Good, Better, and Best

Most of us are now adjusting to a new socially distanced way of living and working. Despite the many challenges that go along with this, there are some innovative initiatives coming out of our required remote working arrangements: Educators are rapidly developing engaging online learning resources. Scientists are conducting marine surveys from their living rooms. Organisers are assembling international groups for virtual conferences. We include some of these exciting developments in this issue of the newsletter.

If you know of any similar remote opportunities related to marine science and the ocean best practice community, please send these onto newsletter@oceanbestpractice.org so we can share them in future issues.

In December 2019, we held the Evolving and Sustaining Ocean Best Practices Workshop II (in another world, in another time!). The 2019 workshop Oostende, Belgium encouraged maximum audience participation and was structured with hour-long panels followed by discussion. This format was effective in stimulating ideas and discussions to lay out a future vision of ocean best practices and how OBPS will contribute to improving ocean observing in the decade to come. Breakout Sessions were also a major part of the agenda, to provide opportunities for participants to share insights and importantly to make recommendations to the Panel on Vision for the Next Decade and ultimately the OBPS Steering Group.

We are pleased to let you know that the Proceedings are now available here. 

One may hesitate to lay claim to a “best” practice, thinking there may be a better method elsewhere, or created tomorrow. But the OBPS defines a best practice as “a methodology that has repeatedly produced superior results relative to other methodologies with the same objective.” The OBPS goal is to document today’s practices to help create better ones. If we’re to learn from our mistakes, documenting failed or superseded practices can be equally beneficial to the creation of new best practices. For example: we all know oranges make good, inexpensive drifting buoys. But Cheerios are even cheaper, why not use them? Here’s why - every seagull within a mile arrives and the Cheerios are gone in a minute. Don’t use Cheerios.

So don’t let the word “best” prevent you from contributing to the OBPS repository.

From the Repository

Marine Plastic Pollution

Over the last few years there has been increasing attention on marine debris and litter, particularly plastics. These range from large pieces of debris to microplastics and can be found floating on the surface, in the water column, or within sediments or animals.

With all these diverse characteristics of marine plastic pollution, there are an equally diverse number of methods to identify and quantify them. A search of the Ocean Best Practice Repository for ‘marine debris’ shows 52 results, while a search for ‘marine plastic’ returns 19 results. These include an assessment of techniques, a description of the role of citizen scientists, and several regional or habitat-specific methods. The 2019 Guidelines for the monitoring and assessment of plastic litter and microplastics in the ocean is arguably the most comprehensive single best practice resource on marine plastics. These guidelines use a collaborative approach to advocate methods for a range of marine plastic types across different habitats and for various use cases.

The significant progress in communication technology has enabled us to become more connected, no matter the distance. Few people have used these advances to learn new skills or refine their skills using social media, video conferences, and other online learning platforms. However, we have never tested communication technology and the e-learning platforms available to us to the degree we have done in this time of crisis. Schools and universities worldwide have closed or are closing, with students of all ages forced to learn virtually and senior family members having to take on the role of teachers. Different universities, schools and companies have made available content online, in some instances free of charge, as a way to help people around the world continue their learning within the confinements of their own home.

The ocean has always been an attractive and inspiring field to many and offers a frontier for discoveries. We have seen a windfall in the uptake of marine science e-lectures and webinars during this period, such as the marine data and science e-lectures from the University of Tasmania, Big Data in Marine Science webinar from the European Marine Board, and a list of marine educational resources for kids and families from NOAA.

We should seize the opportunity that this crisis is providing to keep the momentum going. We could use online platforms to start breaking down equity barriers in the access to education by allowing global access to educational tools and material created using best practice. Marine science could be at the centre of this revolution by fostering international collaboration in ocean science teaching using online platforms.

One of the most immediate and dramatic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to marine scientists has been the abrupt cessation of most fieldwork. Scientists have been told to stay home and certainly haven’t been allowed on large research vessels to undertake their projects. After spending years planning and preparing, many scientists were given the heartbreaking news that their surveys had been unavoidably cancelled.

At least one survey has managed to adapt to this situation, although the road to get there wasn’t easy! The R.V. Falkor was slated to conduct multiple surveys in Australian waters in 2020, but during the second survey, the pandemic changed the world . This led to the cancellation of subsequent surveys, leaving the vessel in an odd limbo in Australian waters.

After much planning between the Schmidt Ocean Institute, federal and state government, and marine scientists, a new survey was begun: Visioning the Coral Sea Marine Park. This survey will use current best practices to map the seafloor and also will deploy the state-of-the-art ROV SuBastien to collect high-resolution imagery of the environment within Australia’s largest marine park.

In what may be a world-first, there are no scientists onboard the vessel during this survey. While skilled ROV pilots and marine technicians operate the equipment and technology from the vessel, the chief scientist Rob Beaman is planning survey operations and narrating ROV dives from his living room! You can read more about the incredible journey behind this survey here and follow the livestreamed ROV dives on YouTube or Facebook.

Consultation meetings for Draft Implementation Plan for UN Decade 
Jay Pearlman

On March 31 and April 2, the IOC hosted virtual meetings on the draft implementation plan for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainability. The implementation plan incorporates many inputs from the ocean community received through major regional workshops, town halls and discussion at focused meetings such as the OceanObs RCN.  

From the implementation plan, the Decade includes “two processes - firstly building science capacity and mobilizing scientists, and secondly creating the enabling environment and engaging practitioners, decision makers, and the private sector - should fuse under the Decade and form an end-to-end value chain. This is the main transformation of ocean science that we need to achieve between 2021 and 2030." ”To translate the knowledge [of the ocean] into appropriate decisions and actions, we will need to build a wide range of specific applications, services and decision support systems, ensure equitable access to the knowledge, develop corresponding capacities in all countries, and strengthen ocean literacy among many types of stakeholders, including the general public.”

With this in mind, six outcomes are defined:

• A clean ocean where sources of pollution are identified and removed. 
• A healthy and resilient ocean where marine ecosystems are mapped and protected.  
• A predicted ocean where society has the capacity  to understand present and future ocean conditions. 
• A safe ocean where people are protected from ocean-related hazards. 
• A productive and sustainably harvested ocean ensuring the provision of food supply and stable livelihoods. 
• A transparent and accessible ocean with open access to data, information and technologies. 

If you say to yourself that this is ambitious, you are correct! That is what is should be if we are thinking transformation and a decade of working together for societal goals.

We appreciate the recognition of best practices in the implementation plan. It was specifically mentioned five times. In moving forward, we will reach out to our readers and the community at large to support the Decade initiative and the contributions that best practices can play in achieving the outcomes that have been identified above.

Western Tropical Atlantic Regional Workshop for the UN Decade 
Jay Pearlman

The Western Tropical Atlantic Regional workshop was held online 26-28 April to gather ocean leaders/champions/key stakeholders to further discuss and prioritize the issues identified at the First Global Planning Meeting.

Like each region engaged in the Decade, the Western Tropical Atlantic Region is complex with the different areas within having unique characteristics in skill base, resources and societal perspectives. To create an integrated understanding of the oceans of our region, we need easily understood and community accepted methods which can be adopted for observation, modeling and applications. These community accepted methods are what we call “best practices”. They are a key to transfer of knowledge across disciplines, locations, generations and genders. They support interoperability and reproducibility for ocean sciences.

It is critical that best practices be a part of capacity development and training.

Examples of best practices include chemical measurements such as monitoring oxygen or biological techniques to monitor harmful algal blooms.  Another active area addresses indigenous customs for community-based management. These methods can be shared with others and widely used for capacity development to become tools across our region.

Too many times best practices are lost because programs end or people move on. Thus, methods  should be documented and then sustained by submittal to the Ocean Best Practices System.

To support sharing, we have a Research Topic in Frontiers in Marine Science where best practices can be peer-reviewed and published . We also have a survey on capacity building that we recommend you look at.
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We should recommend the use of best practices and standards as a cross-cutting foundation for the Decade and its capacity development actions.

Also, we are building a video training library on best practices through Ocean Teacher Global Academy, and we invite you to contribute