 Welcome to everyone joining us here. I'm Environment Editor at the International News Channel, France 24 based here in Paris. And I'm delighted to be here at the invitation of the Food and Agriculture Organization, part of the United Nations of course, and otherwise known as FAO. Now today we're here to talk about oceans and climate change. And I have a wonderful panel of guests lined up to talk us through and guide us through the discussion. But before we meet them all, I'd like us to just reflect on a few facts relating to the oceans. Now the ocean is the most essential building block for life. Without it, there would be no us, no animals, no plants, spurred by man-made climate change. However, the oceans, waters are rising, acidifying, ice is melting, coasts are flooding, species are dying and communities are faltering. The latest research in fact shows that oceans have now hit their highest recorded temperatures, a record that keeps getting broken every year. And yet they're an incredible ally in the fight against climate change. They've absorbed almost all of the globe's excess heat, 93% of it. Now, keeping all that in mind, I'd like to now introduce our guests. Joining us from Rome, we've got Manuel Balangier, Director of Fisheries from FAO, from London Fiona Harvey, award-winning journalist from the Guardian newspaper and someone whose articles I regularly turn to in my own work. We also have Celine Cousteau, Environmental Activist and Documentary Filmmaker, joining us here in France in La Valle. Also, Celine is the granddaughter of the great explorer and conservationist, Jacques-Eve Cousteau. Many thanks for being with us. Joining us also from another continent, from Tanzania, we have Dr. Flour M. Souya, a world-class seaweed, farming and innovation expert, and Mark Murphy. Also joining us from New York, Mark is an executive chef and television food personality, regularly appearing as a judge on the heat series Chopped. Many thanks to all of you for joining us. Now, it's sometimes said that oceans don't get the respect they deserve. Now, just to make sure all our guests are alert and ready, can I just get a quick show of hands whether you agree with the statement that the oceans are too often a neglected priority when it comes to climate change? Can I get a show of hands? Celine's straight off the back. First, I'd like to get a quick sense from each of you where you think we are at this present moment in relation to oceans and climate change, and I wanted to start with Manuel. How would you describe the state of the oceans right now and why should we care about that? I think that, I mean, addressing the question that you put the material on, and I think that the ocean has been neglected in climate change decisions for a very long time because it's been taken for granted. Most of the oceans in terms of climate change, the absorption of heat, the absorption of carbon, is driven by physical and chemical processes. If there was no life in the ocean, that would happen the same. So for a long time, it just is regarded as something that happens. While now it's starting to change because the realization is that the changes due to climate change are affecting the oceans in a multitude of ways. It's not just about warming, it's not just about acidification, it's not just about deoxygenation, it's about the biota that's in it, it's about the relationship between humans and the environment, and that relationship is changing very profoundly and it needs to be, more attention needs to be put into it. Now, these things are important, as you mentioned, because of the climate regulation role, but let's not forget that 10% of the world's population, pen and oceans, and the fisheries that come from oceans for the livelihoods, most of those are at the bottom side of society, at the bottom of society, the poorest, and very often operating in very small businesses that completely depend on healthy oceans and the dynamic. And that's why we need to pay a lot of attention to it. I mean, it's often said that if oceans were a country, it would be the seventh biggest economy in Fiona, the ocean, your opinion, where are we right now and is it where we need to be? For a long time, we didn't realize quite how vital a role the oceans are playing in climate change. We knew that they were absorbing carbon dioxide, as you mentioned, but we didn't really know the extent to which the oceans were really acting as a buffer between us and the worst impacts of climate change. And the oceans are really coming to the point where they can't absorb any more heat or any more carbon dioxide. We're really seeing, there's been some great new research has shown, that we've got heat waves over the ocean. I mean, think of heat waves as something happening over land, where they can be devastating to people and crops and so on. But they're actually happening all the time over the ocean around the world. And that is also having a terrible effect on the climate. It's just, it's a little bit harder to track. And that's why we've been less aware of it until now. Celine, what do you make of the comments that Manuel and Fiona have just said? And what do you think your grandfather, who died in 1997, would make of the threats that oceans face today? Of course, as a child, he spent much time on his iconic boat, Calypso. Well, I was just reflecting back to something Manuel said, just in terms of the climate change oceans. And it seems like nothing is wrong. I think one of the challenges is that we find ourselves amongst communities and scientists who understand the role of the oceans and climate, and who understand the changes because we witnessed it or we're studying it. But for the everyday citizen, for the everyday person, it's still a shiny surface and it's still a place to holiday. And you still order seafood at the restaurant. And so the connection isn't being made with something deeper, which is the entire system collapsing because it's under the water surface. So I think there's a disconnect with the majority of the population because there's a lack of education and lack of understanding. And because it's not a place that most people exist in, they exist perhaps near it or upon it. Going back to your question about my grandfather, I think that he would be saddened to see the state of the oceans today. And sad to see that he was predicting what is happening now, which is really a total degradation of the oceans, us treating it like a garbage can. And I think we just, we need to pay more attention to that, but that's also our responsibility to bring it to the everyday person. I should mention here that the images you're watching are not of Jack Cousteau, rather the images from the Cousteau Biopic Lodice directed by Jerome Sal and starring Lambe Wilson. Lambe Wilson has been a good friend to FAO in recent years. Nathaline, you just mentioned that many of us are not living up close and personal with the ocean, but someone that is, is Flower. Flower, can you tell us the impact of climate change on fisheries and seaweed farming? What have you been seeing? Yeah, climate change actually is affecting seaweed farming a lot because we have actually two types of seaweeds that are found here. One is of higher value compared with the other, but because of warming sea waters, the temperatures are increasing every time. For example, now we have temperatures that go all the way to 38 degrees Celsius, which is quite hot. When actually our seaweed would prefer 25 to 31, 33 degrees Celsius, not more than that. So you see, for example, in the villages that are farming seaweed, for example, 50 villages here in Zanzibar, Nungudia, only two or three villages that are farming the higher value seaweed. The rest cannot because of, because the higher value seaweed does not grow anymore. So farmers actually, or even economic and resilience of the farmers is affected as well because they are producing the lower value seaweed. So species that are no longer being cultivated. So, you know, forcing people to change what they grow. Mark, you're at the other end of the spectrum. In fact, how has the state of the oceans impacting you? Are some of the problems that we're hearing about filtering and making their way down to restaurants and chefs in New York? Well, you know, for us as chefs, I feel like we're sort of, we're the connection between what you all are doing and talking about the ocean and the temperatures rising, but we as chefs should be influencing the world on how we eat. And a good example of that is, I mean, we're talking about kelp, we're talking about seaweed. I had no idea about it until somebody came to me and gave me a book, actually a guy by the name of Brent Smith, and he wrote this book about kelp and everything kelp and he was a fisherman and he realized it was hard and a hard time making a living as a fisherman anymore and realized that kelp was really, you know, reinvigorating the ocean and bivalves were growing near kelps, so it was great. So what does it say to a chef? It's like, well, figure out how to cook with kelp. I mean, let's get people eating kelp. So I immediately, I got in touch with a friend of mine, Vivian Sorenson, who is a person who makes documentaries and things like that and she was already doing things with kelp. So what I did was I sat and I called a friend of mine at the New York Times and we got a bunch of kelp from some kelp farmers and we sat in a kitchen for nine hours and we started cooking recipes with kelp. I was making instead of, you know, in Italy you have a beans and escrow dish, right? Well, we were doing beans and kelp. Well, if we can make kelp taste good and not only is it nutritious, it's healthy, it's a great fertilizer as well, it's just, it seems to be the, I mean, kelp should be the new arugula, the new kale. Everybody should be eating kelp. And as a chef, we should be responsible in trying to introduce those types of ingredients. It's the same thing when everybody, which is still going on, when there's overfishing going on. Well, chefs were responsible not to be using big ituna or, you know, cod was being fished too much in the northeast of America. Stop putting cod on the menu. It's very simple. We can influence the world in very interesting ways. And we do hear from our farmers. We hear about climate change. We hear about problems. You know, the guy who's getting my lobsters is saying, wait, I have to, my lobsters aren't as plentiful this year. I have to go farther north. The water is too warm. That's a problem. And that's a problem for me because now my lobsters have to come farther. They have to be trucked down from farther north. So we understand that, but we do it through the stomach and through the menu development. Just in a couple of words, how would you describe what kelp tastes like? You know, kelp for me was one of those things that you think it's gonna be really salty, but it's not. It comes out of the ocean from what I understand they blanch it. And what the producer I was getting it from was blanching it and cutting it into like fettuccine. So, and you can impart flavor into it. I can't feed it with garlic. Like you would duck legs. It was great flavoring. I used it in, I cooked it on the bottom of roasting a chicken with carrots and onions and celery. And the kelp got moist and absorbed flavor. It got crispy. It was delicious. It was a great, it was a fun ingredient to play with and it was a very successful. Let's put it that way. Great, excellent. Now, in fact, what I wanted to do was touch on some of the problems in the first half and then move to solutions. Mark, you've already jumped ahead and touched on some of the solutions but we will come back there. But first I wanted to just focus a little more on the actual problems we've got right now. And Fiona, the ocean has already for many years been facing the impacts of climate change. And then in 2020, COVID-19 happened. In what way do you think this global health pandemic has perhaps affected our oceans and fisheries? Well, the immediate effect of the pandemic was that an awful lot of things were shut down in a lot of countries. And that had an impact on things like greenhouse gas emissions. So we started putting a lot less carbon dioxide into the air all of a sudden. Carbon dioxide emissions fell by as much as a third in some places in the immediate aftermath of those early lockdowns. But of course, the emissions rebinded, unfortunately, rather quickly. Some rebind was inevitable but actually we could have done more to stop emissions from rebinding as fast and as far as they did. But what we've seen from that is that the dip in emissions was only temporary and it won't have a long lasting effect. So the effects of that on the oceans will be quite small over time. The other effect, however, is that a lot of fishermen were plunged into difficulty. Fishermen that were out at sea had difficulty if they were due back on land and so on. Sometimes they couldn't get to where they were meant to be. Sometimes they were stranded. Fishermen were under a lot more pressure in two ways. One is that a lot of fishermen no longer had a market for their fish because restaurants and things had closed. A lot of transport had diminished in lots of areas. And so it was very difficult for fishermen to actually get out and sell their catch. And at the same time, in other areas, fishermen were under more pressure because people were facing shortages and difficulties because food couldn't get to them. So if fish were available nearby, near them, near the sea, then the fishermen were under more pressure to go out and fish. So it's quite a complex picture of different kinds of pressures on the sea. The problem is that what we know is that the oceans are already under so much pressure that these additional pressures are just breaking our ecosystems. They're breaking the fishing industry in lots of ways. And our long-term prospects have really not been helped at all by this pandemic. And what we need to do is, as we look to recover from the pandemic, we need to include healthy oceans as a part of our vision for the future. That's what's key here. Emmanuel, would you agree with what Fiona's just said? And is it too soon to even know exactly the long-term effects of COVID? We are still in the midst of a pandemic. I actually think that on the one hand, I would like to say that I do not have this catastrophic view of the oceans instead of the oceans as perhaps others have. And I'd like to explain why. Because I think that part of the issue of the ocean is that this is extremely large, extreme complex, lots of these different processes in it. And it's very easy to just jump from black to white to simple answers to problems that are extremely complicated. And the pandemic is one example. So for example, in the fishing industry, there have been sectors that have been very badly affected by the pandemic, particularly the fresh food, the fresh fish sector, because of the enclosure of restaurants and hotels. And there was just simply no way transporting the fish in time for it to remain fresh. However, the tin and processed fish, so an increase in sales, whatever was frozen and processed before the soil boom. So even the sector saw these increases and decreases in successes and failures. I think that it's important to realize things, or two things if I may. First is that when it comes to climate change, the estimations that we have from science is that for every degree of warming of the ocean, we lose about 5% of the animal biomass across the ocean, okay? That's 5% of the biomass for every degree. That means by 2050, if we stick to about two degrees, we expect a 10% drop in animal biomass. That has impacts throughout. And that's simply because the only remains productive is less productive than it is now. That's one thing to consider. And the other thing to consider is that we have FAO estimates every two years and we present that to the FAO committee of fisheries that meets every two years here in Rome. We present results of what is the estimation of sustainability of fish stocks around the world. And the estimate currently is that one in three fish stocks is overfished, okay? That means that two in three are not, but one is overfished. And this change is very dramatically between year and years in different regions, but overall seems to be quite constant. We need to make sure that that third of fish stocks that are overfished are not overfishing in the future because an overfished fish stock is much more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than one that is more robust and is got a healthy biomass ocean. Thank you. Now, in fact, Celine, you were among the first people to put your hand up when I asked whether you agreed with, whether perhaps oceans are not always the number one priority when we talk about climate change and part of your documentaries is aimed at really directing attention back at oceans. And in particular, you focused a lot on illegal fishing or overfishing. Can you explain kind of how the two interact? Is both of them a man-made, human-made, a man-made, climate-changed man-made overfishing? Together, the two are catastrophic. Have you seen the impacts of that? I sat on the World Economic Forum Council on Oceans for two terms for years. And one of the main themes that we worked on is traceability. And this touches on what everybody here on this panel is saying from the source all the way to the use of any kind of natural resource. So whether it's seaweed or fish, the traceability is really one of the big issues that I think we need to take a look at because as Manuel is saying, perhaps at one in three, fish stock is depleted or depleting at an unsustainable rate. If we know that, we know it because we have data, we have information. So if we can really be accountable in terms of traceability, then we can start looking at, okay, let's take the pressure off of this one element and turn towards something else that is perhaps more sustainable. There's also a sustainable aquaculture that is one of the solutions, not always very simple, but that's something that is a solution, moving away from just the challenges and into finding something positive in all of this. And then you go to the end part of it and somebody like Mark who's going to want to source something that's sustainable, that he knows what he is sourcing is going to want to understand the whole traceability. So for example, if you have in the open oceans, you have areas that are ungoverned. In those ungoverned places, you have ghost ships, ships that are just left out to sea with essentially slave labor on board. Those humans are unsustainably and unreporting, under reported, unsustainable catch, bringing them onto the boat, flaying or not flying in horrid conditions. Then you have another boat that comes on board, offloads that fish and therefore brings it to shore under a different flag and a different boat name. As a consumer or as a buyer for somebody who wants to actually be able to do good in terms of fish products, you're already losing the whole information, the whole data chain from the point of extraction to the point of use. So if we can start solving that problem in more areas of our ocean ecosystems, then we can start implementing more barriers to unsustainable practices. And that's where the positive side is is that we have technology now that enables us to implement solutions to be able to know what it is that we're bringing out of the oceans, use the scientists' data and information and research to inform what best practices are and then inform and educate the consumers. And this is where forward-facing people such as Mark or myself or Fiona, journalists who are out in the world actually giving people information. That's our job. Our job is to deliver the information, hopefully in an entertaining and maybe tasteful way where it's gonna be attractive to learn and not just a daunting. Because I do think what we need to do is we need to inspire people. Guilt doesn't work for very long. We can't just pressure people with guilt. We have to inspire them with good stories. And hopefully that's a little bit of something that we can all do today. Wow, did you have anything to add to that? Obviously we've got, like I mentioned, people kind of at the other end of the spectrum, again, you are on the ground first hand is overfishing and other things like that affecting you in your area. Are they affecting some of the farming that's going on in Tanzania? Overfishing is a big problem, yes, in my country because of climate change. So you find that farmers, the fishermen go on fishing and fishing and they catch even the small ones. And because of the climate change, even the necessary grounds of the ocean of the fish, they are affected. So it means that even fish reproduction is lowered. And so the stock is also reduced. And because of climate change, the fishermen will continue fishing. They will fish the juvenile ones and then the reproduction is reduced. So climate change affects a lot the stock and also the sizes of the fish. And also some farmers use illegal fishing because they cannot catch enough, which is also affecting the fishing industry. And Mark, just quickly, do you have a Celine touched on traceability? Is it hard to trace where you're sourcing your fish from? There was an app, I was using them from the Monterey Bay Fishing Society that was sort of a wonderful tool for chefs and for consumers. It was really shopping for dummies really. It's like, oh, it's red, don't buy it. And those type of tools really do help. I wanted to quickly touch on something Fiona was talking about, about the change COVID that had on fishing actually, where I was getting calls from let's say oyster farmers that were like, chefs, you guys have a big presence on Instagram and social media. We used to sell oysters, for example, they said, 90% of oyster sales were going to restaurants because nobody wants to shuck oysters at home. So I was spending a lot of time during the beginning of the pandemic was actually trying to do demos on my social media feed on how to shuck an oyster or how to steam them open or how to roast them because and trying to and pleading with people to buy them directly from the actual, the oyster farms because they were like, well, who's buying my oysters? 90% of my oyster sales were always restaurants and now home people don't really buy oysters. So I try to buy oysters personally but I also try to inspire people to buy oysters. And if you don't want to shuck them because it's a little bit difficult, you can steam them open. There's always, we have to find creative ways to inspire people. Touching back on that topic of whether kind of oceans fall off the agenda sometimes in terms of climate change. Yona, we know that COP25, we've covered these climate change talks over many years. I think we first met in Durban, perhaps but it was supposed to be the blue COP and that kind of fell off when it was shifted at the last minute to Madrid. Now COP26, climate change in your backyard, more or less, are oceans going to feature prominently in these talks or once again, will they be shifted to a nice to talk about but not an essential? Well, I really hope that this year, COP26 in Glasgow will actually have a strong element in it from oceans. As you said, last year was meant to be the blue COP, didn't quite work out that way but a lot of the work that was done there can come forward and can bear fruit at COP26. And in Glasgow, of course, they've got a strong shipbuilding tradition there. So, you know, they're used to this whole maritime thing and that whole theme will be able to be brought out there. The question is whether enough work has been done on what's needed for the oceans? What can we do at the international climate change talks to actually ensure that the oceans are protected in the same way as we try to protect the land? One of the main ways in which we can do that is by ensuring that there is funding for the research that needs to go on and for the kind of projects that are needed around the world to help local people to preserve their own oceans. And those projects can be things like mangroves in coastal areas around the world. Mangroves have been destroyed across huge swathes of the planet, they've been chopped on and that has left areas of coast exposed to storms, sea level rises, floods and so on because the mangroves in the past acted like a natural barrier against these things. So re-growing mangroves is a really important way of protecting coastal areas around the world from the impacts of the climate crisis and it has a brilliant knock on effect which is that regenerated mangrove swamps act as nurseries for fish, they improve the local biodiversity and so as well as providing climate change protections they're also helping the local economy by improving fish stocks and so on. So really there are potential projects like that all around the world that need to be brought forward and seen as part of the way in which we are tackling the impacts of climate change and they need to be funded as such as well. Well, you've made a natural transition to solutions, in fact, thank you very much for that because I'd like to now move on to Manuel who's going to touch on perhaps an add-on to what Fiona just mentioned there in terms of innovative projects. FAO of course involved in many of those. Can you give us a taste of what other kinds of projects are happening around the world? Yes, of course. I mean, first of all, I think that Fiona points out some of the easy wins in this fight. You know, the planting of mangroves and the looking after the seaweed, blue carbon in the ocean, promoting that these are very easy solutions. They're win-win and they're not that expensive actually and so I think that those are easy ones. There are more difficult ones that we know less on what is the right answer. So if I may, for example, when it comes to fish stocks, there's two particular changes that we will see as a result of climate change. The first one is a distributional change. Fish moving towards the poles in particular or across the oceans in some cases and that changes completely the relationship between that resource as that live from that resource. And the second is productivity change. Some species decrease their productivity as a result of climate change. So we'll increase the productivity. There's estimates for both of both. So what we need to look in terms of solution is, first, do we have the institutions in order to cope with the fact that some of the resources become transboundary? They change and they cross boundaries and they are shared when before they were just one country's resource. Do we have the institutions? Do we have the market systems that are flexible enough to adjust where particular species has been negatively impacted and others are positively impacted? How do we do that? And third, do we have the livelihood opportunities for those that depend on the resource and that maybe will not be able to depend on that particular source in the future? So on those three problems, we actually have a significant number of projects in the Caribbean, in South America, in Asia, in the Pacific, working countries first adjusting their legislation to make sure that it's sufficiently adaptable. Second, look at what we can support in creating new institutions that deal with these transbound stocks and then working with fishing communities themselves to adjust their livelihood opportunities. For example, can they change the gear, the boats, or even how they process the fish so they can adjust whatever changes will take place? And I think that is one that is very important to remember here that when it comes to adaptation, we are adapting to what is possible but not what it is probable because we do not know what is probable. There's a significant amount of uncertainty what things will go up or down. We know generally the impacts, as I said, 5% decrease in biomass every degree but we don't know how this is gonna be translated into specific species and specific places. And so we need to have systems that are adaptable enough to that uncertainty rather than being fixed and rigid and therefore less able to adapt. And coming off the back of that, in fact, Flour, you can give us a concrete example of some of the seaweed farmers in Tanzania have already adapted. Could you explain to us a little bit about your work? The women are adapting to climate change by actually moving into the deeper waters because we give the training to the farmers that the shallow areas are getting warm and warm every time. So the best way is to move into the deeper waters. So the farmers now are moving the farms into the deep waters. Then the deep waters conditions are much better, temperatures are lower so they can farm in the deep waters. So this is one of the ways of doing that. And also they use the little seaweed that they produce to make seaweed products, the value addition which also makes them resilient in the civil industry because the economy is improved. It's interesting because you talk about deep waters there, you were cutting out a little bit from what I understand they've moved some of their farming further out but fascinating in terms of adaptation, some of the women can't swim in there. So there's another adaptation which is perhaps a different, not a farming one but a physical skill that needs to be adapted there as well. Swimming is a big challenge because the women cannot swim and working the deep waters to them is a problem. So you are right that the women need to be trained on how to swim and then practice. So as to overcome the fear of working in the deep waters, this way they can work in the deep waters otherwise it is a bit better difficult. So for the women to go there, they need to own boats. So there's the question of economics there that they have to purchase the boats so that they can go into the deep waters and work there, otherwise it is difficult. So these challenges need to be solved for example, the women to be trained on how to swim and to acquire boats to go into the deep waters. Now in an earlier conversation with Manuel, he'd mentioned that something that really bothers him is that we often see the ocean as an aquarium. It's someone else who touched on it as well say, I think it's Celine who was saying that it's a place that we visit, that we enjoy rather than that we protect all the time. Media Fiona, the media's role in changing the way we perceive the ocean, what more can the media do? Well, you know, it's really difficult because we tend to see, if you say that the ocean as an aquarium was sometimes as a supermarket and sometimes as a dump. And I think that what the media can do and has been doing more in recent years is to raise awareness of some of the issues we're facing. Look at plastic pollution. We've been pouring plastic into the ocean for decades since plastics were invented, you know, more than a century ago. And that has been a largely unrecognized problem until recent years. But then a couple of years ago, we started really taking notice of this. We had some television programs where people actually went out into the oceans, looked at what plastic was doing. We had various charitable foundations who went around the world raising awareness and so on. And now this has risen to the top of the political agenda. And now just this year, we even have new global regulations that have just come in around plastic waste, making it more difficult to ship plastic waste from one country to another as a way of trying to protect the oceans. So you can see there that that awareness raised by the media has borne fruit. It has had a really positive result. Obviously, we need to do a lot more. And one of the things that we can do is to get more young people involved. And again, we talked about COP26, the UN Climate Summit, which is happening this year. And it's absolutely vital that people get involved in that summit. Not everyone can physically make it to Glasgow even in normal times. And we're probably going to still be facing some restrictions later in the year. So an awful lot of this is going to have to happen online. And what the pandemic has shown us is that so much interaction can happen online these days. Here we are, people on different continents all joining together for this event. So we really can do a lot more to raise awareness, bring people together online so that people can exchange ideas, form a kind of fellowship online where people can have a community all around the world to actually put this forward into action. And that's where it starts, I think. And this year with COP26 is a fantastic opportunity to get people involved. Colleen, do you want to add anything off the back of that? What I'm hearing from everybody is the idea of creating allyships and creating allies and understanding that all sectors of society need to get on board in order for a message to be understood and heard and for change to happen. What Fiona is saying, I think, is spot on the plastic pollution issue is decades old, much more than that. But it's now with the media attention and with social media that the public is becoming aware of it and now the public is demanding change. And I think that that's something that we can apply to a lot of different of the issues that we've been talking about in terms of the oceans. But it's also really important to somebody who is public facing quite a bit and not to necessarily dumb any information down but to make it tangible, I think is very, very crucial. I'm asked all the time, okay, we hear about all of these big ocean issues and climate change, what can we do? And the individual really wants to know. So the more we can deliver the answer to what you can do, I think the better off we're gonna be in terms of a collective understanding that what's at stake in the oceans is for all of us, not just for the people who are studying it. We think about economy and Fiona, sorry, Flower touched on this in terms of the ability to harvest seaweed off the coast. If the waters are too warm, there's gonna be less of a crop. Well, that's gonna impact the local economy. Same thing with local fisheries. We have to find solutions, as Manuel was saying, for the small scale fishermen, not to say you cannot fish, but how can we support sustainable fishing and support the health and economy of your community while also supporting the health of the oceans? I'll just cite one example real quickly that for me is really inspiring. It's in Cabo Bulmo in Mexico, small little fishing village completely off the grid, 100% dependent on the fisheries and they were to save gas, not going very far out. To the point of Flower again, boats are expensive and fuel is expensive. So they were really fishing just around their village. What had happened is that the fish stock were completely decimated and they had nothing more to fish. So they were having to spend more money to go out further. They asked for support. They received support, I'll make it short. They received the support in order to be able to stop fishing in their area. And there was a marine reserve that was created called Cabo Bulmo. I was there several years ago, it was just 10 years that it had been protected. And that ecosystem in 10 years of protection had returned to its baseline health. The fish were back and plentiful because the baseline health of that ecosystem was basically to look like an aquarium. So now what has happened is the fishing community has not only been able to recoup the fish stock, they fish outside the marine reserve because the fish don't know where the boundaries are and they sell that fish. They can fish inside the reserve what they need to feed their family in that day. And because of people like myself who want to go to far off places and go diving in beautiful waters, they have an additional economy through the tourism industry. So we really need to look at the environmental solutions hand in hand with community and economic solutions because they exist. We keep hearing this idea of community as well that perhaps nothing brings people together like food, Mark, does it really? For you, do you think food is really the interface of what's happening in our oceans and for the everyday person that's far away from flour, far away from the farming? Is that how you see your role of connecting really food with what's happening in our oceans? I think we definitely connect. I mean, we are sort of, yeah, we're connecting the farm, the fish, the delivery guys, everything to the people that are actually consuming and paying for it a lot of the times. But I wanna also touch on a little bit of on the plastic situation where I have, I have always had a vision of the world have full because I think, you know, people are great and people do wonderful things. I think what the media has done around just, I'm just gonna take plastic straws at least here in America. It went from, and this was before COVID, there was obviously, there was so much in the press about it where most of my friends in the restaurant business were, okay, we're not doing it anymore. We're not giving straws out liberally. We're gonna ask people if they want them. So we're not wasting a straw, which that little change alone was huge. And of course, I went the extra step. I started researching straws and everybody was complaining about the paper straws. They don't work it. I found a company in California that was making straws out of kelp. And I was like, well, these are the ones to buy. Of course, they were five times more expensive, but I was like, it doesn't matter. We need to help everybody every step of the way. So I made it a point of telling my waiters to have this conversation with every guest when they wanted a straw. Just want you to know, this is a straw made out of kelp and wonderful dialogue. People want information. I mean, you guys are in the press who are getting information out. People want to be educated. You just have to sort of find the right moments and the right clicking moments where people can really gather that information. And one other thing I wanna go back to Flower is it sounds like obviously, all this kelp and seaweed you're growing over there, I'm really hoping I get some recipes of what actually is happening when that kelp comes out of that water and what kind of food you guys are making with that kelp. Cause I find that to me, this is the interesting conversation. I mean, I love all the conversation, but obviously for me, it's all around food. Can you explain to us, Flower, a little bit what the most typical uses of kelp is at your home? In Tanzania, we have already trained the women how to make several products from seaweed who can make a salad out of seaweed whether fresh seaweed or dried seaweed. You can actually make juice out of seaweed. And the seaweed when it is boiled, it gives you a gel that you can put in jam and all kind of products. You can also make seaweed cake. You can make seaweed also can be cooked as a vegetable. So you can cook the seaweed and eat it with your food. So yes, for the chef, you can have a lot of recipes from Tanzania to make your food. And you can actually import seaweed from Tanzania and make your kind of recipes. We have inspired two, five star hotels in Zanzibar who are making food in their hotels. They have recipes for school cake. They have recipes for juice, recipes for salad. So you can make a lot of food from our red seaweed that we are cultivating. Coming to New York restaurant soon. Absolutely. Can I answer that response? Because I've had the pleasure of being at sea in the water with flour and with the seaweed farm in Zanzibar. And it fills my heart with joy when I see people developing their own language in that way. And we have in Zanzibar, we have a seaweed, sorry, a nursery, a hatchery, an agricultural hatchery that FAO provides support for. Where we grow, among other things, sea cucumbers, tiny sea cucumbers that are given to the farmers in the area so that they combine the seaweed farming with sea cucumber farming. And this is a way of showing adaptation to climate change and showing how to bring solutions to the community. And I want to say that because there's one issue, I've been to the last five or six climate change conferences and I hope to be in Glasgow this year. And every time that I go there, my message has always been, don't forget the people. And don't forget the people because don't forget that we have 619 million people that are hungry in the world today. This has been growing over the last four to five years. And unless we solve the problem of hunger and the problem of poverty around the world, it is extremely difficult to solve the problem of sustainability. In FAO, we can see that in countries where hunger and poverty is not an issue, resources are becoming increasingly sustainable because management is being implemented, it's effective, it's monitored, it is controlled. In places where sustainability is not the priority, management is not happening, resources are deteriorating further and therefore the problem of hunger and poverty gets exacerbated. We need to look at the world as a whole, not just the ocean, but also the land combined together. Think about people, think about people not just in the developed world, but in the developing world where the priorities are very different and see whether we can find solutions work for all of us rather than just for part of us because that's what the United Nations needs to do, find solutions for all and we need creativity, we need innovation, we need technology and we need also a little bit of imagination to find the things that will work in the future that are not working now. With that I'd like to actually move towards our final questions. I want to start in a similar way to how I began by just addressing a similar question to all of you and we have touched on it, but maybe we can just recap. For the people that are watching, what is the one thing that they could do with respect to the oceans? It might be stop using plastic straws, it doesn't need to, I mean the everyday person can't go and go on expeditions to far corners of the earth but or write a journalistic piece that's going to be read by millions of people but what can an everyday person do for the oceans? I'll give everyone a moment to think about it but perhaps Emmanuel, you could go first. Oh well, I'm almost going to point the finger to Mark on this because I think that when it comes to climate change, first of all, I think that people should eat fish, should eat more fish, it's extremely healthy, it is rich in micronutrients, it has a less low environmental impact than many other animal production industries but I think when it comes to climate change people need to eat what it's there, not what they would like it to be there but what it's there and that I'm pointing the finger to Mark because I think that chefs have a great riskability. I used to live in the UK and used to get upset that some in the fish manga, people would buy a cart and nothing else but hot. Now I live in Rome and in here it's completely the opposite. People go to the fish manga every Friday and they see what the fish fishermen have brought and they buy what's there. In what's there is the best solution that we can provide to make sure that we adapt our culinary testers and our diets to what climate change is creating, find solutions rather than finding problems. I don't know, I wonder if you buy a cart on a regular basis but I won't put you on the spot there in terms of what an individual can do, what would your advice be? Yes, well my advice would be to get involved as much as you can and that can be through making your views known, for instance to your politicians, your representatives at a local and a national level and so on, getting involved with organisations that have an interest in this, in sustainability, that can be in person, that can be happening online. It's to make your voice heard and it's also as a consumer, we all consume things and if you choose wisely what you consume that can make a big difference but don't just make those choices, also tell the companies involved. If you're choosing not to buy something from a particular company because you don't like the way that they use resources unsustainably or they cause pollution or whatever and tell them that, write to that company, make it known online, in any online forum or social media that you're a part of. Don't just do it in silence. Because they are listening indeed. Celine, if you had one final word of advice to the people watching. I want to echo what's already been said because I think it's very important. Mark referred to the Seafood Watch, the Monterey Bay Area Aquarium app. I think that's important. No excuses. We have the information we need at our hands in order to do things sustainably. I would say education would be one that I would push is really to start demanding of your schools that environmental education and specifically turning to the oceans is key in our children's future and to not underestimate that those children will grow up with a full understanding because it was always within us. So I would turn to pushing to education towards our ocean ecosystems. And Flower, what would your advice be? I would tell everyone to work to, I would tell everyone to make as much effort as possible to conserve the environment and to stop climate change. You can do a small thing like avoiding things that will produce harmful gases. For example, if your neighbor is using fertilizer that is harmful to the environment, you can tell them to use organic fertilizer. We have a lot of nowadays we have even see with fertilizer that can be used. So by using this fertilizer, it means that the environment is not affected because you are using something that is organic. And then this way you are avoiding also the greenhouse gases. You do a small thing in your home and it will have impact in the community. You don't have to wait to be invited in meetings or conferences or whatever. You can just talk to your neighbor. You can talk to school children. You can talk to anyone who is around you including your families. Just tell them to do small things in their areas that can have a larger impact to the community, to the countries and to the whole world. And everyone can be conscious of impacts of climate change. We're hearing this real theme of making your voice heard. Mark, just to end up, what would your advice be? I mean, I think Celine said that education is one of the most important things. I think educating the public. But I think once you have the education, you also need to sort of practice what you preach. And not only, as Manuel said, shopping local, making sure you're eating the local fish. And if you really want to have that other fish, well, figure out how, there's recipes out there. There's the internet. Figure out how to cook different recipes and to bring other spices and influences to however you want to do it. But educating yourself, practice what you preach. But also, educate your friends. Educate people around you, your family, when it comes to you're going out to dinner, have a conversation about why plastic straws aren't good. I mean, it's not that difficult. It's a harmless sort of thing. You don't have to be preaching. You don't have to get on a soapbox and talk about it. But I think just tricking people into learning things with stories, I think it's very important. I think Celine mentioned the good one about that village where you want to go, oh, you want to go scuba diving. It's a beautiful fish, go to this place. And then the story comes behind. Why are those fish there? And then you get these wonderful stories. People love stories. People love experiences. And just keeping in mind all of the knowledge that all of you have here on this panel and bringing that into it is very important. I'd like to thank everyone for taking part. And thanks to the FAO, of course, for bringing us together for this conversation. I urge everyone to continue the conversation, for example, by following the work, Fiona's work at The Guardian. Celine has a book, Le Monde, Upper Mont-Granpère, The World After My Grandfather in English, but is available from all booksellers who have filmed Tribes on the Edge, is also available from February 2nd. Flower's innovative work to farm the ocean in new ways is also detailed in several videos available on YouTube. Mark has his own podcast, Food 360. And Manuel's work with FAO can be further explored at www.FAO.org. For now, though, find out more about us and the issues discussed at the address that you can see on the screen there. I hope our discussion today will help us all become better guardians of our oceans and, of course, the treasures that lay inside. Thanks for being with us.