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Artash Nath. Founder. MonitorMyOcean.com, Grade 11 Student. Toronto I was honoured to be a RISE delegate sponsored by the 11th Hour Racing at the Ocean Youth Summit held in Aarhus, […]
Artash Nath. Founder. MonitorMyOcean.com, Grade 11 Student. Toronto
I was honoured to be a RISE delegate sponsored by the 11th Hour Racing at the Ocean Youth Summit held in Aarhus, Denmark, from 30 May to 2 June 2023.
11th Hour Racing uses the power of sport to restore a balanced relationship between people and the planet. The Ocean Youth Summit 2023 was a youth-created event that brought together students and young professionals from higher education institutions in Denmark and worldwide, mixing hands-on learning about the ocean with expert talks and dialogues.
The Youth event occurred in connection with The Ocean Race 2023 (the world’s longest round-the-world sailing race) stopover in Aarhus. The 11th Hour Racing emerged as the winner of the Ocean Race, starting in Alicante, Spain, on 15 January 2023 and finishing in Genova, Italy, on 29 June 2023.
Ocean Youth Summit: Listening and Exchanging Ideas for Healthy Oceans
I was selected as a delegate to Ocean Youth Summit as I have been undertaking research on the health of oceans and marine diversity for the past few years. My focus has been on measuring the impact of anthropogenic activities, such as commercial shipping, on underwater noise levels in global oceans using open data.
I created the webapp, www.MonitorMyOcean.com, to monitor changes in underwater ocean noise levels using over 25 years of hydrophone data from the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. The App has been endorsed by the UNESCO-IOC as a UN Decade Activity. As a part of the Working Group member of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment on low-cost hydrophones, I am also engaged in ocean citizen science research, education and outreach.
Over four days, I met hundreds of people at the Ocean Youth Summit: youths passionate about healthy oceans, sailing members of the 11th Hour Racing Team, local experts, ocean researchers, policymakers, and media personalities. There were opportunities to attend plenary sessions, visit the sailing boats, listen to ocean research, projects, and entrepreneurship taken up by other participants, and participate in working groups on six different themes. The working group sessions ranged from solving biodiversity crises to flood resilience management, connecting ocean health with our well-being, sustainable food from the oceans, giving voice to oceans through culture and creativity and creating blue startups.
One of the sessions I found particularly interesting was – Keeping Aarhus above Water: Flood Resilience Management and Urban Development. During the session, the participants quantified the risks of destructive flooding events. They identified flood mitigation measures such as building resilient structures, elevated harbours, and artificial hills. Another session of interest to me was – Inspiration and Tools for Creating Blue Startups, where I learned more about the inspirations and tools various ocean startups drew upon. For instance, the innovative startup, DecaMeal, used a growing invasive crab population to produce high-protein animal feed.
The opportunity to meet so many ignited minds brimming with ideas on ocean conservation led to many discussions and exchanges of ideas beyond the Summit.
Ocean Youth Summit: My Talk on Ocean Noise Pollution
On the last day of the summit, I gave a brief talk about my ocean noise project at the ‘GEM-stage’ expo for action and solutions alongside two of my fellow RISE Global Winners, Omar Cedrón Ruiz and Allison Dominguez.
I talked about my MonitorMyOcean.com project and how youths can apply their technical skills to open science and open data to make significant contributions to ocean science. While the data gathered about oceans is growing exponentially because of land, ocean and satellite-based sensors, the ocean science community is not. It opens up new pathways for youths to play an influential role, especially in oceanic regions outside North America and Western Europe, where ocean expertise and studies are lacking.
I got some questions from the audience on how I had obtained the data for my project and started working on ocean science research.
The Ocean Race 2023: Racing for Science
At the Summit, I learned that the sailing teams participating in the Ocean Race were not only competing against each other but also doing science!
As these sailing teams go through some of the most remote parts of the planet that are rarely accessible for scientific research, they can gather valuable data about the ocean’s health. The data collected by the sailors is open-source and shared with scientific organizations to improve our understanding of our marine world and the threats it faces.
During the 60,000 km-long and six months race, 4.3 million measurements of essential ocean parameters were and more than 400 samples of marine litter were collected using scientific instruments on board the boats. The science data collected during the Ocean Race 2022-23 can be viewed at: https://theoceanracescience.com/ 15 types of environmental data were collected during The Ocean Race 2022-23, including oxygen saturations levels, salinity, carbon dioxide levels, and the presence of trace elements. The data was transmitted via satellite in real time.
11th Hour Racing Team and Team Malizia carried OceanPacks, which took water samples to measure levels of carbon dioxide, oxygen, salinity and temperature, providing insights about the impact of climate change on the ocean. While GUYOT environment – Team Europe and Holcim – PRB took regular water samples throughout the race to test for microplastic concentration.
In addition, the entire fleet was fitted with onboard weather sensors to measure meteorological data, including wind speed, wind direction and air temperature. Some teams deployed drifter buoys in the Southern Ocean to continuously capture these measurements and location data to improve our understanding of how currents and climates change.
Learning about all this data was a delight, as most of my ocean research is based on big data. Accurate, timely and geographically represented open-source data is crucial to solving ongoing and emerging challenges related to oceans and humanity.
Key Interactions, Learnings, and Opportunities for Collaborations
At the conference’s opening plenary, I had an opportunity to ask a question to Mark Towil, the CEO of the 11th Hour Ocean Racing Team. My question was about their team’s key scientific discoveries using data collected by instruments onboard their boats.
He revealed that their water sample analysis indicated the presence of microplastics even in very remote ocean locations on the ocean race route. It was concerning. It shows that even the remotest oceans have measurable anthropogenic contaminants that would harm marine mammals. Be it underwater noise or microplastics, pollution of all forms has become ubiquitous in oceans.
I was curious to learn more, as my project – MonitorMyOcean.com, contributes to a healthier ocean ecosystem by monitoring underwater anthropogenic noise pollution. By measuring the decrease in ocean noise during the COVID-19 pandemic using hydrophone data, MonitorMyOcean bridges the gap between research and policymaking for “Quieter Oceans.” I have made research and policy submissions to national and international policy-shaping processes, including the Draft Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Management Plan and Environmental Assessment in the US and the Draft Ocean-Noise strategy in Canada.
Later during the Summit, Mark remembered my question and introduced me to Stefan Raimund, the Science Lead for The Ocean Race. We discussed the scientific instruments, their sampling rates, the science outputs gathered from this race and new ocean data that could be collected during future races. We also discussed the 11th Hour racing boat’s collision with a whale on the previous leg and potential solutions to avoid such collisions in the future. I suggested deploying hydrophones in future races to record underwater sound in remote regions. The data from these hydrophones could potentially be analyzed with artificial intelligence algorithms to measure marine biodiversity.
We agreed to talk again virtually to discuss new ideas for scientific instruments on the 11th Hour Race Boat, including the possibility of hydrophone deployments.
Touring the “VO65 team Viva México” Racing Boat
Although the 11th Hour Racing Boat had been placed on dry land to check for damage following the collision with a whale, the 11th Hour crew gave us a tour of the VO65 Team Viva México racing boat, previously used by 11th Hour in another racing event. We learnt about the complex rigging mechanisms the crews used to adjust the sails quickly and the onboard computer system used for navigation and running the scientific module aboard the boat.
Exploring the Local Ocean Research Ecosystem in Aarhus
Prior to the start of the conference, I visited the University of Aarhus. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark and is very well known for its research on oceans and marine ecology.
I met with Professor Peter Teglberg Madsen and Professor Jakob Tougaard. They have been working on passive acoustic, bioacoustics, and anthropogenic ocean noise monitoring for several years. I learned more about the work being undertaken by the Marine Bioacoustics Lab on sensory physiology and behavioural ecology of marine animals, with a particular focus on how they use and produce sound to navigate, find food, avoid predators and communicate.
I learned about data collected from a Greenland-based acoustic survey in the Arctic Ocean. I was also intrigued to hear about their ongoing research that evaluated the impact broadband vessel noise had on marine mammals off the coast of Denmark. I was energized by the possibilities of collaboration and how to generate more science from these data. I am thankful for their time to meet a high school student from Toronto, Canada.
How Can Youths Tackle Ongoing and New Threats to Oceans?
Reaching home to Toronto after the Summit, I pondered the future for global oceans as they face ongoing and new threats: climate change, overfishing, noise pollution, plastic pollution, oil spills, biodiversity and habitat destruction.
What should the youths contribute so they can make a significant difference to ocean health? We are the biggest ocean stakeholders, the generation bearing the impacts of climate and ocean crises. Yet, we are the generation expected to do more with fewer resources at our disposal.
Young people will have to exponentially increase their engagement, actions, and advocacy to make a difference. We must carve our policy space in local, national and international decision-making. One way could be by merging our hold on technology with open science and data for the public good: to ask difficult questions and reclaim our stolen future.
Deep Sea Mining and Youth Engagement
An emerging threat to the oceans is deep sea mining to dredge large quantities of metal-rich nodules from ocean floors to create storage batteries for electricity generated through solar and wind technology. A shift to greener power generation on land can wreak havoc in deep seas. Mining on the ocean bed would create huge sediment plumes that will drift on currents and smother known yet-to-be-discovered marine life. When companies operate in international waters beyond national jurisdictions, who will monitor and hold them accountable for irreversible environmental damages?
On 19 June 2023, in an agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Treaty of the High Seas, also known as Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), was adopted by consensus by the UN’s 193 Member States. The landmark legally binding marine biodiversity agreement followed nearly two decades of fierce negotiations over forging a common wave of conservation and sustainability in the high seas beyond national boundaries. The new treaty will be opened for signatures on 20 September 2023, during the annual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly, and it will take effect once it is ratified by 60 countries.
The Treaty applies to oceans outside a nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), about 370km from the shore. These areas accounting for nearly two-thirds of the ocean belong to everyone: these are the global commons and must be protected. The broad objective of the BBNJ is to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, for the present and in the long term.
The Treaty provides new opportunities for youth to continuously strengthen the Treaty over the years to protect our oceans. We need to use open science and data to question:
I am expanding my research MonitorMyOcean.com on measuring underwater ocean noise to develop new baselines for monitoring the impact of deep-sea mining on marine biodiversity and ocean health using open data, artificial intelligence and citizen science and youth collaborations. The action research would be aimed at supporting evidence-based decision-making.
I thank RISE and 11th Hour Racing for this amazing learning opportunity to participate in the Youth Ocean Summit.
Other Links and Resources
My Complete Speech on Ocean Noise Research: https://youtu.be/G-oxJqHOqdQ?t=113
The Generation of Change | Celebrating World Oceans Day by 11th Hour Racing about Ocean Race and Ocean Youth Summit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkdhFgKITr4
A Recap of The Ocean Youth Summit and the Ocean Race Summit in Aarhus, Denmark: https://11thhourracing.org/a-recap-of-the-ocean-youth-summit-and-the-ocean-race-summit-in-aarhus-denmark/
Beyond borders: Why new ‘high seas’ treaty is critical for the world: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/06/1137857
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