision of the Ocean Decade and, if leveraged in a timely manner, will lead to greater impacts at scale.

This 2-hour Innovative Session will introduce the work of the new UN Decade of Ocean Science Technology & Innovation Advisory Working Group and host multiple parallel breakout workshops to discuss and identify barriers and opportunities on: (1) commercially available marine technologies that have yet to be implemented broadly for scientific research and observation; (2) novel marine technologies and innovative approaches to research that are under development and the mechanisms through which those could move to widespread use; (3) a future-looking imagining of scientific research areas over the next 10 years identified by participants for which technology does not yet exist; and, (4) enabling conditions for technological innovation and transfer in support of equitable access, sustainable solutions and capacity building and exchange in particular as it relates to the Global South, SIDS and LDCs. This hybrid session will allow for inclusive and diverse participation, in alignment with the goals of the Ocean Decade. These conversations will inform the report of the Technology & Innovation Advisory Working Group to the UN Ocean Decade Board as it determines the next call(s) for Ocean Decade Actions.”