MonitorMyOcean.com wins the 2022 Youth4Ocean Award for Research

Artash Nath. Grade 10 Student.

Youth4Ocean is a platform for young ocean advocates and changemakers to connect and shape our future with a healthy ocean that sustains us all. Any young European person between 16 and 30, who is committed to or has an interest in the ocean can register to become a member of the Youth4Ocean Forum. Registration is free and open to all.

As part of the EU4Ocean award process, a jury met to pre-select five projects of Young Ocean Advocates to be submitted for the final EU4Ocean Awards. These five projects were determined across five categories: Ocean Conservation, Business and Innovation, Community Engagement, Culture and Arts, and Research related to Solving Marine and Societal Challenges.

I was pleased that my project www.MonitorMyOcean.com was selected as the Youth4Ocean Award winner under Research related to Solving Marine and Societal Challenges category. My project measured the contribution of anthropogenic activities to the underwater noise levels in global oceans using the COVID-19 lockdown as a research opportunity to gather baseline data. I used over 20 years of cumulative data from a network of hydrophones in the Arctic, Atlantic, Pacific Oceans, and Mediterranean Sea. The list of all five projects selected can be viewed here. These projects entered the second phase of the awards: the final EU4Ocean Awards, where the winners were presented during the EU4Ocean Summit. Unfortunately, my project was not selected as the final winner. But it was a great honour to have reached this far!

The Award winners of the first phase were offered a return trip to Lisbon to attend the UN Ocean Conference 2022 or equivalent to purchase goods and services to develop their project further. I was very happy to accept this award and the offer as it made it possible for me to attend the UN Ocean Summit 2022 in Lisbon.

Artash at UN Ocean Summit 2022 in Lisbon as EU Youth4Ocean Award Winner.

I attended the Summit in Lisbon between 27 June 2022 -1 July 2022, which provided a great opportunity to understand how ocean negotiations happen, the issues being negotiated and the different perspectives, and meet hundreds of other delegates from around the world.