The Global Safety Podcast: Safer Oceans

With net zero targets for the shipping industry looming, how can we deliver innovative and long-lasting solutions to decarbonise the maritime industry?

In this episode of The Global Safety Podcast, Tom Heap and his panel of experts explore what we need to do to make our oceans safer, cleaner and more sustainable. We hear from industry thought leaders on the safety of seafarers and what is needed to safeguard workers at sea, insights from underwater cameraman Doug Allan on how overfishing is destroying ocean life and how to reverse habitat destruction, and Ben Fogle on experiencing the power of the oceans first hand when rowing across the Atlantic.

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Episode transcript

TOM: Welcome to the Global Safety Podcast sponsored by Lloyds Register Foundation, this is a series of discussions with global thought leaders, all about engineering a safer world for future generations. And today we're talking about the ocean. When most of us think about the sea, it might be in the context of a beautiful holiday, a walk by the wet staff, or possibly a more bloody and tempestuous day. So it can be a thing of beauty, but also a dangerous place, a poorly regulated place, and sometimes overexploited and polluted place. And yet we need the ocean more than ever before. It provides food to sustain many of us, it provides the transport links for much of the way our materials move around the world. It actually provides a buffer from the worst impacts of climate change and is obviously linked in so many ways to our lives, not least, of course, to what was a maritime nation like the United Kingdom and is still a country. Last time I checked, surrounded by the sea in this episode, we're going to explore the link between safety and environmental protection and sustainability comes to the ocean and marine industries and try to find some answers, solutions where it applies. But first, we're going to hear from a fellow broadcaster who also made his name is an inventor and campaigner, Ben Fogle, who told me earlier why he's passionate about our oceans.

[BEN FOGLE]

TOM: Thanks to Ben Fogal there, we'll hear a little bit more from him later. But now to help me with a deep dive into the subject so that we have a fantastic panel with a brilliant collective wealth and experience, we have Dr. Ruth Pomfrey, who is director of research and strategic programmes for Lloyd's Register Foundation. Ignaz Baker, who is ocean lead for the UN Global Compact, a UN initiative supporting sustainability principles and climate goals, mainly hold technical allergies, mainly how technical analyst for the Green Voyaged 2050 project at the International Maritime Organisation and dug out initially a marine biologist, a research diver, now underwater cameraman who brought many of the most famous images we have in our mind's eye of the undersea world. Many of those came from Doug and many of those came from Doug. So let's start with climate change and emissions. Roughly 90 percent of all products and raw materials are distributed. Roughly 90 percent of all products and raw materials are distributed at some stage, at least by shipping. This means that maintaining and keeping open the flow of maritime trade is absolutely vital to our modern society. But currently, nearly all this industry runs on fossil fuels and this needs to change. So mainly first, simple question, really. What is the IMO doing to try and cut the carbon footprint of shipping? [84.7s]

MINGLEE:It has set itself a target to reduce absolute emissions by 50 percent by 2050 by compared to 2008 levels.

TOM: Let me just wind back about how big are the emissions from shipping and what it may be obvious in a way, but I guess they coming from those big engines that move the ships around. [8.2s]

MINGLEE: Yeah, exactly. I mean, latest studies have shown that in twenty eighteen shipping emitted over one billion tons of CO2. To put that in perspective, that's just a number of accounts for about two to three percent of global GHG emissions, which is about the same as a small, developed industrialised nation, [20.2s]

TOM: Roughly the same as aviation as well. Isn't it that figure? [2.1s]

MINGLEE: Yeah, and I think if you compare it to other industries like cement, for example, they emit sort of three billion tons of CO2 annually. That's quite a lot more. I think I just want to stress how shippings shipping is the most energy efficient mode of transportation. So if you think about emissions per ton of cargo transported, there is no comparison. The amount of cargo that's being transported on ships, it's the shipping is the most efficient way of transporting goods and say that even though the absolute emissions are high, it's really to do with the scale of the goods that's being transported. And as you mentioned, you know, 90 percent of goods being transported are transported by sea. There are, of course, different solutions out there so that technical solutions and technologies that can be deployed on a ship like to, for example, air lubrication, which reduces the frictional resistance, so therefore reducing fuel consumption, which in turn reduces emissions. [There's operational measures. So things like improving your speed or speed optimisation, improving your voyage, planning, so ensuring that you don't navigate into stormy weather, which would increase your fuel consumption. But then, of course, I think this recognition that only those technical and operational solutions will get us so far. And if we want the majority of emission reductions to achieve the goals that have been set, we'll need to come from the use of alternative fuels.  

TOM: Yeah, it's interesting how much you can achieve through making ships more slippery, isn't it?  

MINGLEE: Yeah, exactly. And I think it's really important to recognise that the shipping industry is so diverse and so many different types of ships operating in different areas in different waters. And so the solutions that will be employed to achieve that target, to reduce those emissions is going to be different for every ship type. And that's why, although I may follow this gold based approach and not being too prescriptive on what? Technology should be deployed. I think it also encourages innovation because it means that we're not just limiting ourselves to the solutions that exist today. [20.6s]

TOM: Yeah, but Ruth this is a tough nut to crack, isn't it? Because I guess ships are still being built today with pretty hefty diesel burning engines, which are expected to be on the seas for, what? Twenty five, 40 years I don't know. [12.5s]

RUTH: Absolutely, Tommasino. It's one of the very interesting things we think about the ocean in a bigger context is the very long life span that the things we're building today have. And that's why I think it's a real opportunity here for us to think forward, to think about. Right. If we're going to have ships which are zero carbon or carbon neutral in 10, 20 years time, actually, we've got to not only think about the ships, we've got to think about the way they're crewed. We got to think about whether they're loaded, whether fuel for them comes from and and the kind of work they do on the oceans as well, although they're just to take things from A to B or can they serve additional uses going forward.  

TOM: Doug, you want to come in?

DOUG: It's interesting, Tom, I was just reading in preparation for this debate, these things go flattener routers, which are basically big vertical sales and the power basically you get them to spend slowly and that and that affects the win for them and can add to the thrust that's on the ship and can also make it very much more manoeuvrable and recently put these things on know hundred and fifty thousand ton and gas tankers, things that carry gas and are getting 20, 20 percent less fuel that they're using with these things. They can also manoeuvre them much more subtly and carefully. And I also interested to the idea of taking air out of the sale of ships hulls to make them slide through the water more easily. That is a technique that is used a lot by icebreakers when they get into sticky slush. Yeah, a lot of them say to them their bubbles up the state of the hull reduces the friction and so lets the ship move through through the ice more easily.

TOM: Ignace do you think the shipping industry is moving fast enough on this. On this. [3.9s]

IGNACE: I think we have to be a bit more ambitious than what I heard right now. To be honest, I think you going to a net zero world by 2050 should be our global ambition. Of course, in the shipping industry is not the biggest emitters, but it's still an emitters. And we know that the shipping industry will grow in the next years and so emissions will grow as well. So for now the industry is mostly looking at green hydrogen or green ammonia as the main solution. As Minglee said, there will be a set of solutions that will be no single silver bullet. Are there some, sizeable ships being built or planned with actually that as they're propulsion. [5.2s]

MINGLEE: Yeah, there's definitely some pilot demonstrations that are taking place. There are definitely investments. I think it's important to recognise that in order to get a ship that runs on hydrogen or ammonia, it's there's a lot more infrastructure that supports that to enable that to take place. So it's not just that it's actually on the ports in terms of storage, in terms of handling, even just in terms of the propulsion system, because these new fuels are not as energy dense as as heavy fuel oil. The traditional conventional fuels are being used currently. So there might be issues in terms of storage or how much can be stored on board. [40.7s]

TOM: Isn't the problem here Ruth is that this is a highly competitive and lightly regulated area. So, you know, different companies, different countries want to compete against each other.

RUTH: That's right. Tom I think it's a difficult one. Uses an analogy of turning around an oil tanker and literally we're turning around that oil tanker. We were trying to change something which has got so much long term planning, long term costs, long term investment in it, which isn't thought through end to end. So if you if you look at the other end of a ship lifespan, you know, how are we going to dismantle these things safely? How are we going to to the end of end of life of big ships and these and and all this equipment that we're going to need to make this safe. So there's a real, real lack of end to end thinking and big picture thinking. And I think that's what we've got to do. [35.4s]

TOM: And how do we achieve that? [1.9s]

RUTH: So I think we can't leave that just to countries. And I don't think we can leave that to sort of the big convention type talk. You know, if we look at where big decisions are made, they're made in the investment. Markets are made in companies, and we have to change the way investment is made. We have to raise consciousness of what the consequences of those investments are for our planet and for our people. And that's what I want to really advocate in this discussion, because we have to change our way of thinking, and that's everybody. But starting with investment starts and company behaviour and talking about countries as well, I think countries for sure have a role here. [38.6s]

TOM: If you are building a low carbon ship, maybe a ship based on a zero carbon form of propulsion, you ought to be able to borrow money more cheaply to build it or something like that. It should be easier to find finance for that than it should be for a programme of building those based on Bunkerville. [20.2s]

RUTH: I certainly agree with that, Tom. I I'm not an expert myself in in finance either. But I do think that we have to think about the true value of the things that we use, consume and where they come from and the cost of those to the environment and to the humans in doing that. So if I think about just a very simple thing, I was at a dinner the other night and there was a plate of seafood on a lovely plate of seafood, mixed seafood. And my friends, I said, oh, my goodness, look at the price of that. How can they charge such a huge price for this plate of seafood? And I looked at the plate. I thought, how can it's not expensive. It's actually very cheap. You know, the price of it didn't reflect the cost to the environment or the cost to the people who had to work so hard to get that plate of fish put on that plate. That's why I think we need to change our thinking. [49.5s]

DOUG:I was just going to say that on the news today, I have that there was a debate finally about Tanni the problem with all food production, no matter where it comes from, and is that it's it's designed to come cheap. The system tries to make it as cheap as possible. And there is no price factor then for the damage to the natural world caused by the link of pesticides on land or fishing methods on the sea or the way that we get it for me to be. And, you know, people really need to start thinking about many things in a different way. We need a quantum leap and the criterion how we will run our economics. Basically, we we have all the wrong methods of establishing efficiency, for example, and the carbon cost is just not built into things at the moment. [54.8s]

TOM: Let's just stick on carbon and climate for a minute, but move away from shipping in one of the ways that the sea can can help us, can provide solutions by the nature based or maybe sort of semi nature based in the form of aquaculture. [13.5s]

IGNACE: And there is much more that needs to be done in order to really tap the full potential of the ocean. And here I'm thinking about renewable energy and the potential of offshore wind, which really needs to be scaled up. There is the potential off of the seafood industry, I think, producing low carbon protein for our growing population that the industry, such as aquaculture, as a big potential. We know aquaculture has many challenges, but also has great potential if we are able to overcome the issue, such as overuse of pesticides or. [25.0s]

TOM: how do we do it? Right. Because we know in some ways it's an efficient form of protein production. In other ways, you know, it's emptying a lot of chemicals and fish sewage into the sea and causing some horrendous local environmental impacts. [13.3s] Well, I get

IGNACE: one of the couple of solutions that the market is looking at, for instance, is creating some and then biodiversity system around the farm, such as the seaweed, which will help create some biodiversity or enhanced biodiversity around the farm. And if you are able to to create this small, thriving ecosystem or ocean, it will help reduce the need to use pesticides, medicines and fish feed. Then there is certainly a lot of work that needs to be done when it comes to fish feed. As you may know, follow how we must feed fish in aquaculture farms by fishing fish in the ocean and then give it to to do to to the fish in the farm. 

TOM: I want to ask Doug do you dive solely in beautiful natural environments. We have a dive, I don't know, near near a fish farm or or anything else like that. [9.8s]

DOUG: Well, you have those fish farms. It's interesting. You can see there there, to be honest, the toxic effect of them underneath the fish cages is often an area bereft of life because as Ignacio's just said, the feed from pellets which just get thrown into the water effectively, not all of them are settled on the bottom. And you get this large, sludgy mass underneath and you can see the effect of that the further you go from the immediate fish payme. And and. Yeah. Certain areas of the world are the oceans are in very good condition, but seven of them are certainly degraded because of the pollution that's caused either locally or by, you know, plastic pollution is a big thing, spreads all over the place. So, yes, I don't always we always seek out the virgin areas. But equally well, we've got this problem of the baseline. If you talk to an old colleague, mine cameraperson older than me, they will tell you what Africa or the Red Sea was like before I started diving down. And I consider those places to be lovely. They will often say, ah, you should have seen it 30, 40 years ago, and that goes for the Mediterranean. If you go back the Mediterranean 100 years, it was know like a virgin ocean. And the way that we've carried on with the factories on the seashore, things like that. And just irresponsible pollution has definitely spread through many of the oceans in the world. [90.7s]

TOM: I want to move on to what is perhaps the obvious historic and current way in which we most strongly affect our cities, and that is by literally fishing the fish out of them. Doug, have you seen places that in your diving life time have changed as a result of overfishing? [6.2s]

DOUG: Yes, I could take you to areas of Scotland where bottom trawling has caused an incredible amount of damage, and I imagine someone say that's akin to imagine someone in a balloon floating above the clouds, sending down a giant net and just scooping up everything that net could throw across. It would come up full of cars and people and clowns and all grannies and everything like that, if all sorts of stuff that we didn't want. And it's the same when you when you start of you may be looking for fish or shellfish just under the surface or fish that live in the mud. But to get those fish, you have to trawl along into the mud holding up everything. And it really just leaves the place as it dissolves. And it's a classic case of if we leave that kind of thing on land, it would have been banned long ago because we can't see it, because you can't see what's happening and still gets carried on.

TOM: Isn't a problem with fishing that we see all over the world is that if you have a single, very powerful authority on top, it is usually capable or can be capable of successfully regulating the fishing. You really see, you know, in the old days in Europe, Iceland managed to protect its fish stocks because it was the only one responsible and it was matter to them. So they enforced it, whereas the European Union made the right Horlicks out of it. Isn't this the problem that you need a single authority with the will to enforce a fishing regime? [31.6s]

RUTH: I think it's certainly true that if you have the possibility of a single authority with good enforcement, then you can create big change. But what I would like in the oceans to at the moment is, is the old American Wild West. So if you think about essentially an area which is overexploited and unexplored, where you have landgrab, happening, where industrialisation happens without any planning or without any regulation. And that's how I think about the oceans. And that's what I think we need to avoid. That is the the concept that I think we should move forward with, because essentially we've talked about fishing. Fishing has become hugely industrialised in an uncontrolled way, without forethought, without planning. We need fish, fish, fish sustains so many human beings. And we have to think about the people in the system completely. But unless we have good structured planning, not just for fishing, but for offshore oil, offshore wind, for our shipping, for any kind of new activities that we do at sea, which and there will be many more new activities that we do at sea. But we need to do that in a controlled way which which recognises the rights of our planet and also the rights of the people working in those conditions. And that's one of the things we haven't talked about yet is, is the people who are out there working on the ships in fishing oil rigs. So so that's an important step. I think we need to look at it holistically, right. To the planets and rights for the people. [96.3s]

TOM: you've got a concept about us becoming better ocean citizens can you tell me what that means? [2.0s]

RUTH: if we look out to the future, we are so dependent on the oceans already. But we're going to be increasingly dependent on the oceans, not only in the open ocean, but also at the ocean margins for our food, for energy, for our resources, our transportation. So many things. And I'm looking to that future of looking at 10, 20, 30 years and thinking, what do we need to do to get there safely and sustainably? What are the things that we're going to need in place? And so I've got a concept of ocean citizenship here because we all know what it's like to be a citizen of our countries. We have rights and responsibilities and they're controlled by our state. But when you step out into the oceans, hoo hoo hoo gives you your rights and who gives you your responsibilities. And I think we need a charter of rights and responsibilities for all those companies, individuals, countries who are using the oceans in in such an unsustainable way. And to and to. Have an enforceable way of articulating those rights and responsibilities, and I do think that comes back to investment. I think if you're investing in something where people don't have the right to be safe and if the planet doesn't have the right to be treated in a sustainable way, then you shouldn't be investing. But we can come together and articulate that without big conventions, although that would be helpful. We we can do it as companies are our citizens. And that's that's the sort of out of sight, out of mind. I want to bring the oceans into the minds of people [84.3s]

TOM: No longer out of sight, out of mind or under the waves. It's got to be you've got to open it up and make it visible. [4.6s]

RUTH: Absolutely. There are places that we can't go, but we can know, and that's the oceans we need to we need to know the oceans even if we can't go there [8.0s]

TOM: Talking of to hear knowing the oceans. I think somewhere that you've explored and dives a lot is the the Antarctic and some of the waters around there. I think I'm right in saying that they actually have been quite successful with some of the the governance regimes over seals and indeed fish in the South Atlantic, is that right? [18.8s]

DOUG: Yes. The Antarctic is covered by the Antarctic Treaty, which was a great deal of force signed in the early 60s and has been renegotiated twice. So effectively, everything south of 60 degrees is interesting. It's not. It's not it's controlled by by a scientific committee of the Antarctic. Politics, to the largest degree have kept out of it. Not always. But you do have this wonderful association of basically scientists who are looking after inside Antarctica and the waters around Antarctica, but designated as basically a giant area of scientific interest. But within that, we've got large marine areas like the Ross Sea dependencies, which is a giant marine park. And so generally, you know, Antarctic waters are very well looked after because I think that you can isolate any group of water from any other body of water, just like you can't put a bell jar over somewhere that's being affected by climate change and stop it. [23.4s]

TOM: But it seems to me it does have a lesson in that. Absolutely. The key thing is study it well, make a plan. [6.9s]

DOUG: Yes. Keep the politicians out [1.7s]

TOM: And keep the enforcers in [2.4s]

TOM: Just briefly, before I move off this Audi me briefly with you might know about this. I mean, these days with enforcement of satellites can do a lot of work for us, can't they? I've seen those there's global maps where every ship that's legally supposed to have a kind of a transponder on it is showing you where it is. So it's a little bit more difficult to hide these days in the wild west of the ocean. [20.0s]

RUTH: Absolutely. I think this is a huge opportunity here with increased monitoring of our planet to actually make a big difference. Now, we've seen this in a forest already on land and forestry maintenance, in forestry, conservation and even in citizen science. The Forest Service, great. This is great programme where schools adopt little piece of forest and then they monitor it for any changes and they adopt the trees. They can recognise every single tree in the forest in the Amazon. I'd like to see something similar happened to the oceans. I'd like to see a big global citizen science project where we use the resources. We start to know and study and adopt certain parts of the ocean so that we don't leave out of sight, out of mind. But we can use satellite imagery. We can use the sort of telecommunications we can we can bring that part of the ocean into our lives and make it that be more accountable and adopt it and look after it in a different kind of way. [53.0s]

DOUG: I just I think you're right. And this is where science can come in, too. We could put barcodes on every single box of fish that was landed and check that fish when it was brought ashore to find out we have fish stocks where it originated. And this sort of thing is definitely more capable of being done now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Yes. [22.0s]

TOM: Well, moving on now, I want to talk about the people involved in all of this and our marine industries, including fishing, shipping and some other offshore trades, can be very, very dangerous to work in. And we're going to hear briefly from Ben Fogle again. Now, who knows a thing or two about the perils of the high sea? [20.1s]

[BEN FOGLE]

TOM: Ben Fogle, they're talking about how unforgiving the ocean can be. And I want to talk about some of those perils, but I don't know whether this might be one for Minglee just in recent years. I'm I'm a recent year, let's say at least the last 50 years, I guess, has the safety, general safety of shipping improved? [22.5s]

MINGLEE: Absolutely, the sea is a really challenging working environment itself. You know, for many of us, shipping is is out of sight and out of mind. And we might not realise that the seafarers are out there in the oceans for long periods of time and don't get to to come back for for long periods of time. And so you not only have a physically challenging environment, difficult conditions, that long hours of work, and they're very isolated with limited Internet access or assistance if anything goes wrong.

TOM:  But I'm guessing that has been improving for the last 50 years or so many people behind that.

RUTH: It's been a huge increase in new kinds of regulations which have been very successful in helping the average seafarer. So I guess what I say is that there's less people at sea. So there's smaller crews on ships, so fewer people being put it at risk and there's much better telecommunications. So the satellite systems that serve our ships have have improved hugely over the last 50 years

TOM: I'm guessing that satnav makes it a lot harder to crash a ship into the shore than it used to be. [5.2s]

MINGLEE: Certainly, navigational systems have improved greatly. Autopilot systems have improved greatly. There's lots of. Yes. Systems on board that now with technology advancements make it a lot easier and communication has improved. So just communication between the port and the ship has improved a lot as well. [20.4s]

RUTH: I think the thing to recognise is it was has been a huge leap forward in safety and being a mariner, being a sailor is still one of the most risky occupations that you can have with long term consequences to things like mental health, long term health conditions. And and that's just mariners. Now, if we look if we look at the worker at sea more generally. So we talked about fishing and fishermen. I think it's the most hazardous occupation. Many thousands of fishermen die every year in doing their work. And that is that that is one of the unrecognised things about about the fish that ends up on your plate is the huge danger that that goes into securing that that fish in the market or the fish on your plate. So it's a mixture of different things. There's a mixture of local artisanal fishing. And then there's what we've talked about already, which is the industrialised type fishing. And some of that is very unregulated. And there's some very interesting journalists working out there who are trying to expose some of the practises and the human rights abuses that do happen in the fishing industry and in and in the maritime industry as well at different scales. but you're in coastal margins. So there is often more hidden problems around smaller scale fishing or the sort of ferry industry which is also has been unsafe. There has also made great leaps forward more recently as well, I would say. So the ferries is fishing. And if we go into things like even if you look at things like oil rigs, you look at the kind of accidents and problems that have been happening at sea in the oil and gas industry, and they are thinking forward. Let's look then at the offshore wind turbines. This is still hugely hazardous jobs and we haven't built in. This is my point. We haven't built in the safety requirements that we should have built in even looking forward. So this is why, as Ignacio says, we need to manage those oceans. We need to put in place the infrastructures to keep people safe, whatever job they're doing at sea, whether it's having telecommunications that you can you could send out an alert where you can communicate with your family or replacing a lot of those hazardous jobs of robots and systems which which automate the processes and take people out of harm's way. [66.9s]

TOM: But I think there are some issues around bonded labour, if not actual sort of slave labour on some some vessels, certainly some of the sort of medium sized fishing vessels that have, you know, crews and basically no passports. [14.3s]

RUTH: I think that's right, Tom. I think if you if you you can do a quick Google search and you can find projects like the Outlaw Ocean with some horrendous stories and about people who these are real people with real lives and real families and the kind of conditions that they're working with and their lack of rights in the jobs they do. These are you know, we've done a lot of work looking at modern slavery, and there's still undoubtedly conditions of modern slavery in many of the jobs that we find at sea. And that is something that we'd like to change in this sort of concept of having proper citizenship where where every every right and every life and the oceans themselves are enshrined in some sort of rights and responsibilities that we can sign up to meagrely. [45.9s]

TOM: why is it being an issue during the pandemic and how is it affecting Cruise? [3.1s]

MINGLEE: Well, I mean, many of us have been able to work from home. Seafarers have obviously kept the supply chains going throughout this pandemic and have sustained, you know, vital supplies of of PPE, personal protective equipment, vaccines, medical equipment and cargo. It's all sort of like they've been due to travel restrictions that can change quite rapidly as we know it. They can sort of change from one night to the other countries and in different restrictions on on people being able to enter or leave the country. And that has meant that seafarers are unable to change their crews as regularly as they might have wanted to stop them. Exactly. And they've been stuck. And we've seen cases of up to two years. They've been on board. And this is well beyond their contracts. And I think that's obviously a huge risk as such. We were talking about hazards and and the stress or fatigue. You're more prone to making mistakes. We all know that if we're really tired, we're just more prone to to to making errors. And of course, that can lead to loss of cargo and pollution, but also it could mean a loss of life. You know, it's quite dangerous. And so Omobono is is advocating for seafarers to be designated as key workers to just to smooth that and enable seafarers to get on board and and go back home and to come off. And so to enable that change to take place and also to give them priority access to vaccines if possible. That's also what I am advocating, because you seafarers are travelling internationally between different different countries and it's important that we protect them. [100.8s]

TOM: Ruth you want to comment briefly that [1.1s]

RUTH: I just want to say hats off to the IMO with what they've done during the pandemic to raise this as an issue. I think we have seen on social media and different types of media some recognition of the work of seafarers which which was  before invisible and is becoming more visible. But we've still got a long way to go. So I just, you know, two years on board, the ship is a prison sentence in any other country. So without any rights to travel or you're confined. So I think we really do need to work hard for the rights of seafarers and other people at sea. [31.2s]

IGNACE: Yeah, I just wanted to make two points. First of all, on the issue of of of the fishing industry and slavery and fishing fishermen, Beatrice, I think there is regulation. And here again, all about enforcement. There is regulation to have observers on board fishing fleets. But only two to five percent of fishing fleet are observer, independent observer on board. So this is, I think, a critical issue. The second point is about this area. I think it's also beyond government support for global value chain efforts that needs to be done. And companies have a role to play when they orders or, you know, of interaction with the shipping industry to set in the contracts, proper protection for seafarers, make sure that basic human rights are respected, et cetera. So I think companies in the contract have a direct role and even obligation to make sure seafarers rights are respected in the value chain. [65.7s]

TOM: So we've had a look at the people. We've had a look at the nature of the seas, and we've had to look at the climate threat. I just want to get as a final thought from folk kind of vision of what you would hope our oceans would look like, both on top and beneath and what they'd be doing for us, let's say, and do it for themselves in 30 years time. Let's start with you. All our oceans be like in 2050, would you hope, if everything went according to plan? [28.2s]

MINGLEE: I think there is a big challenge ahead of us, but I am optimistic. There's a lot more awareness of what's going on with our oceans now. And the more we raise awareness that will keep consumers are more aware of the choices that they're making. And I think all of this creates the right conditions to accelerate decarbonisation.

TOM: Ruth, paint me a picture of our oceans in 2050, [2.2s]

RUTH: Now what I would like to see is, is that not only do we make oceans more visible, so let's let's understand them us know what's going on in the oceans in the most natural sense. You know what what what are the creatures? What are the support was what is the flora and fauna there in our oceans, but also to understand the industries which are being built and in our oceans. And then as we build out those industries for our oceans, they're built in a planned and well managed way. So it's not a Wild West that we have the right support structures. Then we have emergency services, we have support services, we're all sharing the same electricity and the same water in the same utilities that we're going to need at sea that we do on land, and that we articulate the rights and responsibilities of all people towards the oceans, whether we work on them or work far away from them. We all affect them and we all need to respect them. [54.3s]

TOM: Yes, what are your what's your vision of the ocean, 20, 50? [3.4s]

IGNACE: Well, I guess for me, will be a stronger global recognition of the role of the ocean when it comes to to tackle the biggest challenge of our time, which is climate change, but also being able to deliver a more equitable and sustainable global economy. We need a much more a much better management of the ocean if we want to protect it, but also better use the ocean for all it has to to to give to us. [14.3s]

TOM: Thank you. And Doug [0.6s]

DOUG: Well, I would I mean, I have some very interesting things listening to all these people. I would like to see all the actions that we are proposing could put into action because we need to save the oceans. We need to save the oceans for the sake of the oceans and particularly for ourselves. The lungs of the planet are not only the Amazon, but they are the oceans. I think climate change is a big issue. What we need are fewer words and more actions. We have to do things. We have to do big things. We have to do them very, very quickly that we we will have an ocean to look at in 50 years time. [36.8s]

TOM: Not sure whether I like it or don't like it when the final speaker steals, my final thoughts are very lucid, but you well, thank you to everybody. And Doug Allianz kind of said it really by 20, 50, I guess we'd like to see our oceans protected because that would protect us. That would be good for the creatures that live within it as well as us, the creatures that live beside it. We cannot maintain this planet unless the blue part of it is healthy. Well, thank you very much for listening to what has been a fascinating programme. And thank you to the panel. Dr. Ruth Pomfrey in Bangor, Maine, Molly Hope and Doug Allen. And remember the search for us, the Global Safety Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts and follow or subscribe for free so you don't miss a single episode. I’m going to put my wet suit on.

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