 Welcome back to our final panel of the conference. First, we'll review the poll results. The question was, what frontier did the audience thinks was least researched? And as you can see, we have a very well-educated audience with us today. 84% did identify that the Earth's oceans was least researched. So thank you again for letting us know your thoughts. It's been really fun pulling with you guys today. And once again, all of the conference materials are available at the NWC events page. We also have a new library guide on climate change that's available to you. I have put that information in the chat and you can access it. And this event is being recorded and will be available on the NWC YouTube channel after the event. During this panel, please remember, you can enter your questions in the Q&A box at any time and upvote the questions you like. We conclude the conference today with a panel that bridges science and technology with our economic and maritime security interests. And bringing together the blue economy and competitions in the oceans, Professor Walsh and I came up with the term blue competition. While we have decades of well-established climate science, a key component to understanding the climate is understanding oceans. Ocean research is essential to climate research, to sustainable economic development and national security, leading to a global push as we enter the United Nations designated decade of ocean science for sustainable development and the supporting ocean shot. Understanding the oceans is important for the national security and the economy. For this reason, we have taken this extra opportunity today to bring you a panel called blue competition, US and international efforts to develop the blue economy. The moderator for this panel is my colleague and fellow policy analysis professor in the national security affairs department, Professor Kate Walsh. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Naval War Colleges China Maritime Studies Institute and director of our oceanography and maritime security group. Professor Walsh is a China analyst focusing on Chinese science, technology and innovation strategies, plans and policies. Since 2013, she has been researching China's blue economy and what it means to US national security. Professor Walsh has a master's in international security policy from Columbia University. Please join me in welcoming Professor Walsh. Good afternoon, thank you Andrea very much. It is my honor and pleasure to introduce our final panel of the day. This panel likely needs no introduction to this audience but let me briefly introduce each gentleman when I would term a blue economy green team. First, our first speaker is Rear Abbo retired Tim Gallaudet. He is assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere as well as deputy administration, national oceanic and atmospheric administration also known as NOAA at the US department of commerce. Before joining NOAA, he served for 32 years in the US Navy, completing his service in 2017 as the oceanographer of the Navy. In his current position, Rear Abbo Gallaudet leads NOAA's blue economy activities that advance marine transportation, sustainable seafood, ocean exploration and mapping, marine tourism and recreation and coastal resilience. Rear Abbo Gallaudet also directs NOAA's support to the administration's Indo-Pacific strategy, oversees NOAA's Arctic research, operations and engagement, and is leading the execution of the NOAA science and technology strategies for artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, citizen science and more. Rear Abbo Gallaudet holds a bachelor's degree from the US Naval Academy and oceanography degrees, both masters and doctorate from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Our next speaker will be Rear Abbo retired John White. He is president and CEO of the consortium for ocean leadership, which represents over 90 member organizations from academia, industry and the nonprofit sector, advancing ocean science and technology through discovery, understanding and action. Rear White had a distinguished 32 year career as an oceanography and meteorology officer in the US Navy, including as former oceanographer and navigator of the US Navy. This latter position included leadership of the Navy's task force climate change and appointment as the Navy's deputy to NOAA, as well as extensive federal and international representation of the Navy on these matters. Rear Abbo White has a bachelor of science in oceanographic technology from the Florida Institute of Technology and a master's of science degree in oceanography and meteorology from the US Naval Postgraduate School. And our final speaker is Dr. Larry Mer. He is professor and director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire, as well as chair of the US National Committee for the decade of ocean science. In addition, Dr. Mer is a US Arctic Research Commissioner. He is a member of the State Department's Extended Continental Shell Task Force and vice chair of the Board of Ocean Exploration Trust. He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2018, has received an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University and is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science as of 2019. Last year, Dr. Mer became the first recipient of the Walter Munch Medal from the Oceanography Society. His current research deals with toner imaging and a research, sorry, remote characterization of the sea floor as an advanced application of 3D visualization to ocean mapping problems and applications of mappings, the law of the sea issues, particularly the Arctic. I actually had the honor and pleasure of touring his lab and hearing from some of his research and center colleagues. And I can share you with a very ambitious and impressive place. I think you can see why we wanted to have these very gentlemen to provide an overview of the blue economy, what it is and why it matters to US national security and an understanding and addressing climate change. Put simply, we cannot understand climate change without understanding more about the ocean and the importance of other bodies of water to climate. We cannot understand the oceans without investing in ocean science nor preserve the ocean and other water and marine resources without advancing more sustainable and innovative means of maritime development, both domestically and internationally and for commercial as well as military purposes. That is what the blue economy concept offers, a smarter, better, more integrated, innovative, more sustainable approach to marine, maritime and naval development. So starting us off, our first presentation is by Rear Admiral Gallaudet who will present on the US, sorry, the US blue economy and contributions to national security. My name is Tim Gallaudet. I'm the deputy administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA and the assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere. And today I'm excited to talk to you about what NOAA is doing to advance America's blue economy. I wanna thank Andrea Cameron and Kate Walsh of the Naval War College for having me today. It's really exciting for me to be back to the Naval War College, even if it's just virtual. Before I dive into what NOAA is doing to advance America's blue economy, let me just talk a little bit about our agency. We're America's premier science agency and our mission covers from the deep sea floor to the edge of space on the sun. And what we do with weather forecasts and warnings and managing fisheries and protecting habitats and endangered species is just wonderful work that impacts every American life every day. And we do it with a fleet of 16 ships, nine aircraft, eight supercomputers and 20,000 of the most committed and dedicated scientists and administrators, technicians that we have in the whole US government. And I am just proud to be a part of our agency. So first off, let's talk about the blue economy and the foundation for it. And what we're talking about is our oceans, coasts and Great Lakes. And we are an ocean nation. When you look at our population on the coast, it's 40% of our overall population. And when you look at some of the recent statistics about the growth of our economy, most of it has been centered around the ocean. For example, when you look at the ocean component of our economy, it grew between 2014 and 2015 by 5.7%. That's nearly twice of the rest of the US economy. And then if you look at the activity of our USC ports between 2014 and 2018, that growth was 17% to nearly $5.4 trillion or over a quarter of US GDP. And you know, with COVID notwithstanding, the demand for maritime commerce is growing and expected to double worldwide by 2025 and even triple by 2030. So there is a booming blue economy out there and it's an important part of our national economy. Now, why are we talking about this at this national security event? Well, when you look at the 2017 national security strategy, the second pillar in it is about promoting domestic prosperity. So that's what this is about, is a strong, healthy, prosperous country is a secure country. And so that's why this blue economy panel is important. Now let's talk a little bit about what NOAA is doing in this space. We have been advancing their champion that American blue economy for about three years and we've talked about it in the sense of these five pillars, which I'll go into. So let's look at the first one. The first one is what we call seafood competitiveness. And this is really characterized well and promoted in a recent executive order on promoting American seafood competitiveness and economic growth that was signed in May. And what we're doing with NOAA fisheries is we're advancing our commercial fisheries sustainably, ensuring optimum yields to better science and technology as well as growing domestic aquaculture, which here and for has not been advanced because of really just difficulty in permitting and we're improving that with this executive order. And then we're also working to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which is an increasing problem all around the world. And we've really focused on. In fact, recently, the Coast Guard released an IEU fishing strategic outlook. And I was part of a panel with Admiral Craig Fowler of U of Southern Command and the Command and the Coast Guard to talk about what we were doing together. And we're doing a lot of work with the inter-agency as well as international partners. And in fact, just last Friday I signed an MOU with USAID to work together to counter IEU fishing. So all of these are really important about this, this first pillar of seafood and fisheries. The next pillar is tourism and recreation. Of course, I'm really excited about this one because I've been a scuba diver for 35 years and I really, what we know it does in this realm is just wonderful. We're part of an $884 billion outdoor recreation economy. And when NOAA has our real just national treasures, there are national marine sanctuaries which are basically underwater parks. And they contribute to about $8 billion of economic activity, whether it be through recreational fishing or dive tourism or just coastal ecotourism. Now we have also a coral reef conservation program that's all about protecting and restoring our coral reefs whether it be in the Marianas, the Hawaiian islands, the Puerto Rico and Florida. And I really love this program too. And recently we've done a number of things to move and move forward with coral restoration, one being to develop a strategy to address the coral disease in Florida. This is a strategy to advance the respond and prevent the spread of this disease called stony coral tissue loss disease. And so that's one activity. Then there's another, there's marine debris removal and prevention. And we run the national program for that. I'm really excited that it was recently reauthorized and under the SAVE RCZAC 2.0. And we also recently with the EPA developed a federal strategy to address the global issue of marine debris and marine litter. And this is the first whole of government approach in this important area. Now the next pillar is coastal resilience. And this was been on full display this year with this record setting hurricane season. And I'm really proud of what our agency does in this area. We work with partners like the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation that run the National Coastal Resilience Fund which over the last few years has funded hundreds of million dollars for poor resilience activities. We also work on habitat restoration projects like Restoring March Land in Louisiana, Oyster Beds in Chesapeake and the coral reefs I talked about in Puerto Rico that were damaged by Hurricane Maria. And then we have a disaster preparedness program which trains some of our federal and state partners in disaster response and preparedness activities. And then lastly for coastal resilience, I think one of the most important things to do is weather watches and warnings and forecasting. And that's why it's been a top priority for NOAA to advance our weather model and regain our rural leadership and the skill and performance of that model which informs all of our local forecast warnings and predictions. And we're doing this with the support of the Weather Research Forecasting Innovation Act that was reauthorized in 2019. Now the fourth pillar that we are focused on is marine transportation. And this is a really exciting one for me. It involves a program called the Physical Oceanographic Real Time System which is a number of sensors around 36 of these systems of sensors at 80 USC ports that take measurements of the other water level, the air gap under bridges, currents as well as visibility and weather. And this is critical information that pilots need real time to bring our ships safely in and out of port as well as Navy ships. And I'm excited about what our great people on the program that run this due, they just even during the pandemic have recently upgraded five systems around the country as well as three new systems being installed at Portsmouth, Kings Bay and Valdez, Alaska. And we also undertake what we call precision navigation surveys which are basically high depth surveys that are allowing these Neo-Panamax class ships to come in and out of ports. And our first survey was done in the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach just last year. Now we also have storm response surveys where our navigation teams go in and they clear channels to ensure there are no hazards to navigation. And we showed up and did this in a real terrific way this year in 2020 following the five storms that made landfall in Louisiana. Is that just a kind of a range of the marine transportation activities that we undertake? The last pillar is our ocean mapping and exploration pillar. And this is exciting because just recently we released a national strategy to map, explore and characterize our US EEZ. This is the first national strategy of its kind. And what this is about is understanding the majority of America. When you look at all of the continental US that's above the water, terrestrial, that is exceeded by everything in the EEZ under the water. And we've only mapped about 40% of our EEZ. So this is important. It's important for energy development. It's important for sustainable fisheries. It's important for things like critical mineral discovery and also just discovery. Like NASA is going to the moon and then Mars and discovering new phenomenon or universe, we're discovering new phenomenon in our oceans. Very excited about that. Now, some enabling activities for these five pillars include partnerships. And I'm excited about our partnerships. These were recognized in November of 2019 at a White House summit to advance ocean S&T partnerships. And both CEQ and OSTP led that. And we were a key convener and I chaired one of the panels. And ultimately from that, we have signed over a dozen S&T, ocean S&T partnership agreements that are really directed at advancing the American blue economy. They include a range of inter-agency partners like the Navy, the Coast Guard, Department of Energy, USAID. They include NGOs and philanthropic organizations like the Schmidt Ocean Institute and Ocean X and the Ocean Foundation. In academia, there are just so many to count but recent ones include Scripps as well as MIT Woods Hall and University of New Hampshire. And then even in the private sector, public private partnerships with groups like Caledon Oceanic, Vulcan, Viking, Ocean Infinity and the Ocean Exploration Trust, all of these are helping us do much more than we could otherwise. And then another enabling area are emerging science and technology areas. And this is, this shows you six strategy documents re-released in the areas of uncrewed or autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics or omics, as well as data, cloud and citizen science. These are just transformational in nature and they're applied to every one of our NOAA mission areas. And these are really, we're helping us improve our performance and efficiency in just remarkable ways. So that's a key enabler. And then lastly, I think a critical enabler and not least of course STEM education outreach. This is the next generation. So we contribute to the national strategy for advancing STEM education. You see the cover there. And then we have partnerships like with Aquaria and Zoo that you see on the left side. And that is me of course, I'm at the National Aquarium and I was so excited about this early on in my time with NOAA because I really didn't think about when I was there that the most important species I'd have to interact with and wanted to were kids, people, not the fish in the aquarium. And that's the point of these partnerships we have is really to show interest and advance the next generation's STEM potential. So as I wrap up, I wanna kind of highlight something that's sort of recent and it's the idea of a new blue economy. And that with that new blue refers to is a blue economy increasingly dependent on data and information. And that's, you see the cornerstone of everything we're doing. And we're gonna see all of our economic activities certainly as we work to recover post COVID to be dependent upon data and services. Now, as I close, I wanna address two of the big questions that our host asked us to answer. And the first is, what are our policy recommendations for the incoming administration? And this succinctly say, I would say continue the good work that NOAA has done to grow our American blue economy. And I talked about some of these things like the national ocean mapping and exploration strategy. We also have a, for example, Alaska coastal mapping strategy that we're implementing. This coral disease strategy I talked about, the seafood executive order, expansions and new designations for our marine sanctuaries. We have a new sanctuary just last year in Mallows Bay. Doing more of that I think are all good for our economy as well as the weather act that I talked to, the state of our CISAC 2.0 and recent reauthorizations for the NOAA port, digital coast and integrated ocean observing program. I think all of those are good and need to be continued. The last question was, what piece of advice would I give as we move forward and working to move the blue economy as we go beyond COVID? And that advice is continue to leverage these emerging technologies I talked about. And two of the areas that helped these advance were as a law signed in 2018 called the CNOT Act. This is the commercial engagement through ocean technology and that is directed the building of a NOAA uncrewed or autonomous system center on the Gulf coast. I mean, this technology is really moving forward in all sectors. And I think continuing that is really gonna be important. Also, artificial intelligence. Just this last National Defense Authorization Act established the NOAA center for artificial intelligence. So continuing with advances like that, I think are gonna be critical going forward. So thanks for letting me be a part of this. I'm excited to be here and enjoying my teammates in this great panel. Thank you, Rear Admiral Gallaudet for that very detailed overview of NOAA's programs and initiatives. Next up is Rear Admiral John White, who will talk to us about the blue economy, how it is being pursued in the US as well as in terms of international cooperation and competition in advancing the blue economy. I'm John White, I'm the retired Navy sailor and an oceanographer. And I'm here to talk to you today about the blue economy in terms of international cooperation and competition. It's a topic that could take up in the multi-day conference in itself, but I've only got a short period. So I'm just gonna hit a few wave tops sort of like a fast-waving camera. So first of all, I wanna thank the Naval War College and certainly with Admiral Chatfield and Commander Cameron has done an excellent job on this program, this conference has been terrific. And just again, very well done to everyone at the Naval War College. So let's get underway. I'm gonna share my screen with some slides and I'll walk through them very briefly as I indicated. All right, so as I said, that's what I'm gonna be talking about and who I am. This is the organization that I am in charge of right now, it's been around for several decades. It's, I've got organizational members, not individuals and our job really is to advance ocean knowledge and use it to influence ocean policy. But at the national and somewhat of international. So when we look at the blue economy and there's some of the international types of definitions, you've really got a little bit of difference here between what the World Bank offers and it's where it talks about the sustainable use of the ocean being tied to the term blue economy as well as health and ocean ecosystems. Others such as the European Commission, which I agree with is more about, it's the entire ocean economy. We need a sustainable blue economy if we're gonna be successful in the economy in a sustainable manner. And I'll talk more about that. We have other work by OECD, which really agrees with the definition of the European Commission as well. And so that's what we're gonna be using and happy to take questions or comments about that as well. I love this diagram from the Ocean Commission. When like how about blue economy, they use this drop of seawater, which talks about established sectors, emerging sectors in the enablers, which are really the things that lead to, you know, a sustainable ocean and sustainable ocean in terms of how it impacts the economy, really ocean health as well. And we have again, things that we've known about maritime transportation, fisheries, new things, new types of ocean energy, new salamation as we look at the growing economy in the future. Speaking of growth, the OECD report from 2016 really highlighted an expectation based on models and previous growth that by 2030 we would double the global blue economy going to $3 billion. A few hiccups, maybe some slowdown due to the COVID pandemic, but I'm convinced that's gonna pick up rapidly as we all still rely on the ocean for really our life and everything that we need, all our basic needs. So as we think about that going forward and we ask ourselves, what's a vision of the future? And I go back to Admiral James Watkins, former Chief of Naval Operations, four star Navy Admiral, was head of the Ocean Commission at the turn of the century. And he put forward this vision, which is really a healthy and prosperous ocean that meets the needs of humanity and all life on our planet. I think that's still a very valid and it's a goal we should certainly strive for. We know the things that really are not contributing to a sustainable and healthy ocean. These largely are caused by humans over many, many years. And we see that it's climate change, it's the overfishing, it's issues of stuff that we dump into the ocean. Put that all together and aggregate and it's a pretty grim outlook. But we also know what are the things that we might be able to apply to really reverse some of this and understand the ocean so that we can fix it. And again, we know what they are, but we still haven't come to grips with how to do this especially on a global basis. And that's where we need cooperation and we need to understand the benefits and dangers of competition going forward. When I think about this, I look at their great international efforts, the new and decade of oceans science for sustainable development started last Friday. And so they understand that we need to apply scientific and technological knowledge to get to a sustainable ocean. The Economist Group with the World Ocean Initiative and the many types of events that they've been sponsoring for years. Again, after the same thing, billions of dollars are going to work to do this in the future. And we need to be a huge part of that. And we need to all understand the importance of that. I asked myself when I use the analogy of ships, sometimes we talk about where we go from here in terms of cooperation and even in terms of other things. And so not Navy ships that I'm talking about, not even oceanographic ships. I'm talking about these ships. Specifically, these are things, these are the ships that we all have to embrace to get to where we want to go with a really healthy and sustainable ocean and blue economy. I think of partnership and leadership especially. So with partnership, I feel, okay, how do we do that at the international level? What's being done? And the key sectors that really contribute to the partnerships and cooperation that we must have, I suggest are these and the engagement through partnerships, the interaction and the economies of scale and the advancement of a sustainable economy relies on the all these folks being part of the team. There are many efforts to do this in the international level from many different nations. They are clusters, they are collective impact organizations, local enterprise partnerships. These are great because they're bringing these sectors all together to advance common interests such as the workforce in the future and driving the needs in terms of food, water, very energy, all these basic needs that we must address and they're very successful. So I think this is key to do this. We've also got to figure out how with these larger international global efforts, we bring these type of organizations on a more local regional scale together, knit them into a global type of successful effort. One effort where that's going on a lot now is in terms of ocean observing. We cannot, you know, we need more ocean observing. We need more observations. We cannot be satisfied with what we have we're a long way from understanding the ocean. A lot of that has to do with it. It's hard to observe the ocean more than the surface that we get from satellites. But if everything that is in the ocean is taking an observation and sharing that data, which is what these organizations down here at the bottom of the slide are all striving for, global national organizations, and it's not just the sensor we put in the water, it's anything that gets wet again. This is how we must observe the ocean in the future. It's everybody's priority going forward. In competition, on top of cooperation, I've talked about this competition. We know that there are always winners and losers. That's part of an economic model. So where are the winners and losers going to be? Many nations have strategies to advance their ocean economy, their real economy. Is that good for the global ocean, a sustainable ocean and ocean health? We'll see. We need to understand how do we influence these national strategies around the competition that's being influenced there? We have competition in the Arctic, of course. We talk about that at this conference, the climate change impacts on the Arctic. Resource extraction and transport through the Arctic is going to get more and more as time goes on. How do we ensure that that's done responsibly and sustainably? The fishing disease issues are illegal and put it on regulated fishing, this storage, and it really gets to the value of fishing. Black markets, kind of the cost in excess of a million dollars. How do we make a dent in the markets like this to ensure that the sustainability of fisheries and oceans are paramount and we're monitoring what's going on to ensure that we actually get to that point? There's deep sea mining, these issues, which a lot of it is covered by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US is not even a signatory, we've not ceded to that. A key sort of, in my opinion, a barrier must overcome if we're going to influence the right decision to ensure we don't screw up the ocean like we have done many areas of our planet in terms of mining without understanding the consequences. Infrastructure, building islands out of coral reefs, large ships that can go do all kinds of things in the ocean, coastal or mid ocean, understanding how those are going to influence it. That's competition to do more and more of this. We need to understand this competition influence it through diplomatic measures, through pressures, and through our engagement with other nations as well. Again, a global effort to sustain the ocean, not destroying coral reefs for personal or the gains of an individual nation, I think are critical going forward. So the answer, the question really is, what's the ocean going to be? Is it going to be a winner or loser? It's got to be a winner if we're going to have a sustainable new economy. So we have a lot of work to do, but I think that's what we should be figuring out is how to ensure the competition influences success for everyone. It rises the level of play. It's not one winner and one loser over somebody else. The other ship we need is leadership. And I think leadership in this nation at the international level could be a lot better. You've got to be a strong player. The US influence on many nations around the world is key to accomplishing where we want to go. So there's nothing more important than in the influence of the US and this arena. Today, I think most of the nations, including the US were sort of doing good things. We worked together, we played well together, but we're not a team yet to a level that we're going to be if we're going to have a sustainable new economy within a decade or a couple of decades. And if we don't get there by then, I'm not sure we ever will. So can we get to the world a couple of level tomorrow? Good question. So there we are. I think that pretty much covers it of what we need to go with US leadership including military leadership to influences. I'll leave you with a couple of final thoughts. And if there's one policy that I can enact it would be a seating to one class as I talked about. In addition to national security interests, formal US representation in the international organizations and processes is key. I gave you some examples here of why we have to be a leader. We have to be an influencer here. And we can't do it to the level that we need to if we're not part of uncomes. And the thing, if you could do one thing, if we could do one thing, we have to advocate for a national US maritime strategy, not a military strategy with Navy Coast Guard Marine Corps or just Navy as was actually released recently. We need a national strategy that addresses all these things. That national maritime strategy can lead to plans, can lead to resources, can lead to execution, can lead to success. We need a military understanding of how. So thank you for your time today. Thank you for being with me and with all this group and all that forward to your questions and any dialogue in the future if you wanna reach out to me. It's an honor and a pleasure. Thank you, Rere Mo White for laying out the international blue economy prospects and challenges. Last but certainly not least is Dr. Larry Mayer who will present on the coming decade and beyond of ocean science and the importance of ocean science and research to the blue economy and to US and international security. Let me start by thanking Commander Cameron, Kate Walsh and the Naval War College for the invitation to participate in this panel on blue competition. When Commander Cameron first asked me to participate I was a bit hesitant in as much as I don't really consider myself an expert on the blue economy and particularly the Navy's perspective on blue economy competition. But when I heard that Admiral's Gallaudet and White would also be participating I knew that these issues would be well covered and I felt much more comfortable offering what will inevitably be an academic's perspective on the role of international science and technology cooperation in the development of the blue economy and potential national security concerns. Let me start with a few perspectives on the concept of the blue economy. I think the traditional notion of the blue economy is really focused on sustainable development and the management of resources and commodities things like fisheries, renewable energy, pollution, tourism, maritime transport and the impact of climate change on all of the above. Each of these are critical in the maintenance of life on earth and without question of long-term national security concerns. Given the interconnected activity of the oceans and the global scale of these issues these are problems that I believe will require and benefit tremendously from international cooperation and collaboration. While there are a number of ongoing international efforts to address some of these the ultimate example of an international effort to address the breadth of these issues is United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development which I'll just call the decade from now on. The decade represents the recognition at really the highest level of governments of the critical role that the ocean plays in sustaining life and the economic wellbeing of humankind. And it calls for concerted and coordinated effort of transformative science solutions to create the ocean we need for the future we want. From a blue economy perspective if you look at the decade implementation plan and other documents it's quite clear that the decade clearly recognizes the critical role the oceans will play in economic development. And that the decade could just as easily be called the decade for blue economy development. The decade has outlined a series of outcomes as well as a series of challenges that are listed here that need to be addressed to reach those desired outcomes. And as you can see these are all very well aligned with the concept of the blue economy. Recently the US Committee for the Decade put out a call for what we're calling ocean shots and these are ambitious transformative research concepts that draw inspiration and expertise from multiple disciplines and fundamentally advance ocean science for sustainable development. And there was a remarkable response with something like 105 submissions sent in over just a few months proposing many truly exciting programs. And this is just a sampling of some of them but as you can see given their magnitude and geographic distribution these sorts of programs will depend on international collaboration and cooperation to be successful. So for this component of the blue economy I see international cooperation and a bit of competition that underlies this cooperation to be an essential component. And while there are always national security implications I don't see immediate security concerns. However, I do see potential benefits and that's in terms of soft power or scientific diplomacy. There are numerous examples of how scientific interactions have allowed the establishment or maintenance of dialogue even when political relationships are strained. The Minerva Foundation in Germany played a key role in the reconciliation of German-Israeli relations post World War II. One of the first venues that mainland Chinese and Taiwanese representatives sat around the same table was the International Ocean Drilling Program. And today there's still reasonable cooperation between Russian and US scientists working in the Arctic despite otherwise strained relationships. I contrast this however to another component of the blue economy that has shorter term and more immediate relevance to the question of national security. And thus in terms of international collaboration and cooperation we have to tread a bit more cautiously. And that is that part of the blue economy that focuses on domain awareness and the senses and systems used to collect this information. Let me start with a sector that we may not consider when we think of the blue economy but we should given that 71% of the earth is blue and that's the field of earth observations which is a remarkable growth field with small satellites and high altitude pseudo satellites starting to provide unprecedented coverage of even the smallest objects on the sea surface. And with respect to national security concerns we can see the remarkable detail that even publicly available satellite imagery can provide. Here in the lower right we see sorry imagery identifying a four meter long dinghy and these capabilities are available commercially including to the Chinese who often have who also have their own capacity. And so in this sector I have real concerns about collaboration but here I think the horse is really already out of the barn which leads me to the other component of the blue economy that I have concerns about with respect to international collaboration and national security. And that is if there's nowhere to hide on the sea surface we have to think about the way domain awareness under the sea. And with that of course the development of undersea sensors and in particular autonomous underwater vehicles. AUVs and other autonomous vehicles and the artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that go with them represent another tremendous growth area and economic driver of the blue economy. And one that the US has held the leadership role in though I remind you that what is probably the most commonly used and robust full ocean depth AUV the Hugen on the lower right here is a Norwegian product. With my academic hat on I'd also like to point out that the roots of AUV development as with much advanced deep ocean R&D took place and continues to take place in the academic environment. The first AUV was developed at the University of Washington APL in 1957 the Spurve and later UW developed a sea glider. Scripps built the deep toe in 1961 the precursor of many remotely operated vehicles and Woods Hole has had a remarkable history of development of a range of deep sea vehicles that have been the prototype of many of today's commercial systems. And I contend that in part it's the openness competition and collaboration within the academic community that led to these R&D successes. But this comes with some national security concerns probably best illustrated by a recent example of a clone of a new Woods Hole hybrid vehicle that was built in China in a remarkably short period of time. And I guarantee that this level of duplication did not come from published papers. And so we're faced with a quandary. How do we maintain the open and collaborative environment that leads to creativity and the exchange of ideas but at the same time protect national security interests? And I don't have an easy answer to this but we have to start by acknowledging that there's a problem. And right now there's very little guidance for the academic community some of whom are cognizant of the problem some of whom don't care but most will probably just unaware that there are even issues with it. I suspect that there'll have to be more vetting and more scrutiny of the work of the academic community but this has to be done with great care and sensitivity and great selectivity about what issues are of concern. We need much closer communication between researchers and potential end users as end users are often able to recognize applications that the researchers are unaware of and may never even need to know about. The key will be to maintain as much as possible an open and collaborative environment but with enough control in key areas to mitigate security concerns. And this may even involve security folks on site at key institutions. As I said, it won't be easy but I think we've evolved to a point where we need to do something and I'm hoping that this will be a topic of further discussion. Let me end by responding to the questions from our organizers to answer two specific questions the first, what is a policy that I would champion? And for this I would say that if the US is to maintain a strategic advantage in the blue economy we'll need to maintain and support robust and farsighted R&D programs at academic institutions while paying careful attention to areas of national security concern through close communication with and clearly articulated and well-informed guidelines from the security community. The second question is what piece of advice would you give on this topic? And for that I'd say creative and groundbreaking R&D is difficult to do in isolation and that we have to be careful not to assume that by definition the US is leading the world in ocean science and technology remembering that hubris leads to downfall. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Mayor. So I'm sure we'll be happy to talk more about the decade and the ocean shot as well as other ocean science endeavors he's mentioned. At this point I'll ask that our panelists rejoin us on camera for the Q&A, the question and answer period, thank you. All right, thank you gentlemen. I am going to try and bring a couple of questions to bear and then combine a few. You've seen them, I know in the chat. So let me start with Rear Admiral Gallaudet. In addition to any of you answering the question about Robert Ballad and potentially working with him a question you might get often. The question is seafood competitiveness. The questioner asked, can you speak to how to mitigate or adapt to ocean acidification and poleward mitigation of fisheries? Is that one of the areas of seafood competitiveness? Sorry Pete, I dropped the offer a bit. Were you able to hear the question or no? I can repeat it. I did not hear the question, I apologize. No worries, no worries. In addition to letting us know if you've had any opportunity to work with Dr. Ballad, Robert Ballad who's infamous. The serious question really is seafood competitiveness. The questioner asked, can you speak to how to mitigate or adapt to ocean acidification and poleward mitigation of fisheries? Is that one of the seafood competitiveness issues that NOAA is looking into or working on? It sure is Kate, thanks. First off, I'll mention Bob Ballad is a great personal friend but also an important partner. We have a relationship with him. The Ocean Exploration Trust, Larry is on that board and so we work together to undertake this important exploration activity. And one of those is assessing the impacts and the extent of ocean acidification and the nature of our changing fisheries. The part of the cod fishery in Alaska has migrated 1,000 kilometers north over the last few years. That's a big deal. It's out a range of a lot of commercial fishermen. So we're working hard to study it. That's NOAA's big job to study it. And some of the really those mitigating practices like for example, acidification and shellfish farms in the Puget Sound is being mitigated by growing seagrass because they take up some of the carbon. So we're looking at a number of scientific endeavors to mitigate that important problem but also just understand it better. Great. And a related question, Ashley, for where I'm a white question, I asked if... Sorry, reading my scratches here. On the international partnerships, in addition or especially related to fisheries management. Is that one of the areas where we talked about ships and partnerships related to fisheries management? Yes, it is. And it's great since I'm here with certainly with Larry and Tim but especially NOAA and their leadership for many years, they have really shown the exemplary way to manage fisheries. That has spread through regional partnerships across the Atlantic and parts of the Pacific region around the world. And we're starting to see that really be a positive influence especially it gives rise to practices such as ship riders, such as being able to go in and monitor fishery health with new science and technology, environmental DNA, even satellite imagery as Larry was talking about. But really those partnerships allow us to share resources, especially with smaller nations such as operations and things like that. So we see that growing forward. I think that's why it's so important under some of these initiatives like the UN Decade that we push those partnerships because they are key. And it gets back to influences influencing the bad players. We've talked about them, Kate, you know them well. One of them is China. We've got to influence their distant water fleets and all these things. They are killing fisheries, many fisheries on the edge of being really just in a lot of trouble and collapsing. So yes, those partnerships are critical and through partnerships you create teams that have great influence on the bad players as well. So yeah, it is foundational. Thank you. Okay. We have a lot of questions but I'm going to ask you a question. Dr. Mayer, our attendee asks, do you see ocean research trending upward? And why do you believe that so little research comparatively is being undertaken? That's a great question. I do see ocean research trending upward for all the reasons that Admiral Zagala Depp and Admiral White pointed out that the recognition of its importance is growing. Why have we done so little of it? I don't think we've done a little of it. I think what we're constantly looking in contrast is the levels of budgets that are put to ocean research relative to things like space research. And it is phenomenal the space research that we do. And I support it tremendously but if we think about the level and investment of a single Mars mission to map Mars, we can map the entire US, the entire US, the entire world ocean for the cost of a single Mars mission. And so I think somehow we've gotten out of balance in terms of our looking outwards, in terms of exploration and looking to our own planet. But I think with the growing recognition of the issues that we have, we will turn more inward and we'll see an increase in ocean research budgets. We had a couple of questions on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and I see that some of those questions or statements were responded to, but I want to leave an opportunity if any of you gentlemen would want to talk about on close. Current status or prospects? Yeah, Kate, I'll take a step that as you know, what was one of the two things I left in my closing remarks there. I think now more than ever it's critically important to actually move forward on this. Again, we don't get to play at the right level at many of the international types of bodies that make decisions, whether it's BB and J, it's deep sea mining. There are also the maritime national security instance, the actual what navies and coast guards can do at sea inside of territorial seas, transits, all these things is China going to be allowed to build islands and expand their territory all over the planet. Come on. So we've got to be part of that. And so I think pressure to do that from a new administration that is a little bit more focused on ocean, so on these issues such as climate change and ocean change and their impact on national security, but going back to our colleagues on the international front, applying some diplomatic pressure from the maritime sectors of the international, basically that actual group, especially our allies can be critically important. I think we're at a good time with a lot of things that are changing in our federal government now to take a fresh look at this. I don't believe the arguments, especially now anymore make sense. And so I think this is a good time to revisit that. And I think like we have in the past, every CNO, every secretary of the Navy, every secretary of the fence has supported the ratification and accession to unclos. We need to get on that track and need to get it done and exert the US leadership in the right way without people basically giving us a look and smirking at us and saying, yeah, put your money and put your pin where your mouth is. Thanks, Kate. And then we'll go with that. We had a question specific to you. If you and I'm sure our other experts can comment it, they wish as well. The question was how to find the balance between data metrics and working with people and local communities. The questioner asks or says that technology and data, an approach that takes technology and data only will ignore and anger local communities that might be affected by federal activities based solely on the numbers. So basically they're asking, is that our approach and if so, is that problematic? That's a great question. In fact, well, first of all, both are important. And I think we're developing systems now to capture more data and use it in intelligent ways and it's valuable. It's helping us as Larry articulated, understand the oceans, which are so little understood and I thought the opener was gray on that with Commander Cameron showing that 84% of the poll acknowledged our oceans not being understood. I think the best way to answer this is know as National Marine Sanctuary Program. This underwater park program I talked about is a community-based program and each one is local in nature and in development. Every one of those, we seek public input, we have listening sessions and we work with the communities to understand what they want from their National Marine Sanctuary. So you can take, for example, the Florida Keys and we use that sanctuary to promote the dive tourism, the recreational fishing, the coral conservation and all those activities and the conservation required and science required to support that. You could go to Thunder Bay in Lake Huron and that's about shipwreck preservation and local tourism and it's just building a local economy and what was a really downturn town. And so I think community-based efforts that balance science and data with actual community engagement relationships that balances is what we do need to do and as everything is local and that our sanctuaries are a good example of that. If I may, let me very briefly address on class. John was absolutely right and I think one of the biggest and important things that we could do in this conference maybe it might be a result of after this conference in terms of national security and climate change is countering China's harmful environmental abuses. They're the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. They are the largest practitioner of damaging activities on the ocean, destroying coral reefs in the South China Sea, the illegal fishing activity I talked about and John White talked about and the research security and piracy that Larry talked about. There are a lot of reasons we need to be strong, stand strong against China and without assessing the uncloss, we just really can't speak with the loud voice we need. Great, thank you very much. And Dr. Mayer, if you would, could you tell us a little bit more about how the UN decade of ocean science and sustainable development is progressing and that you as a chair of the US ocean decade program could you sort of explain that a little bit for our students who might be online today and how they might be able to participate over the next decade? Sure, well, as I think Admiral White mentioned, it just started January 1st, but there's been a lot of preparation. The US is the first to form a national committee and we have, this is run through the National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine. And I encourage people to go to the National Academies website and just look up Ocean Decade US and you will see lots of information about a lot of activities, but probably the most important one is a kickoff meeting that's coming up the 3rd and 4th of February. And at that kickoff meeting, we'll introduce the concepts of the decade, but most importantly, and I think amazingly, excitingly, as I've mentioned in my presentation, we just a couple of months ago put out a call for ocean shots, these ambitious, transformative concepts. And just within a couple of months got over a hundred responses. It was just remarkable showing the depth of excitement and knowledge and creativity amongst the US community in terms of truly transformative programs. And what we're hoping is to start nurturing and catalyzing these programs so that they keep presented to our funding agency colleagues and really start engaging the community and seeing if we can really start transforming the way we do ocean science that will lead to us more sustainable ocean at the end of the decade and beyond. So again, I just encourage folks to go to the website, the National Academy website, lots of information there and then tune in to the kickoff meeting February 3rd and 4th. Great, thank you. I think we probably have kind of one more question and that is, is there any initiative to regulate by law the fish catch in high seas and the management of migratory species? In related to that, we had a question about the ABNJ, the areas beyond national jurisdiction and its impact on the US blue economy. So I'll leave that an open question if anyone has any insights on that. This is Tim, I'll start off the, NOAA is the US lead in a number of international fishery commissions that do this multinational regulates to develop the, reinforce the partnerships internationally and in our agency to counter IE fishing as well as advance our capabilities and technologies that are supporting it. Thank you. Any other? I will just add that, you know, again, it's what do you do it? And it's not, you know, yes, we've got to go in and recognize we've got to name and shame the violators of these regulations. But we've also got to figure out when you find violators, what are the penalties? What, you know, what's going to keep you from doing it again? And especially on the international level in these areas beyond our national jurisdiction, how do you come up with that? So we've got to really lead this effort, but there's got to be some type of penalties and consequences for people that don't follow the rules. We just don't understand our ocean well enough for a lot of reasons that were mentioned by both Tim and Larry, especially we've got to understand them. But while we're trying to figure it out throughout the rest of this decade, what do we do about it when we find people who are really in danger in the future of our ocean, which is the future of our climate. And as we all know, it's the future of our planet and our species and all other life on the planet. It's that important. And it sure as heck it's worth taking a little bit of money from some other research areas and from some other intelligence and national security areas and exerting the US leadership to solve this problem. Thank you. And I'll just chime in, because I have to chime in online class also, but coming right back to what both Admiral said, that as we do want to make those points, we make them with a much more diminished voice when we're not a signature to the treaty. People say, well, you know, you're not even part of the treaty. So I think it's something we really have to work on. Agreed. And in fact, as somebody who researchers, China and the Blue Economy, they are quite advanced in developing their own strategies, plans and policies, not just domestically, but internationally in trying to promote this concept. And the Chinese version or variation of the Blue Economy, which is not exactly the same as ours or our European partners concept of it. With that, I think we're going to have to leave it there. I thank you gentlemen all for an extraordinary panel, very useful, insightful and thoughtful. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Commander Cameron for her closing remarks. Thank you very much. Thanks, Kate. Thank you. Thank you so much to Professor Kate Walsh, we're Admiral de Gallaudet, we're Admiral White and Dr. Larry Mayer. This was a fantastic panel bridging the Blue Economy and national security interests. Thank you for bringing together the science, technology, economic and defense topics as we conclude our conference for the day. Today's event was largely reflective about how I think about climate change and national security. What does it mean for global power competition, state fidelity, domestic response and base infrastructure and how does science and technology support our economic and defense interests going forward, especially in the oceans? If you're still interested in more, please check out the recommended resources in the conference program, the Naval War College Climate Change Library Guide or an American Adapts podcast I recently did on the fundamentals of climate change and national security. In fact, some of you are here today because you listened to that podcast and wanted to know more and as any academic will tell you, it's always a thrill to know your work is meaningful to others. This event started as an idea in my head about a year ago and was made possible by the generous funding of the William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics and the Naval War College Foundation. By going virtual, we were able to reach over a thousand more people than we could have done in person, bridging together national security practitioners and scholars from all over the world. I truly appreciate your participation today and your interest in the subject. And that being said, this is just a start. There are many more related topics as you can see from the questions that were asked at the event today. So you can guess what I will be doing at the Naval War College for the next several years. Again, I'd like to thank all the speakers and moderators for their participation today, as well as our Naval War College team. We had a special events team, public affairs, media services, alumni programs, our subject librarian, Isabelle Lopes and Professor Michael Bush. While I was on camera, it took a large team to deliver this event today and I could not have done it without them. As a reminder, all of the panels have been recorded and will be available on the Naval War College YouTube channel when we are done. Thank you all for joining us today. Stay safe, everyone. This concludes our virtual conference on the national security significance of a changing climate, risk and resilience in the 21st century.