A COLLECTIVE FAILURE TO ACT

To date, there has no collective response to this ocean systems crisis — and effectively zero data generated that could inform one.

“Without ocean observation data … and in turn the information and knowledge that it generates … it’s not possible to even define what sustainable means.”

Ralph Rayner, professorial research fellow, London School of Economics, past president, Society for Underwater Technology

Just because a venture is in the ocean does make it ‘sustainable’. Despite near universal claims to sustainability, the ocean sector is operating almost entirely in the dark.

As things stand today, there is neither the data, the supporting mechanisms, or incentives to drive truly ethical guardianship of the oceans.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for example, were not designed to reflect the interconnectedness and complexity of ocean-human ecosystems. SDG 14: ’Life Below Water’ is by far the least funded of the SDGs, representing a meagre 0.01% of all funding from development finance up to 2019, and only 0.56% of all philanthropic funding since 2016. It has been consistently treated as the least important SDG, despite its critical role in supporting all other SDGs and the very survival of humanity.

For its part, and with all the goodwill in the world, today’s academia is slow, siloed, and locked into legacy ways that render it incapable of accurately characterising ocean biogeochemical conditions over space and time at the scale required. This even as a few folk have spoken out about the challenge for decades.

Some place their faith in the Blue Economy, but research indicates that it already has unidirectional negative ecosystem impact in 13 out of 14 sectors1, most likely because it is driven by market sentiment, and not data, good systems science or indeed strong ethics.

And while not-for-profits are ethically strong and could play a key role, they typically focus on single-issues and roles, so limiting their efficacy in tackling systems level challenges.

As of 2024, the new corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) will require all “large” companies to prove their ecosystem impacts or make themselves vulnerable to litigation. But there is effectively zero data to enforce it.

We’re here to shine a light on the biogeochemical state of ocean ecosystems.

FIND OUT HOW