 Yeah, thank you for everyone who's joined so far. My name is Simon Clark, I'm the EU's committee programs coordinator. Today is World Conservation Day, which is the perfect opportunity to discuss ocean conservation. So welcome to the webinar on said topic. If you have a question, please enter it by clicking on the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen at any time during the webinar. We can also upload questions and questions to the most votes are more likely to be asked. No, we will try and get through all questions, either way, anyway. The webinar will also be recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel, which is at your Geosciences. And today I'll be talking to our guest expert, Dr Rebecca Helm. Yeah, so, why should we begin? Could you give me more background in your personal background expertise to a little bit of you are and what your expertise is in. Of course, my name is Rebecca Helm. I'm joining from Western North Carolina, where I'm an assistant professor of biology at the University of North Carolina Asheville. My background is in open ocean life. So I studied jellyfish and organisms that live on the ocean surface. It's been a heck of a year for doing science on the high seas. We haven't been out much, but it's been really amazing to come together with broader communities over the past year to try to tackle some of the questions that we have and some of the challenges that the high seas and ocean ecosystems are facing. So it's really great to be here. Thank you so much again for having me. Sure. So you mentioned you're a physical marine biologist, but you also work in marine conservation. How did you become involved from being a marine researcher into conservation efforts. I have been studying all these organisms that live on the high seas and spoiler alert is that we know virtually nothing about them. So, of course, every field of science can say that about something. But in this case, we really don't even know what species are out there. If a species in the Atlantic is the same species in the Pacific, what their life histories look like, how long they live, how often they reproduce what they eat. It's almost sort of going back to 19th century science in terms of just finding and describing organisms. And so in the process of doing that being involved in that very fun and exciting science is sort of realized. Wow, you know, we're learning a lot about these ecosystems. Some of the ecosystems in the open ocean appear to be potentially very fragile, especially when we start thinking about deeper sea life. So we can sort of slowly move, we can sort of interpret based on some aspects of their biology how long they might live. And some of them may live for a very, very long time. What mechanisms are in place at the level of policy to maybe conserve or protect these ecosystems. If there was an organization or a company that wanted to go in and fish or mine, or harvest plastic resources or things like that. And in sort of asking that question, and then contacting experts, I realized that there are very few, and a lot of potential opportunities are being discussed at the United Nations right now. Through a set of negotiations for a potential treaty called biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. And so that was what really kind of popped a light bulb over my head. Wow, they're all these biologists they're working so hard to try to understand these ecosystems we need to find a way to engage in these discussions on high seas conservation. That's sort of how I got involved. And a lot of that happened before COVID but then a lot of these discussions also been happening during COVID as well because all those negotiations have been sort of put on hold. So really on the, I suppose a lip of undiscovered well, and of the unknown in terms of sea life and I guess that's also kind of anti imperative why we need to caution or protection it comes to this region because there's a lot we don't know about it. So yeah, it's the idea of the precautionary principles so we really need to be careful when there's uncertainty when we're sort of aware of our own ignorance about these systems. And these systems are challenging because this is in areas beyond national jurisdiction so there's no one country that sort of sets the law. And as a consequence, you have the process of negotiation, which can take a really long time even within one country let alone you know many countries coming together to try to figure it out but this area covers nearly half our planet. And so it's really thinking about this forgotten half of Earth's surface that isn't currently sort of under one clear umbrella for biodiversity protection. So, before we kind of explore biodiversity protection on the high seas but further, could we just step back and talk about what threats are facing marine life. So like what kind of threats are there that we should be concerned about. Some of the things that we're worried about on this half of the earth that we're more familiar with are also impacting high seas so things like climate change, plastic pollution. And then there are some things that may be unique to the ocean so overfishing for example. There's coastal fishing and overfishing within easies but there's a lot of high seas fishing. And then when we think about things like deep sea mining which is an emerging industry so a lot of the things that I'm kind of paying close attention to are things that are sort of emerging, they're kind of coming up. So one of the challenges that were sort of for me facing with the high seas is the reality that for a long time this area of the world was sort of protected by virtue of how far it was from shore. It was incredibly expensive and logistically difficult to operate an industry on the high seas, and it's getting easier and easier. And then we are seeing emerging industries that maybe don't have analogs close to shore that don't have analogs on land that are going to uniquely impact the high seas. And so those are some of the challenges that we're really looking at addressing, and within the context of the BB and J. We have an opportunity to sort of address that for particular activities that may be impacting the diversity between the floor and the surface. So deep sea mining, you know falls under its own category fishing falls under its own category, but for any organism that maybe doesn't directly fall into either of those categories. This is how we might protect it. I think one of the key things when it comes to trying to protect the ocean and in particular high seas is being aware of how pollution or social pollution might vary with space so you have things like deep sea mining which might have more impact around the sea beds or how perhaps plastic might embed itself in the sediment and compare to say at the ocean surface while it might be more noise pollution or larger plastics or oils and stuff. One of the challenges that the high sea face is this is true for any ocean system or really aquatic systems that the impact in one place is probably not going to stay in that place. So when we think about conservation, there's almost like this implicit understanding that there is some geographic bound on an impact. And we really have to examine whether or not that's accurate for the high seas. And so this is true for plastic. This is true for oil. This is true for mining. This is true for fishing. You could be conducting some industry, half a world away from where the impact is most acutely felt. And that really goes back to the life cycle of the organisms that are living in these areas, how widely distributed they are the current systems, how far debris is carried. It could take years to really see an impact from one area in another area. And so that creates a huge amount of challenge and uncertainty and thinking about managing these impacts. The main challenge, one of the key challenges, I suppose, is there's a huge amount of variation based dynamic and it's across multiple scales. So quite a daunting challenge really trying to find a way to make sure this kind of region is protected. Can you talk a bit more on kind of impacts you might expect in some real life, how animals are impacted by prediction. So there are so many different impacts that we could see and one of the problems that we're facing and I know that I'm sounding like a total broken record here, but it's just like ignorance ignorance we really don't know it's hard as scientists are not in study these systems to, but some of the impacts that you see on high seas life could be analogous to what you might see closer to shore. So for example with plastic pollution, a huge impact and endangerment is entanglement so a lot of people think about organisms eating plastic and certainly organisms do. So we'll actually have our really great handle on all the ways that that might impact organisms so we know that there are instances where an organism will consume plastic that plastic will block their digestive tract. And then they will suffer some sort of fatal consequence as a result of consuming that plastic. But we also know a lot of organisms may be eating plastic that are sick or starving for some other reason in the same way that we see organisms eating things like floating pumice when they're starving. And so there's a lot of nuanced interaction with that, especially because plastics may hold on to sort of more bioactive molecules that could have toxic effects on animals there may be some sort of exposure to toxicants from eating these plastics. But again, you know we don't have a lot of data so that's certainly an active area of research, you know with regard to jellyfish a colleague of mine did a study looking at the impacts of plastic ingestion on jellyfish and it turns out jellyfish can eat just anything. And they spit it out. But entanglement I would say is huge issue lots of evidence of mortalities associated with entanglement. A lot of this comes back to ghost nets these nets that are cut from ships for a variety of reasons and sort of left to float around the open and their net quality doesn't change just because they're no longer attached to a ship and so their organisms caught in these nets they die. Of course then that may attract other predatory or scavenger organisms, which then come around these nets and then they might get entangled and die layers and layers and layers potential interaction. So this oil has huge impacts that we're just beginning to really see for ocean surface life. So I study life that actually floats on the ocean surface or someone's very near the ocean surface. And you would think we would have a pretty good handle on how oil impacts organisms that live at the ocean surface they're called mucin. But in fact, you know, we don't have a particularly nuanced understanding of it, but it turns out even things like oil dispersants impact them, even potentially more than oil. And then when we think about things like deep sea mining, that's going to be potentially releasing a huge sediment plume into the water column. And so that's the big concern that a lot of people in my field that study organisms that living, you know, the live somewhere on the surface are thinking about how far does a sediment plume go. I think is it going to be the clearest water I've ever seen down in the deep sea. So what happens when it's suddenly filled with mud. I think one of the images that came to my mind when you were talking all these images of say whale caucuses of plastic nets in the stomachs or birds covered in oil and beach or something like that. What you're saying it sounds like there could be a huge variation of impacts, for example if you use all dispersants to deal with a oil pollution oil spill on the surface that might stop some seabirds from being contaminated but it might have a worse effect on the Yeah, yeah, it's a complicated sort of juggling match to understand and appreciate it and that is you know one of the big challenges okay so this oil dispersant will allow us to sort of get rid of these big patches of oil and you know for some organisms that's really good, but for other things like sargassum which is this floating yellow seaweed that makes up the bulk of the biomass in the sargassum which is the shoreless sea between the US and sort of Europe Africa in the middle of the North Atlantic. And if you look at the impact of dispersants on sargassum it for whatever reason they sink more in the presence of dispersants. So that's sort of like oh no. Here we've got all this oil, the sargassum is trapping the oil. That's terrible because the little sea turtles and other life are sort of associated with sargassum because that's their natural habitat so you want to get the oil out of the sargassum. So then you dump a bunch of dispersants on the whole mess and then everything sinks to the seafloor. Maybe that is better than having oil associated with sargassum. I don't know. But there's a lot of cost benefits to assess and there was kind of a cost-benefit change all the time given how dynamic the system is as well. So yeah, extremely complex. A slight aside, but when I was reading up on the current conservation efforts around high seas. There was a theme in some of the public comments I found which were interesting and basically kind of a basic asking is why is it that humans should care about this. One, I haven't got a direct quote was very much that they basically called the ocean just empty space and suggested that actually it's empty space why can't we just use that for dumping plastic like a landfill or something. I feel like you've already demonstrated it's quite a dynamic system of impactors in terms of lots of different ways like fishing, etc. But how do you think this might impact humans if it does continue letting pollution in the marine system continue. I mean so first I just want to respond that like the empty space comment is something that I hear a lot so that is a real challenge that as a science communicator. I'm really trying to get across like it's not empty space. Of course I'm sitting here with you know a background that looks very empty. But a lot of the organisms we see are dark blue, they're living right below the surface. So I can tell you I took this picture while I was collecting life at the ocean surface so there is actually life in this picture it's just camouflaged, or right below the surface where we can't see it so this idea that there's empty space out there that we can just jump, dump all of our trash is fundamentally wrong. But I really understand why people think that because it's it's like a world inverted, you know where we're used to looking at a picture like this on land and all the life is above. And in the ocean we really need to flip it upside down in order to see where all the life is. So one of the impacts of dumping trash on the high seas. One of the challenges is that there are probably a lot of impacts that we're not going to see for a very long time. So one example is a colleague of mine at the Smithsonian who is looking at the presence of non native species on trash, floating across the Pacific. So in 2011 there is a huge tsunami in Japan, a ton of debris from Japan was carried out to see, and we can actually use that debris. To try to understand what impact of sort of large scale plastic distribution might be like. And one of the things that we're seeing is, even now 10 years later, plastic from the tsunami is washing up on US Canadian coasts. And it's carrying non native species that are from Japan that aren't local to our habitat, and these species could potentially colonize they could disrupt local ecosystems they could disrupt local fisheries local industry. We really don't know and if you think about it this is happening on an ocean wide scale all around the world right now. Plastic persists in ways that natural debris does not so woods, things like that that flowed out to see driftwood. That's eventually eaten up by organisms and sinks, right plastic can persist for years, potentially decades, depending on the size of the plastic, carrying organisms across ocean basins. So it's not out there. It's, it's out there but it's also much closer to home, and we will see very surprising impacts that I think probably won't necessarily anticipate or expect. Pollution or debris in the marine environment, not only can transport invasive species across national borders and environments and ecosystems. It sounds like pollution could also help help other species to thrive as well as being negative to other species so is it possible that our impact might also kind of shift as that I suppose what you could say is an ecological balance where some species might actually benefit from pollution to the other species such as Dechman. Oh yeah it's going to change a lot right and so, and, and then one thing I think that's true for a lot of humans and for human industry is that like changes and always the thing that we want right because you know our industries are sort of built on some production of consistency over time, at least in the national environment right and so you're not wrong there are species that probably do benefit from the presence of plastic one example is this little insect called a sea skater. And it's sort of very similar to the little pond skaters you'll see the little spider looking guys that float on the surface of ponds and sort of zip around. They're the only genus of insect that's made it onto the high seas, and these sea skaters lay their eggs on floating debris so there's an increased number of sea skaters in areas with increased plastic and scientists think it's probably because one of the limits to being a sea skater is it's really hard to find floating debris out on the ocean surface. And now there's more of it. The only genus of insect that has made the high seas its home is now being helped by long term ocean plastic so perhaps in the long, very distant future that might lead to a whole new range of species in the ocean. I'd like that idea. I think that's a good idea because that means this plastic. The army for these insects because it's like ocean insects like hanging around your trash, you know, and you're sort of like no female insects. So innocent, and now you're being associated with something that people really dislike, but, but I mean, you know that animals eat these insects to right like these are tasty little snacks for a lot of organisms and so they're increasing other organisms might be increasing. One thing I'm seeing is that, you know, our, our understanding of the surface ecosystem is actually way behind our understanding of plastic on the surface. So we know so much more about the distribution of plastic than we do about the distribution of surface life. So there are all these organisms that have been like eating tons of trash, and there's this big question the back of my mind like why, why albatross like why are you eating all this plastic right I mean your lighters and like doll heads and things that, you know don't look like a squid why are you consuming it and then feeding it to your chicks why turtles and one thing we're seeing is that if you actually look at the composition of their diet and break it down based on where the organisms can be found like right at the surface or in the dark zone or on the floor. It turns out like up to 80% of their diet by volume maybe surface life, 30% of their diet for some of these seabirds. And so now it's like, oh, you know they're going after these things that float and are brightly colored. And for some surface life, things like little by the wind sailors they feel like plastic. So it's like, you wouldn't even necessarily be queued into the fact that it's not pray from the texture. And that kind of changes things so it's sort of like yeah the impact of plastic on open ocean organisms is going to impact different organisms differently. And it's also going to impact organisms based on ecosystem interactions we're just sort of getting a hold up right now. That kind of leads into that question of why is a high seas a big focus for conservation when it's really like we'd know more about the problem than the impacts of it. So there's animals out there like the ballala ballala divide the wind sailors or the For some reason I can only remember the Latin name Glockus Atlantica. The sea dragons. Yeah, we know they exist but we don't necessarily know how the impact of this problem is. And so that I suppose gives motivation to try and influence negotiations for the UNC treating. You know also if I can be totally honest with you like so many of the environmental challenges we're facing right now are sort of literally or figuratively it's on fire, like what do we do. Right, like climate change is happening is launched, you know our opportunity to sort of have intellectual discussions about intervening have passed 40 years ago, right. So now we're just dealing with the consequences and figuring out how do we mitigate it, how do we adapt to it. Gosh, and this is true for so many things that we sort of in my generation have interacted with you know we were like trying to recycle and that's talking to them. We work out for at least plastic super well so now we've got all this plastic everywhere and we're just figuring out like what do we do, how do we deal with this. And the high seas is like one of the only areas that I'm involved in in terms of conservation and sustainability where it's like, oh we actually have the opportunity to sort of step in and build policy around conservation. You know, like, I'm from Arizona. So the western half of the United States which is just burning up right now. Right, we're sort of past the point of having conversations about conservation like it has been impacted. The ship has sailed, but this is one of those very helpful areas where it's like, oh no we might actually be able to conserve and protect some of these ecosystems, you know, before they're like, totally impacted beyond recognition and we're sort of all grieving and trying to recover some of what we've lost does that make sense. Yeah, absolutely, you need to strike. Whilst iron is hot, or I guess the better way is make sure there's no fire. Actually having to fight a fire. Yeah, like, let's make sure the forest is protected. And what we're thinking about we should be protecting it before it so like, right, if to use the current environmental traumas as a metaphor. Yeah. And, you know, one of my favorite analogies is thinking about Central Park, like it would be impossible to set up Central Park now, if you just like went to New York me like you know what this city needs, like a giant pristine park, you know, that's like very well cleaned and like very thoughtfully sort of curated so that you know people in nature can coexist in this really beautiful way like no way that would never happen, you know. But you know someone had the vision of Central Park at a point in time where it was still possible to develop it. It's like the Grand Canyon right now do you know how many housing developments would be on the edge of the Grand Canyon if it wasn't a national park right I mean everyone will live there it's such an amazing place but we've conserved it we've protected it we've set it aside for the benefit of future generations, and thank goodness we did. So, now that we kind of digging deeper into conservation and you mentioned this is now the time where conservation is to be built into the high seas or how the global community approaches the high seas. Is the high seas currently protected at the moment, is there some kind of there is a patchwork of protections for you know specific organisms are habitats, but you know less than 1% of the high seas is fully protected so you know effectively not really at least not from my perspective as someone who does it study sort of large charismatic or economically important organisms at least not at the moment right. We're thinking about sort of biodiversity in the same way we might think about the Amazon rainforest. Is it easy to point to any particular species in the Amazon and say well like, why should I care. Right. Yeah, I mean you could point to a species in the Amazon that hasn't even been described. But then if you look at the Amazon as a whole, you're like okay yeah this is super duper important to like global function the biodiversity in the Amazon is a really important resource for current and future generations. And we're sort of burning a lot of it down right now. And that's, that's a challenge so there is a little tiny bit of protection, but it would be sort of the equivalent of you know protecting like the big cats in the Amazon at the expense of the trees and then sex. So really focusing on the things that have almost immediate value to us as humans but not necessarily having a big picture of the conservation of the ocean. I would say, yeah immediate value or maybe immediate engagement. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned this path patchwork of protections. Is that mean just, there's lots of little parts of the ocean that are protected and a lot of it isn't, or do you also mean that perhaps as some nations have predicted some areas and some have others as potentially a clash in terms of who manages. What. Yeah, there's a little bit of so what I mean that patchwork is sort of thinking about policy very broadly there are certain areas where there is clear policy sort of in place. And, and sort of clear central or centralized sort of community sort of for managing that. So, for example, deep sea mining. There's already some policies that in place for sort of regulating managing deep sea mining on an international scale. You know, is it necessarily biodiversity is focused and conservation focused. You know, but there is at least some policy we can point to and say like okay this is how this resource at the moment is being managed the same as true for fisheries but then when we think about. You know, the pelagic fisheries fisheries they're, you know, super deep down, you know, who are those exactly who's the regulatory body that needs to be console I'm not yeah it's a little bit unclear. And you know that sort of lack of clarity really propagates out to the vast majority of area on the high seas. So that is set to policy. It's not only per the area or where it is where it's protected but also what's been done. You say there's like new emerging industries or taking advantage of this more and more accessible environment. And some of those industries might be more regulated than others basically. Yes, yes, absolutely. And I mean a lot of them are very new and so there's a big question about like well what do we even need to regulate right like what, what do we need to know from environmental perspective, in order to generate policy that really protects our collective interests as you know a human species that is relying on these ecosystems in some form or another. So, if there's a treaty being built at the moment that could potentially have conservation at its end. And the current policy and regulation around conservation is very patchwork it seems as a whole there which could be filled with for example private enterprise or people trying to take this into their own hands at all the conservation efforts by private companies but might be trying to clean up the ocean or anything. Oh interesting so right now you're sort of wondering are they're right yeah yeah there are so there are gosh a variety of different initiatives at various stages of development that are trying to tackle the sort of high seas ocean plastics issues one example. So, a couple would be the ocean cleanup that is trying to go out and collect plastic in a semi autonomous way so without monitoring their impact necessarily. Of course they're launching a prototype this summer and they will be out and they will be sort of looking at the environmental impact. It's unclear what their predicted impact will be so their current setup is they've got two giant ships and then they've got a big net stretching between the ships. And they're just going to drive these ships around with the net in between and try to net all the plastic and life that is at the surface so it's really really difficult to sort out the two. I've been pretty concerned about this effort for a while. I know they've done an environmental impact assessment on their latest design. I can infer from the comments they've made on their environmental impact assessment that it suggests they will potentially have a significant impact on some life at the ocean surface but they haven't publicly released it so I don't actually know what it says. But I think part of that is there's kind of like almost names like interaction between two of the points made previously by it's a incredibly dynamic system of potential risk trade offs such as previously between the ocean and birds getting covered in oil. But also, a lot of this lack of regulation means that if people do see these problems and people are very passionate about trying to solve them. There's still a lack of regulation. Nonetheless, that means private enterprises looking to clean up the ocean might still suffer from a lack of international policy or regulation. So it kind of impacts both potential polluting industries but also people who might just want to go over and clean up the ocean themselves. Yeah, I mean it cuts both ways and so for the ocean cleanup I know they have a unique agreement now with the Netherlands to try to kind of cross the bridge between the United Nations and their particular high seas activities, but we're all stakeholders in the open ocean and one of the problems with this idea that it's just a bunch of trash out there that whales occasionally swim through is that you end up developing cleanup technologies that may actually be worse than the plastic itself. So imagine, you know, a desert with no life in it and there's some plastic, you know, and occasionally, like an antelope or something wanders through. And so you can, you know, envision a bulldozer just coming through to collect all the plastic, as if there's a desert out there, but it's not a desert out there it's more like a meadow and so if you're going to collect all the plastic, you know, in this very coarse bulldozer kind of way, then you're going to end up collecting all the life that the organisms you're concerned about depend on. So it's sort of one of these like does this even make sense from what we know about the ocean surface ecosystem, but then let's be real what we know about the ocean surface ecosystem is very limited. So what do you do in the meantime, you just kind of hope that you won't mess it up and keep going or do you do pause. Yeah, from. And from what you said previously. It might sound like that some species might have a preference for environments of a high plastic density as well. So there's the ocean gyres the garbage patches. Is it other species but are potentially vulnerable because they prefer to live in these denser environments. So we're still not super clear on the ecosystem of the North Pacific garbage patch, but the North Atlantic garbage patch is the sarcastic sea. We don't hear it referred to as a garbage patch as much because we already had a really good understanding of the ecosystem before the plastics issue started to arise. The problem is we don't have that understanding for any of the other garbage patches right and, in fact, I hate the term garbage patch I'm not picking on you. Of course, I use it because it's a way to discuss these areas of the ocean these, you know, convergent zones of the ocean, but still compared to closer to shore. I mean there's still some of the cleanest places on earth right they there's a lot of plastic in the garbage patch relative to other parts of the ocean. They're still compared to like coastal zones. For example, I mean we're looking at a fraction of a percent of total ocean plastic. So this picture behind me was taken in the North Atlantic garbage patch in the sarcastic sea and I mean hello, you know, it's, it looks pretty clean. So even the idea that this is how we tackle the issue is that we go to the farthest place from shore where plastic has been found and collected there, when even by the ocean cleanups own studies we know that up to 98% of plastic that enters the ocean ends up back at the coast. Most of those nasty pictures of the garbage patch that you'll see if you Google the North Pacific, you know, are actually from coastal zones. You can click on the pictures and see like little islands in the background there are no islands in the Pacific garbage patch right so even though we, you know, call it a garbage patch and think about it as this like gross floating island of trash. It's mostly like these very small little flecks of plastic, and then there are ghost nets that are out there and they're not necessarily super easy to find so another organization that's working on sort of cleaning up the patches focusing more specifically on ghost nets. And they're having people tag those ghost nets with satellite trackers, and then they're going and picking them up by hand which really reduces the environmental impact. And I wrap up this section soon and move on to the Q&A and the questions that I've been sent. But firstly, there's a couple of questions left I have for you. And the first one is, so what is the goal then of the current negotiations at UN. What is the next work of conserved areas in or managed areas in the ocean already. What's the end goal from trying to get involved in UN. But the end goal I think is something that is still very much up for grabs right so probably every everybody that's involved in this process has a unique set of goals that they're hoping to see move forward and maybe there's some agreement and there's probably you know some disagreement that needs to be sort of hammered out. For me, you know we're really wanting three things. The first is we want some sort of mechanism for setting aside marine protected areas beyond national jurisdiction. So think about the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or other amazing natural areas of the world wonders of the world. At the moment if those wonders fall beyond the jurisdiction of one nation then there's really no set way to sort of collectively come together humanity together and say, you know, this is special. This is worth protecting, you know, and we're all going to agree that even though, yes, the fish in this area may be delicious. And yes, the minerals in this area may be valuable that it's worth more as a whole than it is for the some of its parts and we're going to protect it using a mechanism like a marine protected area so that's one thing we want is a way to say, this is valuable for the environment. We want to conserve it. The second thing we want is a better mechanism in place that's transparent so that everybody, even if you're not part of the United Nations can be involved for really understanding and evaluating and understanding potential impacts. Right so, you know, it does seem far away, but you know there's a very real possibility that high seas industries will, at some point, impact your life. And so isn't it important if these things may impact your life that you at least have the possibility to understand the potential impacts of those industries on the ecosystem. And be engaged in the discussion so we want environmental impact evaluations continuous monitoring continuous science and we want all that to be very transparent. And part of that transparency means having sort of a central place in governing body that's informed by science that is open, that people can be a part of, and kind of a minimum sort of watch in the same way that you know here in the US it's like you can get your right and you can go sit in on this Supreme Court and you can go sit in on Congress right because it's important that it's for the people by the people and the same, we believe should be true for the high seas. Sure. So, basically, it needs to be transparent. It needs to be as efficient monitoring and it needs to be interconnected as well. So, rather than the patchwork of areas it's an interconnected system with multiple voices to put input on it. Yeah, in a very sort of centralized way so you really know okay where do I go if I want to know what the latest information on this issue is. So, there are lots of other things folded into the treaty genetic resources, things like that, but our sort of hope is, is to sort of push forward these, you know known tested and you know, like scientifically informed mechanisms for conserving biodiversity. Sure. So you mentioned we, if there's people watching us who want to perhaps get involved in what you're doing, and he with in terms of helping push the idea for better high seas conservation, how can they get involved or where can they go to find out more. So, myself and a group of other scientists, 19 incredibly brilliant people is very lucky to work with up, published a letter in science magazine, calling for protection of the high seas, specifically asking for these sort of three wants and hopes. So, we have now available for signature the letter up on our website which you can find right here. You can go to protect the high seas dot marine conservation.org. You can actually also just go to protect the high seas calm and that'll direct you to the same place, add your name to the list. A lot of this work is a little bit like a duck, you know floating at the surface it doesn't look like anything is happening and you're furiously paddling underneath. Right now we're very much in sort of like duck phase of a lot of work is happening behind the scenes and we hope that very soon. We can sort of begin to engage signatories in some of the efforts that we're making right now so if you're interested if you want to get involved. I mean and this is a signatory page that's open for everybody. We really believe of course we want science we want scientifically informed policy, but this isn't just a science policy thing this is like, Hello, all of us on this planet have a vested interest in this issue. So if you care about it, sign and we're going to keep you up to date on the things that we're doing and ways you can help. So, one last thing for me before I ask a few audience questions. And that is, is there a key message you would like people to take away from this conversation regarding ocean conservation or pollution on the ocean at all. What a great question and like, of course, I'm so busy nerding out about the details, you know, I think for me it's, it's more of an emotional message of, of you know we have an opportunity to do something here that hasn't been done in a century or more. And this is a really hopeful, exciting forward thinking time, and being part of this process. I've sort of watched my thinking shift from like 50 years to 100 years to like okay 500 years to what do we want this to look like in 1000 years right. And this is the very beginning of this process. So, you know if you've ever wanted to be involved in something that has the potential to impact generations in a very positive way that is being formed and developed right now. This is it covers half our planet, you know, join us get involved. It's a really exciting time to be alive. Thank you. So, I'm going to go to a final section which is just a few audience questions that I've been sent in. The first one is what can the average person do to help. You've already mentioned to sign up to your letter so people find out that way. I suppose over any direct actions people can do to help with either conservation or marine pollution. It really depends on your personality right because I think that for me this is sort of how I engaged help is you know I see a problem that I'm like, I'm going to go nerd about it for like two or three years. Put together something like very very specific and then publish it and then you know move forward on that level that's kind of how I do things but gosh you know if you like to be outspoken and go protest I would say one thing is to really be on brands. So, I think recycling our plastic reducing our plastic use it's really important it does matter there are individual things that we can do that turn into collective things, but it doesn't make sense if we're not letting brands know. Right so for example if you're not buying coke products anymore because of their plastic issues right one of the number one sort of plastic polluters from a consumer plastic source perspective right so if you're abstaining from that. Make that clear, you know, go on social media and say so, and at them, if you know if you're the kind of person that's like this is how I want to show up and do the work. If you're someone more like me where I'm like, I'm shy but I you know I don't use code products and I, you know I'm working on the science behind the scenes, get involved with us. I would also say that a lot of this change has the potential to happen at the community level so as ironic as this sounds I think it sort of comes back to the fact that we're living this very dispersed life. And so, you know right now in the context of my community thinking about what are we doing about our waste what are we doing about, you know this surplus now of masks and PPE and things like that, and getting involved on that level. I would also say, like, we know nothing about the ocean surface ecosystem so if you have any interest in studying these topics like the it is a wide open field. So, you're a PhD student if you're you know an undergrad and you're like man I want to be involved what can I do, we have way more data questions then we have people to work on them so come join us. We've also got actually on that front, and trying to understand the ocean surface, a new NASA funded citizen science program to understand how and where ocean surface life is distributed so kind of tackling this question of like how do we know where all the garbage patches are but not where all the surface ecosystems are. So if you like to go walk at the beach or sale or surf, or you know maybe just go to the beach once a year. Join our new community science project so it's go see science.org. It's a really fun community monitoring program we have monthly sort of group meetings with the public. We have fellowships available for community members that maybe aren't scientists but are just like really, really into going to the beach and telling us what they see. And that's what I have to do, go to the beach. You let us know what you see there. It's like, so fun and easy so and we're your excuse. So quite a lot you can get involved in terms of research, perhaps for like a research project as an undergrad or postgraduate. To get behind a more policy oriented areas by getting involved in the project you're working with. Direct action either through pressure in the government or companies alongside consumer choices, but also get involved in community groups as well because always just start with a beach cleanup or something right. Yeah, you know it's funny because like beach cleanups do not make the news a lot right but they are like so effective in terms of the amount of trash that's been picked up around the world like beach cleanups are it. I mean people that run beach cleanups are heroes for sure so that's a great way to get involved. So you mentioned monitoring. I've got a question related to that is, can we monitor the impact of pollution well at all. And I think for me that kind of relates back to what we discussed regarding a simple whales versus jellyfish. I mean I assume you can tag a whale but can you take a jellyfish to see how that's impacted. You can tag jellyfish although the field is still being developed, but you know one of the challenges broadly with monitoring is like, okay and sorry my cat has been really good this whole time and now she's decided that she's going to she's going to sing for us. So if that's coming through apologies but anyway, you know with the high seas, you don't really have like a ton of before data, you know so we're thinking like coastal. Before data that's actual data that scientists have gone out and collected or that has been collected through. You know maybe non traditional mechanisms like looking at fisheries catch right how big were the fish that they caught 100 years ago versus today, and you can use that to kind of infer. You know what was that population of fish like 100 years ago versus today. We don't really have a ton of data like that. And so one of the things we need to monitor impact is some semblance of before data, which is what we're trying to do right now. Right so go out there just try to understand these ecosystems on a baseline level. So that then if when these impacts really ratchet up whether it's an oil spill whether it's more classic whether it's you know the continuing impacts of climate change at least now. We're paying attention and we can say okay. These things have changed. They've changed in this direction. There's a strong correlation. Let's design a study to try to figure out if it's a cause. Excellent. So, we should wrap up sooner quickly running out of time. Unfortunately, we're able to get through all the audience questions. I have time for one more though, which is on jellyfish, and it's just asking, are we expecting a jellyfish boom in the future, then. That's a tricky question because it really depends on where you are so maybe only fish blooming is a totally natural part of their life cycle. So this is something that they do every year in the same way that flowers bloom every year. Right, so come spring. It's flower season as policy pollen season it's jellyfish season different species of jellyfish bloom at different times of year, but blooms in itself they're not really surprising and in fact a lot of species depend on these blooms. I know that for example leatherback turtles will follow jellyfish blooms kind of around and just sort of munch within the bloom as jellyfish season advances. I think what the person might be asking is like are jellyfish going to get worse over time. And that was something that scientists were concerned about for a little bit because it did appear that in coastal regions that were heavily impacted by people that there were more jellyfish and less fish and other things. It turns out that a lot of those are actually coming from more local drivers. So there are areas of the world where we're seeing huge increases in jellyfish, but those areas don't necessarily have the same cause in common. So trying to untangle what's the cause for my ocean backyard and how do we address it. So, for example, in my relative backyard near Chesapeake Bay, there are more stinging nettles than there were a couple of decades ago. And part of that at least is because people have been building these great boat docks off their beautiful, you know, sort of canal houses, and those boat docks happen to be favorite habitat for young jellyfish larvae. So, whoops. Now we know, and that's a local problem that you know is going to require a local solution to address it. And that seems to be the case for a lot of jellyfish blooms that we're seeing getting worse, whether there's sort of a global movement. I, you know, I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that's really played out. Yeah. Yeah, because I think what I've seen regarding jellyfish blooms or the future. What are the reports I've seen it seem to suggest that in the future, we're going to have a hot ocean with just jellyfish and we're going to have to eat and survive of jellyfish and some kind of marine water world, bad max scenario. But actually, a lot of it is just down to local changes and it goes back to what we said. Well, what you said earlier where there's a very dynamic system of high variation geographically and through time. A lot of unknowns as well so local but possibly not some huge world wide world wide trend. Well, and one amazing thing that we didn't know before this question was being asked that we have a much better handle on now is that it turns out like everything eats jellyfish. We didn't realize that because when something eats a jellyfish it's like immediately gone so if you're a scientist doing gut content analysis you're not going to see the jellyfish in the stomach of a predator right because it's just water and it's already been digested as like five minute process in it. Now scientists have actually gone out and gone like oh my gosh like all these fishy jellyfish all these turtles the jellyfish. So even if jellyfish do temporarily bloom one of the consequences might actually be. They feed a lot of marine life and sort of potentially that can be a kind of reset to. So, you know initially it was like oh my gosh is it just going to be slime and who even eats these guys and jellyfish burgers and super gross and now it's like oh no no no it's really important part of the ecosystem to. So if all these animals are eating jellyfish maybe we shouldn't be too scared of a jellyfish burger ourselves either. Yeah, you know I mean there are places in the world where jellyfish are super important part of the menu I've eaten jellyfish many different ways salads fried and cupcakes, they're not too bad. It's something to try. And I'm next if I inspiration the kitchen maybe, maybe. But we need to wrap up we've run out of time. So I'd like to say thank you to our guest for back to say for my questions and also to the audience for attending and giving their questions so with that I'll wrap up the webinar. So thank you very much for sending. Thank you so much Simon it's been amazing to be here and wonderful to talk to you today. Lovely to see you too. Bye bye.