“Developing global consensus on how methods should interoperate and evolve into best practices is a major challenge on the path to realizing the Ocean Decade’s ambitions.” The Ocean Practices for the Decade Programme (OceanPractices) supports all ocean stakeholders in securing, equitably sharing, and collectively advancing your methodological heritage. By engaging diverse communities of practice, OceanPractices can transform how science and other stakeholders align their interests/capacities, creating and using practices to promote sustainable human and ocean well-being.
The Ocean Practices created a framework of high-level objectives to guide programme actions and define and monitor outcomes. These objectives are:
OceanPractices will be implemented through the following activities. Over the Decade, these Activities will be updated in response to changing needs.
OceanPractices Ambassadors: The early career Ocean Practices Ambassadors are representing diverse voices, actively promoting the access and implementation of ocean best practices in the field, thereby raising awareness, building trust, and shaping ocean best practices across the entire ocean value chain. Read more here .
OceanPractices Federated Network: OBPS is not the only aquatic and ocean sciences Methodology Management System (MMS). The establishment of the OceanPractices Federated Network will facilitate a coordinated approach across MMS from individual institutions or enterprises. This will enable MMS that may be siloed and often inaccessible, to interoperate and offer federated searching. Read more here .
OceanPractices Community of Practice: This COP is available to all members of other Decade Actions who have an interest to adopt or create and share superior methods for every activity in the ocean information value chain, from research to operations to applications. Read more here .
The outcomes currently envisioned are:
Advocating for humane capture fisheries to support ocean and fisheries sustainability
(Region: Global; Lead Institute: Aquatic Life Institute). .
Every year, 2-3 trillion individual aquatic animals are caught in the wild and killed for human consumption. Yet, animal welfare for aquatic animals lags far behind that of farmed land animals. Our Fisheries Welfare Project at Aquatic Life Institute aims to incorporate aquatic animal welfare considerations at legislative, corporate policy and industry standard levels. Commendable efforts are already being made to steer towards more humane capture fisheries. We work closely with policy-makers, seafood certifiers and businesses along the seafood supply chain to advocate for the widespread adoption of these progressive practices
(Region: Australia, Lead Institute: NESP Marine and Coastal Hub)
This project aims to advance the establishment and use of national practices to monitor the condition status of priority values and pressures of Australia’s marine estate. We will achieve this by building on a previous project to produce three new national standards for monitoring (drop cameras, socioeconomic surveys of marine users. marine microplastics). We will also develop a practical implementation plan to embed the application of standards, with particular attention to inclusive and diverse approaches (e.g., engagement of community groups and Indigenous partnerships). The plan will set out a future path to develop, maintain and make available national standards; increase their uptake; and assess effectiveness and impact as related to the delivery of priority marine monitoring activities. The resulting national framework will be of use to other countries and regions seeking to develop and maintain their own ocean best practices to ensure a sustainable marine estate.
Ocean Community: Engaging through the use of best practices
(Region: Global, Lead Institute: IFREMER)
Global and regional perspectives of the ocean are essential in addressing climate and sustainability. To understand a global ocean. similar and interoperable methods are needed for in situ and remote sensing observations. data management. analyses as well as creation of products and services. To use similar methods in regions with different levels of infrastructure. methods must be adapted to local and regional capabilities. yet remain interoperable and transparent. The project addresses this challenge through active participation of experts. early career scientists. and indigenous knowledge holders in many global regions. This work will leverage the initial pilot in the OBPS Task Team 22:01 “Coastal observation for Under-Resourced Countries” and will be enriched by partners in LDC and SIDS. The efforts address all aspects of the ocean community incl. citizen science in support of broader ocean science. options for lower cost quality instrumentation will also be examined
Cross sector collaboration grows circular economy
(Region: Australia, Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC)
Australia has a waste problem, with the highest per capita material footprint in the world, the third lowest rate of manufacturing self-sufficiency in the OECD and a circular economy that is half the global average. Circular economy is an economic model that aims to retain the value of circulating resources, products, parts and materials through a system that allows for renewability, long life, optimal (re)use, refurbishme nt, remanufacturing, recycling and biodegradation. Circularity is based on three integrated principles: designing out waste and pollution; keeping products and materials in use; and regenerating natural systems. The FRDC Circular Economy project uses cross-sector, cross-industry and transnational initiatives to identify circular opportunities, develop stakeholders’ circular capacity and capability; and showcase success stories that together will increase adoption of circularity throughout Australian fishing and aquaculture and improve ocean outcomes.
Creating Capability, Capacity & Culture Change
The need to develop capability and capacity within Australian fishing and aquaculture is a key sectoral challenge. Over the next decade, 41% of Australian agriculture, forestry and fisheries jobs will be transformed by technology. One in three new jobs created in these industries will be tech-related, making digital and data literacy essential. People who can lead, solve problems, think differently and adapt are critical to the success of Australia’s fishing and aquaculture sector and increasing ocean health. Increased capability and capacity will be delivered using three initiatives: 1. Investing in people to strengthen capability and capacity, showcasing career and development pathways to enable and empower our future workforce 2. Establishing shared principles, values and trust through new ways of working to enable culture change and adoption 3. Developing confidence, resilience and courage to solve problems, manage uncertainty, respect and support each other
(Region: Netherlands, Metabolic Foundation
Surfside Science is an initiative to co-develop and validate low cost and replicable methods for coastal environmental monitoring on SIDS , making use of remote sensing and low-cost electronics. The goal is to identify which methods can contribute to improving access to data collection systems on small islands, with all methods and findings documented and shared openly. The approach focuses initially on Surfside Bay in Aruba as a case study, and includes development and testing of field monitoring stations, protocols, and remote sensing tools that can be expanded across the island and replicated on other islands. The initial set of parameters to be tested includes to following areas of environmental monitoring: • Air Quality: Particulate matter, humidity and temperature • Water Quality: pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and electrical conductivity • Coastal Change: Vegetative cover, coastline, size of reef islands • Seafloor Mapping: Seafloor cover, including shallow reef and aquatic vegetation Instructions for every step of the process are written up and shared for others to replicate, including protocols for processing of underwater imagery, construction of monitoring stations, adaptation of scripts for satellite imagery analysis, building of localized databases, connecting to our data portal, and further validation.
Co-Coordinators: Dr Rebecca Zitoun, Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), Hobart, Tasmania, Australia Prof. Aileen Hwai Tan, Universiti Sains, Malaysia decade@oceanbestpractices.org OceanPractices (COP) on the Stakeholder Network: https://forum.oceandecade.org/topics/30867/home
