Cabot Conversations: Ocean floor – An Alien Commons?

 

Image Credit: Cabot Institute

 

 

Transcript:

 

00:00:07 Cabot Institute 

Welcome to Cabot conversations produced by the Cabot Institute for the Environment at the University of Bristol. 

00:00:13 Cabot Institute 

We are a diverse community of 600 experts united by a common cause protecting our environment and identifying ways of living better with our changing planet. 

00:00:23 Cabot Institute 

This podcast series brings together our experts and collaborators to discuss complex environmental challenges and solutions to climate change. In this episode, Doctor Kate Hendry and Doctor Lawrence Publicover discuss the ocean floor, an alien Co. 

00:00:37 Cabot Institute 

Means you can find out more about the Cabot Institute for the environment at bristol.ac.uk/cabot. 

00:00:51 Dr Kate Hendry 

So I’m Kate Hendry. 

00:00:52 Dr Kate Hendry 

And I’m an associate professor in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, and I’m an oceanographer. I study marine science specialising in the chemistry of the oceans. 

00:01:03 Dr Laurence Publicover 

I’m Laurence publicover. I work in the English department at the University of Bristol. I work principally on 16th and 17th century literature, but my other area, which is I guess, the area that I’m I’m working on more and more these days is oceanic literature and and more broadly, relations between humans and oceans. So I’m interested in voyages and shipboard culture and and. 

00:01:23 Dr Laurence Publicover 

That more kind of maritime studies area, but I’m also interested in in ideas about the deep ocean and the sea bed. And it’s the sea bed that we’re focusing on today. But we thought it might be useful first to kind of set that up by talking about the oceans more broadly. Didn’t we care and particularly the kind of environmental pressures that they’re? 

00:01:42 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah. 

00:01:44 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah, absolutely. And and I can kick off, I mean it’s, one of the main reasons that we studied the ocean is, umm, they play a really key role. Uh, in climate change and and they also house a huge amount of biodiversity. That’s really important for for society. And you know, for biodiversity sake as well, I suppose. 

00:02:04 Dr Kate Hendry 

but the oceans are also really sensitive to climate change, so there are lots of these these feedbacks that are set up between oceans and climate. And of course, they’re also vulnerable to pollution and other man made disturbance. 

00:02:21 Dr Kate Hendry 

UM so. 

00:02:23 Dr Kate Hendry 

I guess just to sort of unpack that a little bit in terms of the role of oceans in climate, one of the the main reasons that they that the oceans play a role in climate is that they house a lot of microscopic life, algae and these algae take up carbon from the atmosphere, they they photosynthesize. They lock this carbon up inorganic. 

00:02:43 Dr Kate Hendry 

Matter and when these algae die, the the cells sink to the sea floor and. 

00:02:49 Dr Kate Hendry 

That’s where the the the the dead matter can become buried so that carbon is sequestered away. We call it sequestration, and it’s locked away from the atmosphere. So it’s really important that process is so key in controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. And, you know, I suppose that’s where the sea floor. 

00:03:09 Dr Kate Hendry 

Comes into it really. 

00:03:11 Dr Kate Hendry 

Uhm. 

00:03:12 Dr Kate Hendry 

But uhm yeah, I’m. I’m also interested in in thinking about how we communicate these processes, cause I think you know they are really really key for understanding climate. But they’re not very straightforward. So I mean, so, so turning it but back to you really Laurence, you know what what interests you about that the the space of the deep ocean and the sea floor. 

00:03:34 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Well, I suppose one of the things that does interest me about it and that has interested so many authors. I mean poets, playwrights, novelists, about. 

00:03:44 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The deep sea and the sea bed is precisely that issue of knowledge. It is the site that seems, you know, relative to the rest of the of the Earth and the biosphere, kind of, the Biome alien. Different. We don’t know much about it, we it’s a hostile environment. 

00:04:00 

And. 

00:04:01 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And so it’s, you know, it’s difficult for humans to spend time there or even to feel that it’s really part of our world. And I think a lot of the the writing about the deep ocean imagines that going down there is in some way a transgression, that it’s a sort of, gaining knowledge that we shouldn’t have or that we shouldn’t be after in the 1st place. So I think a lot of these. 

00:04:22 Dr Laurence Publicover 

I guess cultural. 

00:04:23 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Attitudes towards the ocean that are inscribed in literary texts do feel in quite interesting ways into, you know, legal frameworks, political choices that we make about or in relation to the deep ocean, and sometimes without consciously knowing that. I mean, as as you say, there’s there’s. 

00:04:43 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You know that there’s still a great deal we we need to learn about the role of the seabed in kind of global systems. 

00:04:51 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And I think there are these, I guess, kind of wider cultural assumptions. There’s a woman called Kimberly Patton who’s written beautifully about this. How in in, in many cultures across different periods. 

00:05:04 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The deep sea has been seen as this. 

00:05:08 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The repository of the things that humans don’t want as as a wastebasket, essentially. 

00:05:14 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The place to which we commit things that we no longer want, whether they’re kind of. 

00:05:19 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Sin, for example, human sin that is imagined being taken down to the seabed in some Inuit cultures, or, you know, chucking nuclear waste down there. And so I think it’s very interesting that there is actually a kind of scientific, you know, corollary of of of this process of thought that that the ocean does take up our carbon. You know, this, this carbon that we keep pumping out. 

00:05:40 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Into the atmosphere and that it does fall down to the sea bed, though of course it can only do so for so long without us sort of damaging that process. 

00:05:51 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah, absolutely. That’s. Uh, it’s really interesting and UM. And it isn’t just, you know, carbon that we’re talking about here. Umm. Well, first of all, you’re quite right that this is a really sensitive process and climate change and well, in particular, oceanic warming can really impact how much of that organic carbon can become buried. It might mean that. 

00:06:10 Dr Kate Hendry 

Actually some of it will start being released from the sea floor. 

00:06:14 Dr Kate Hendry 

Uhm. 

00:06:15 Dr Kate Hendry 

But as I was saying, it isn’t just carbon and it’s actually lots of other, chemicals, some of them good if you like. So some of them are being, uh, nutrients that are also important for life. Things like nitrate or. 

00:06:28 Dr Kate Hendry 

Fate. 

00:06:29 Dr Kate Hendry 

But also toxic chemicals too. So some of the some of the stuff that we’ve been throwing in the ocean, the sea floor can actually be our friend and actually can bury some of that away. So things like heavy metals, mercury and and arsenic, for example. 

00:06:45 Dr Kate Hendry 

but we don’t really understand those processes and it could be again, that actually the sediments can turn on us if you like and start releasing some of these. 

00:06:53 Dr Kate Hendry 

Things back again. 

00:06:54 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah, I mean it, it seems. 

00:06:55 Dr Laurence Publicover 

To be a a wider context for. 

00:06:57 Dr Laurence Publicover 

This which? 

00:06:59 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Some academics in in political geography being particularly good at talking about is that with the kind of expansion of human influence on the on the planet, you know, the fact that we just affect things much more than we used to, that the world that we live in and that we’re building and interacting with is increasingly high and deep. You know, we. 

00:07:18 Dr Laurence Publicover 

We’re used as a species to living kind of horizontally you. 

00:07:21 Dr Laurence Publicover 

That we most of us stand and and look forward, but increasingly our our world is. 

00:07:27 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Involved in these high spaces, you know satellites, skyscrapers and incredibly deep spaces, mines, communication systems that run along the sea floor. And these geographers point out that we’re not really equipped to deal with this, that we, we kind of don’t necessarily think very well along the vertical axis. 

00:07:48 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And so. 

00:07:50 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah, that, that, that we haven’t really adjusted either as academics or as you know, geographers they say, or perhaps just as as human, you know, as global citizens to the notion that we are involved in these spaces that seem kind of alien to us, like the sea floor. You know, I think I always say it’s my. 

00:08:05 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Students, you know it’s well, there’s, there’s. 

00:08:09 Dr Laurence Publicover 

A A notion around academia. 

00:08:10 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Or generally that that we’re kind of not aware of the sea to the extent that we should be that we’re sea blind or there’s a a wonderful literary critic called Margaret Cohen who talks about hydrophobia, a kind of a neglect of the ox. 

00:08:23 Dr Laurence Publicover 

But if you think of that being true of the oceans in general, then perhaps it’s particularly true of the sea bed, the sea floor as the space that we just think of being beyond the human domain. But in fact, you know, we are involved in it, we get oil and and other kind of energy resources from the seabed communication systems, the Internet connections that we use for the most part, don’t run through satellites, they run through. 

00:08:44 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Fiber optic cables in the seabed. Pharmaceutical products come from the sea floor, so in all sorts of. 

00:08:50 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Ways. 

00:08:50 Dr Laurence Publicover 

We are engaged with it, but perhaps not in a way that we’ve kind of adjusted to as as global citizens, and I mean one of the. 

00:08:57 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Things I love. 

00:08:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

About thinking about. 

00:08:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

About literature on the sea is that. 

00:09:02 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Poets in particular, whenever they write about the seabed or frequently when they write about the seabed, seems to acknowledge that the seabird kind of sits beyond our usual parameters of thought. So you’ll often find that when they’re writing about the sea bed. 

00:09:15 Dr Laurence Publicover 

They’ll kind of break up the syntax, or they’ll use metaphorical structures in a way that’s sort of obscure rather than explanatory. So in some way they’re trying to evoke that sense that the seabed is kind of beyond. 

00:09:29 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Our usual patterns and structures of thought, and there are even some words in the English language that I think beautifully bring out that relationship between the the deep sea and and knowledge. So for example, the word fathom which. 

00:09:43 Dr Laurence Publicover 

As a noun of fathom, as a as a unit of measurement of of 6 feet. So it’s it’s literally what you can get your arms around and it’s usually used to measure oceanic depth. So you say, you know, the sea is is 4 fathoms deep or whatever that would, that would be 24 feet deep. 

00:09:59 Dr Laurence Publicover 

But of course now we use the fathom as a as a verb, not only to mean measure depth, but also kind of to understand and the same maritime act, the same navigational act has the expression sounding sounding. The ocean again means taking the depth, the ocean, measuring the depth of the sea bed. But when we talk about taking soundings now, it’s usually metaphorical kind of trying to get information from someone. 

00:10:21 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So kind of written into our language is this relationship between the seabed and the search for knowledge and a search that’s often unsuccessful. I think, or only partially. 

00:10:33 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah, I can. Certainly. UM. 

00:10:35 Dr Kate Hendry 

Uh, definitely say that after some of my oceanographic expeditions, it’s not always successful, but absolutely. And. And I really like thinking about that. You know, the idea of comprehending the ocean like that and the but what I was thinking about when you were saying that is as an ocean scientist, I like to think that I have a good grasp of what what it means, what these depths. 

00:10:56 Dr Kate Hendry 

I mean, you know, thinking about doing some research 3000 metres away, 3000 metres below the water, looking at the sea floor and then I sort of think about, like, well, do I really understand that, is it or is it just I’m used to it is this is that different? 

00:11:11 Dr Kate Hendry 

Thing. 

00:11:12 Dr Kate Hendry 

UM and. 

00:11:14 Dr Kate Hendry 

And then I sort of started thinking about, you know, the challenges of doing of doing sea floor research. And I think that sort of plays into. 

00:11:21 Dr Kate Hendry 

It too I mean. 

00:11:22 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The analogy that I’ve I’ve seen people use a couple of times is trying to understand the seabed by taking, you know, samples from it from a ship, kind of, you know, however many miles above the surface is a bit like kind of passing over a city with a hot air balloon. 

00:11:35 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Chucking a bucket out the bottom, pulling the bucket up and saying ohh this is what a city is like. You know that that that it’s kind of that level of OK you get some information but how are you supposed to piece that information together to get a real picture of of what’s going on? 

00:11:49 

Yeah. 

00:11:49 Dr Kate Hendry 

Absolutely. And you know, I think the very first expeditions I did at sea when I was looking at the sea floor in particular was really like that. You know, we basically put down on wires from the ship heavy, what they’re called box scores, but basically heavy metal buckets with jaws at the bottom that close. And they just bring up a big. 

00:12:09 Dr Kate Hendry 

Batch of mud and you know it’s travelled thousands of metres. It’s been bashed around. 

00:12:15 Dr Kate Hendry 

And there’s, you know, the Mud’s been mixed up. It’s really not very ideal. And you can use trawls and dredges to look at the, the deep sea creatures as well. But again they it, it’s all very out of place. 

00:12:25 Dr Kate Hendry 

And it’s only been much more recently that, I’ve been able to have access to remotely operated vehicles. So these are basically underwater robots that are housed that well, they house. 

00:12:37 Dr Kate Hendry 

High definition cameras and videos and manipulator arms and sampling devices. And it means that in real time you can actually look at the sea floor and look at the habitats. 

00:12:46 Dr Kate Hendry 

And it revolutionises how you see things. You see things living on the sea floor as they’re meant to be. They’re not just sort of piles of goo that have ended up in your trawl. So, you know, these technological advances are really, you know. 

00:13:00 Dr Kate Hendry 

What’s making this the science actually, UM possible and allowing the advances that we we can make. 

00:13:06 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Do you think it matters? OK. I mean, I guess, you know, if you look at the kind of 20th century of ocean science or even slightly earlier than that, the kind of obsession with actually going there as a human, you know, getting into a bath escape or a bathysphere which people still do, but it’s more, I mean I. 

00:13:22 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Suppose it’s more. 

00:13:23 Dr Laurence Publicover 

If you’re James Cameron or someone like that, it’s it’s you know. 

00:13:26 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Does science have to be done like that? Does it make a difference if you’re actually sending a human down to the sea floor as opposed to sending a robot down there? 

00:13:33 Dr Kate Hendry 

Oh, that’s a really good question. I mean, I’ve I’ve never had the fortune to be in the position to actually go go down in a man submersible, a crude submersible. 

00:13:44 Dr Kate Hendry 

So yeah, I don’t know. I mean, to be honest, I am. I’ve just found even just having the live video footage from the safety of of the ship is actually is is incredible in its own right and opens up and really opens up the world. But I imagine being actually down there with the organisms would be would be amazing. 

00:14:05 Dr Kate Hendry 

you know that that human interaction would be, would be incredible. 

00:14:10 Dr Kate Hendry 

1. UM.

00:14:12 Dr Kate Hendry 

So UM. 

00:14:16 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah, it it’s an interesting conversation and something that I’ve actually been working on recently thinking about the future of marine science and thinking about in particular, how we can make marine Science NET 0 into the future. And so can we move away from having these crude ships and make science entirely autonomous? 

00:14:36 Dr Kate Hendry 

And one of the one of the things that comes up time and time again in the conversations is you know the impact on on the human side of things. Now what does it mean for an? 

00:14:44 Dr Kate Hendry 

Oceanographer to not to go to see anymore. 

00:14:46 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah, I mean, I suppose it’s a similar sort of argument to the, you know, what does it mean to be firing missiles from your laptop in Texas as opposed to kind of, you know, being? 

00:14:57 Dr Laurence Publicover 

In a plane, you know in the place itself, you know, if you keep kind of automating and and creating distance between. 

00:15:05 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The human behind these activities and the activities themselves, then you know clearly in a military context that dehumanizes it and and there’s there are risks involved in that. I guess in science the risks are are quite different but and I think I mean there’s a a lovely moment in James Hamilton Patterson’s book 7/10 where he talks about how. 

00:15:24 Dr Laurence Publicover 

But you know, I I cannot vouch for the accuracy than this other than it’s a pretty well researched book, well researched book, but that in in the Second World War submarines, uh, took on board piano tuners. because they could listen for the different sort of, you know, resonances, I guess of of enemy submarines. And so they could hear, you know, the difference. 

00:15:45 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You know, you know some other oceanic sound and and what could be a threat and and you know that that kind of sense of actually being in in the deep sea and listening out for these things I I find quite evocative I guess and and you know for the kind of non scientists you. 

00:15:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Know I must. 

00:15:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Admit that that the appeal of the deep ocean is is often a sense of of, you know, of actually breaking that frontier and kind of going down to a place where people haven’t been before. And I think, you know, of course, there are all sorts of problems attach. 

00:16:10 Dr Laurence Publicover 

For that way of thinking, but I think it is one of the things that makes it appealing and I guess you know as we move towards thinking about policy and and. 

00:16:20 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You know what? How how we should be developing our relationship with the seabed over the next 20 or 30 years as these technologies increase and as resource scarcity becomes more of a thing or resource 1st and we try and use the resources of the sea to a greater extent. I mean it, it’s it’s how do you harness that fascination with the sea? 

00:16:41 Dr Laurence Publicover 

That so many people have, and with the deep sea in a way that’s helpful rather than exploitative. 

00:16:48 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah, absolutely. And and it’s certainly a question I’ve been, you know, battling with for a while now. And I think an interesting example of where this could have gone well, but could have gone badly in some ways was a couple of years ago with the Blue Planet Television series. One of the episodes. 

00:17:07 Dr Kate Hendry 

I’m David Attenborough narrated an episode on on the Deep Sea, and it was the first time that footage from a deep sea like this had been broadcast into people’s living rooms. And you know, that could have been taken as a tremendous. 

00:17:21 Dr Kate Hendry 

This, but at the same time it was really put into this narrative of an alien environment, a very different environment and. 

00:17:30 Dr Kate Hendry 

Some have argued that that might not might actually not have been so helpful. It sort of in a way emphasised or amplified that difference between the surface and the deep. 

00:17:41 Dr Kate Hendry 

Whereas in fact, you know there are. 

00:17:43 Dr Kate Hendry 

There are actually lots of similarities. It’s just another ecosystem really. 

00:17:47 Dr Kate Hendry 

so it’s an interesting one. 

00:17:50 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah, because I guess the danger is that if we do treat it as alien, then, you know, come back to those larger cultural. 

00:17:55 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Issues we just. 

00:17:56 Dr Laurence Publicover 

We don’t believe that we have interaction with it. We don’t believe that we can affect it and I think that’s a larger problem with the oceans that you know is is inscribed in so much great literature about the oceans, the notion that they are timeless. 

00:18:10 Dr Laurence Publicover 

That they are sublime and sublimely indifferent to humans. You know that if anything, the power relationship runs that the humans overwhelm. Sorry that the oceans overwhelm the humans and. And of course, to some extent that that is true and remains true. But but what it does obscure is that potential after anthropogenic change. I suppose it obscures the possibility of anthropogenic. 

00:18:32 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Change the fact that the oceans are not timeless. You know that we have affected their chemistry, their levels and and that we’re going to continue to do so. 

00:18:40 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And and I guess that we are increasingly involved in this world, partly because of the amount of carbon we’re pumping out into the atmosphere, but also in a more kind of precise sense in in the work that, you know, that scientists like you are doing on on the deep ocean. But it’s not only scientists down there, is it, you know, it’s commerce, it’s. 

00:19:00 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Energy extraction. That’s been energy extraction for a while, but more more recently. There’s been. Well, we’re getting closer and closer to something that’s been mooted for a long time and kind of quite seriously mooted since the 1970s or so, which is mining the seabed for metals. 

00:19:19 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And. 

00:19:20 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And I guess what’s particularly interesting about that as an activity is how it? 

00:19:27 Dr Laurence Publicover 

How it’s bound up in questions to do with climate, but also to do with global equity and justice, the elimination of poverty. It’s an intensely complex affair, isn’t it? I mean, I I don’t. I almost don’t know where we should start. 

00:19:40 Dr Kate Hendry 

I know absolutely. I mean it’s the way to I guess we could start thinking about it is you know that there is an argument and I’m not saying I particularly follow this argument, but there’s an argument that it’s almost inevitable that we will have to do this because if we want to move towards greener technologies. 

00:19:55 Dr Kate Hendry 

We need the the metals for the battery technology and and and well any sort of energy transfer process that you can find in great abundance in these these deep sea deposits so. 

00:20:11 Dr Kate Hendry 

It’s. Yeah, it’s almost, you know, the the the narrative in many cases does sort of turn to this sort of inevitability. And, you know, the counter to that is that it isn’t necessarily, there are other technologies out there that don’t require these metals and perhaps as well, we can work towards more of a circular economy when it comes to these metals, you know, being efficient with their use. 

00:20:31 Dr Kate Hendry 

Recycling them properly. 

00:20:34 Dr Kate Hendry 

That we don’t necessarily have to go down that road and. 

00:20:40 Dr Kate Hendry 

And yeah, I mean, the interesting thing as well is it like, like you say, the the equity and justice aspects of it as well and UM. 

00:20:47 Dr Kate Hendry 

I think that also UM plays into a little a little bit to do with the sort of science I do as well. So from scientific points of view, you can also make that argument that getting to the deep sea is incredibly expensive. So it is a problem. But oceanographic research is done by the places that can afford to do it, and there’s. 

00:21:07 Dr Kate Hendry 

at the moment there’s this great inequality in terms of of who can do the research. And so yeah, absolutely. There’s going to be great inequality as to who can do this exploration, this commercial. 

00:21:17 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah. And I guess what, what kind of, you know, puts that? 

00:21:22 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Knotty issue, as you say, within a kind of specific legal framework, is that the area, as it’s nicely called, which is the the bits of the seabed that are outside national jurisdiction. So outside any states. 

00:21:37 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Exclusive economic zone have been officially kind of designated a global Commons by the UN and more particularly the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. 

00:21:48 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So. 

00:21:50 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The result of that is that any deep sea mining in the area has to be. 

00:21:56 Dr Laurence Publicover 

For the benefit of humankind or mankind, as it as it was expressed at the time, so. 

00:22:04 Dr Laurence Publicover 

What does that mean? I guess is the really complex sort of decision that has to be come to and and it’s a decision that’s being debated at the moment at the International Seabed Authority, which is the the body set up by the UN to kind of govern, to give licenses for exploration and exploitation to. 

00:22:24 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Am nations and also commercial parties that want to explore and exploit the seabed, particularly at the moment in the Pacific, in a place called the Clarion Clipperton zone, which seems to have so much sort of, uh, so many of these deposits that people are after. So yeah, I mean, what what can it mean to to do this for the benefit of humankind? I mean, in a financial sense. 

00:22:45 Dr Laurence Publicover 

How are you going to incentivize the mining? You know, because it’s it’s going to be a public private partnership. So how are you gonna incentivize it if all the money is is just gonna be sort of divided up globally? I mean, one argument is that all the. 

00:23:00 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Nations that are landlocked and so therefore don’t usually get to enjoy the benefits of the ocean should be getting sort of a larger proportion of the proceeds of deep sea mining. Another argument is that the countries that are are currently metal producers, that is, you know, whose economies rely on on the extraction of cobalt in particular. So and a country like the democratic. 

00:23:21 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Republic of Congo should they be compensated for what would absolutely be falling metal prices? So those are really complicated questions. And then within the exclusive economic zone. 

00:23:32 Dr Laurence Publicover 

where kind of nation states have have to say over whether they should mine, you know, does the international community still have a role to play in decisions like that, given that the knock on effects of deep sea mining, you know, are kind of probably, uh. Could be significant though the extent to which they’re significant is still kind of not particularly well known because the science is so uncertain. 

00:23:54 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So yeah, and again, do you wanna make exceptions? For example, Pacific Island nations, which. 

00:23:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Were. 

00:23:59 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Developing economies, you know, do we treat them differently from, say, the UK, which also has a lot of, you know, umm, a a large exclusive economic zone, but is a developed country. So there are all sorts of questions about equity here that I think you know. 

00:24:12 Dr Laurence Publicover 

We’re not quite ready to address yet, and yet deep sea mining seems to be right on the horizon. You know, I mean, people are are are estimating that it could, it could go ahead within the next few years. Having said that, I mean people have been saying that for a few years now and it still hasn’t quite happened. But we are, we are getting closer and closer. 

00:24:28 Dr Laurence Publicover 

It. 

00:24:28 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Seems and and as Kate says that as you say, Kate, the. 

00:24:34 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You know the the argument that we need. 

00:24:36 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The metals to. 

00:24:36 Dr Laurence Publicover 

To transition to a green economy, is is a powerful argument and you know the the way that this is usually framed by those who support deep sea mining is, well, we need to get the metals from somewhere because at the moment we don’t have sufficient metals in the global economy to get to that point of the circular economy that you were talking about. 

00:24:54 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So, you know, do we get better at mining metals on land? You know, that’s another possible solution because at the moment the argument of the deep sea miners goes, well, the concentrations of metals are are better in the ocean, there’d be fewer kind of, you know, effects on local communities. There’d be fewer potential human rights abuses linked to the mining of metals. 

00:25:15 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So yeah, it’s a very thorny issue, but there are environmental consequences, you know, to to bring into that mix, which I’m sure you’re in a better position than me. 

00:25:24 Dr Kate Hendry 

To talk about and you know you mentioned earlier that, you know, we’re just not ready in many aspects of thinking about the equality and and equity issues. 

00:25:34 Dr Kate Hendry 

But there’s lots of things we’re not ready for. There’s lots we don’t understand. I mean, it’s not my area at all, but the legal frameworks are absolutely, you know, tangled threads. At the moment I from, from what I can gather with different bits of the ocean being under different bits of jurisdiction and so on. And. And I don’t think we we have a legal framework. That’s that’s. 

00:25:55 Dr Kate Hendry 

That’s ready for this yet. And scientifically speaking, we’re not ready. We don’t understand what the impacts will be. You know, we we have a good idea of what some of the the the negative impacts will be, but really fully understanding them, I think we’re we’re a way off and and. 

00:26:10 Dr Kate Hendry 

You know the the obvious one is, damage to the deep sea ecosystem, so it well, it’s only been relatively recently signed in terms of our our scientific understanding that we’ve really started to understand these ecosystems that that make their homes in these mid ocean Ridge environments which are one of the places where these mineral deposits. 

00:26:32 Dr Kate Hendry 

Form and these are, you know, they’re, almost like underwater mountains, if you like mountain ranges on the sea floor. And each of those different peaks, if you like, in the mountain range, can actually have a unique habitat. And the more and more we find more and more we look, the more we find new species, we find unique ecosystems. 

00:26:52 Dr Kate Hendry 

Like I say and. 

00:26:55 Dr Kate Hendry 

Some of that is actually not just, you know, beneficial from a point of view of biodiversity, and of course, we can have an argument about, you know, do what are the general benefits of biodiversity? But there are there are benefits for human human. 

00:27:09 Dr Kate Hendry 

Counties. 

00:27:10 Dr Kate Hendry 

The reason that we’re we’re looking for pharmaceuticals, for example, in these deeply ecosystems is because of this, this uniqueness, this, that they’re endemic, we call it and. And that means that there are not not only unique species of. 

00:27:26 Dr Kate Hendry 

Slogans like deep sea sponges or corals. But in fact those different species by also have unique UM combinations of UM micro organisms that live within them. We call them their microbiome. So they house unique combinations of things like bacteria. And these are the bacteria that can produce the chemicals that we want for. 

00:27:47 Dr Kate Hendry 

Pharmaceuticals so they. 

00:27:48 Dr Kate Hendry 

Use the anti cancer drugs. They produce the anti, uh antibacterial drugs, the antimicrobials that we’re really looking for because of the increased concern about antimicrobial resistance so. 

00:28:03 Dr Kate Hendry 

It isn’t just a case of this is biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. We really need these environments for us as well, and and. And it’s not just the ecosystem damage because of, you know, direct physical. 

00:28:16 Dr Kate Hendry 

Damage from mining equipment. There’s also potential risk from release of toxic metals. You know, these metals that were after, they will actually be fairly reactive if they could react with seawater and get released. And that could cause poisoning of of anything living around the mining site. 

00:28:34 Dr Kate Hendry 

There’s noise pollution, there’s pollution that simply comes from moving the stuff around. The shipping required to do this. 

00:28:42 Dr Kate Hendry 

So the knock on effects really are very far reaching and really haven’t been properly understood. 

00:28:49 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah, I mean, I’ve certainly, yeah, I’ve heard the argument several times from the mining community and also the lawyers that represent them, that no extractive industry has had the level of, you know. 

00:29:03 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Of kind of environmental impact assessments of deep sea mining and you know, I I guess it’s it’s only fair to say that a lot of this work is being done and that there are, you know there seems a genuine attempt to try and understand uh, these things at least on the part of some mining corporations before kind of, you know, taking the plunge as it were and going in and just seeing what happens. 

00:29:23 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So yeah, you know, this work is being done, but as you say, it’s just such a difficult environment to understand. 

00:29:29 Dr Laurence Publicover 

That’s you know there there are there, there is probably a question where we you know there are things we know are going to happen. 

00:29:35 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And there are. 

00:29:35 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Things we don’t know are going to happen. And yes, the kind of effect I mean. 

00:29:40 Dr Laurence Publicover 

But of plumes and so forth is. 

00:29:42 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Is it’s difficult to measure where they go and and what impacts they’ll have. I mean, I think it’s worth saying as well that there are different kinds of deep sea mining and that. 

00:29:50 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Umm. 

00:29:51 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You know, some are. Some are more damaging than others. I mean, in some cases it’s it’s kind of lifting nodules that are kind of roughly the size of a tennis ball or a little bit bigger off the surface of the ocean. But that still involves kind of stirring up sediments and which will be damaging in other cases. It’s it’s really kind of, you know, drilling in into these crusts. 

00:30:11 Dr Laurence Publicover 

For uh, the hydrothermal vents, and you know, just destroying the habitats. So you know there there are different levels here. 

00:30:17 Dr Laurence Publicover 

UM and I guess you know it’s it’s just a question of weighing up some of these pros and cons and and perhaps the answer after weighing them up will be not to go in there at all or perhaps it will be some degree of of deep sea mining or further research before it starts. It’s hard to say, but you can, I mean because you know we are trying to keep. 

00:30:38 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Temperature rises down. You know, these are not decisions that we can perhaps dwell on forever. You know, you you can see that kind of none of these decisions is is ideal. 

00:30:49 Dr Laurence Publicover 

But then neither is. Is it inevitable? I think. 

00:30:51 Dr Laurence Publicover 

It’s it’s fair to say. 

00:30:52 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah. No, I I I think that sounds about right. And I think the like the main message that. 

00:31:00 Dr Kate Hendry 

I you know, from my personal point of view that I think needs to get across is this complexity and I keep coming back to the word complexity. And yes, there are scientific investigations going on which you know absolutely I’d I’d rather they are. They’re not absolutely. But it is an incredibly complex system and trying to communicate that I think that. 

00:31:20 Dr Kate Hendry 

1. UM.

00:31:21 Dr Kate Hendry 

You know. 

00:31:22 Dr Kate Hendry 

To to quite an overused phrase, the these unknown unknowns, even that, we can speculate on. We can try and model, we can try and test. but. 

00:31:33 Dr Kate Hendry 

You know when you’re dealing with so many interacting components of a system. 

00:31:38 Dr Kate Hendry 

When you don’t understand the processes, you don’t understand the rates of change that you might, uhm bring about. 

00:31:47 Dr Kate Hendry 

I spoke. I suppose it’s just, you know, that’s the that’s thing that concerns me now. And I would like to get that concern across to people who need to hear it and. And so I think it comes back to this idea of communicating complexity. 

00:31:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah. And also communicating the more basic fact that we are down there that this is happening. I mean I think which kind of comes back to these cultural aspects of, you know, not treating the seabed as, as, as, as part of our domain, it’s not, you know, it’s not like going and and sort of you know taking the top off the mountain that you’ve been looking at every day of your life. You know, these these things happen in a concealed. 

00:32:18 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Based and however much. 

00:32:22 Dr Laurence Publicover 

I mean, I suppose you know there’s there’s the unknowns of the scientific community, and then there’s also just a kind of, you know, a sea blindness or a lack of awareness that this is taking place or just a kind of broader cultural attitude that that doesn’t see the sea bed. And I think, I mean, in some ways a a way of bringing these ideas together as an example is the fact that these. 

00:32:42 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Hydrothermal vents, which are one of the target places for deep sea mining, and we we only discovered those in the 1970s, right. And so, you know, and every time people go down there, they. 

00:32:54 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Discover organisms that you know for the first time. Umm. 

00:32:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So. 

00:32:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You know that there’s an awful lot that we don’t know, and and there’s probably a kind. 

00:33:03 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Of. 

00:33:03 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Still a mental. 

00:33:05 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Block. I think you know culturally rather than within the scientific community that’s perhaps thinking worth thinking about here. I mean, if I know both you and I are kind of interested in the azoic theory. 

00:33:16 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Of the 19th century, famously at at a marine biologist called Edward Forbes that. 

00:33:22 Dr Laurence Publicover 

That sort of thought, that. 

00:33:23 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Life simply couldn’t exist in the deep ocean below a certain level. 

00:33:29 Dr Laurence Publicover 

It’s about half a kilometre, so you know that’s out by a long way, but I think it’s interesting just that that was an assumption that, you know, because of the darkness, because of the extraordinary pressure that it simply wouldn’t be possible for life to exist that deep in the ocean. And it took an awfully long time. You know it we’re talking here about the 19th century, you know. 

00:33:49 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Really quite recently, says someone at least who works on the 17th century, predominantly that that that was that was scientific consensus and and what actually kind of in the end made people realize that this couldn’t be true. 

00:34:00 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Was sort of accidental, really in the UM by this point, deep sea cables were being laid in the Mediterranean, and when people were pulling them up to fix them, uh, they were recognising that organisms had attached themselves to these cables. And so, you know, this wasn’t just a question of kind of picking them up on the way on the way up to the surface. You know, there must be stuff living down there. But it wasn’t until then that. 

00:34:21 Dr Laurence Publicover 

That, you know, scientific consensus had to change. So you know, that’s just one indication, I guess, of of how. 

00:34:27 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Culturally, perhaps, we still just can’t imagine the deep sea as kind of a domain that’s anything like the human domain. 

00:34:34 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, my, I was gonna say my favorite story, but I just think it’s, almost unimaginable now that you know, back in 1977 when they did first, get video footage of the ecosystem growing on mid ocean ridges. 

00:34:50 Dr Kate Hendry 

They they didn’t have a biologist on board. They really weren’t expecting it. This was something completely that took them by surprise. 

00:34:58 Dr Kate Hendry 

And it was. It was this assumption that you need to have photosynthesis in order to have an ecosystem. You have to somehow. 

00:35:06 Dr Kate Hendry 

Create energy. You have to somehow make organic matter that you can then use. 

00:35:10 Dr Kate Hendry 

To live and the way that we know about it, because the way that we see it every day is photosynthesis by plants or algae. And then, you know, they came across this ecosystem that was entirely separate and OK, yes, to a certain extent, extent. Some of these deep sea ecosystems rely on on that sinking organic matter that we talked about right at the beginning. 

00:35:31 Dr Kate Hendry 

But also there are bacteria that live there that will harness energy that doesn’t require sunlight. It’s, it’s chemosynthesis. It’s different. A different way of doing things. So absolutely, you know, it was. 

00:35:44 Dr Kate Hendry 

Such a surprise. They didn’t even have anyone on board. 

00:35:46 Dr Kate Hendry 

Who could help? 

00:35:48 Dr Laurence Publicover 

I mean, I guess so that’s that’s just one kind of initial example of why interdisciplinarity when approaching something like the seabed, is so important. You know, even within the sciences, the hard sciences, you know, you, you you need to have a physicist and a chemist and a biologist on a on an expedition. 

00:36:04 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Like this to try and kind of get the whole picture. I mean, in your view, Kate, what’s the value of going even beyond the sciences to the social sciences, political sciences, even humanities, in order to kind of come at an issue like the seabed and its future? 

00:36:20 Dr Kate Hendry 

Ohh UM. I mean, I think I think it circles back to, you know, what I’ve said before, but it’s it’s about communicating and UM. 

00:36:28 Dr Kate Hendry 

We can’t just do science in isolation now for many reasons. I guess the most important being that we need to actually have impact. We need to actually use our science to to make things make things better, put on to a better way of putting it. So getting those key messages across to policymakers who can actually do something about it. 

00:36:48 Dr Kate Hendry 

But also from from a much more practical point of view, we need funding, we need to. 

00:36:52 Dr Kate Hendry 

Actually can convince. 

00:36:54 Dr Kate Hendry 

The funding organizations that what we’re doing is. 

00:36:57 Dr Kate Hendry 

And ultimately, a lot of the funding is based on taxpayers money, so we need to be able to communicate to the public as well as to why this is important. And but me coming along and just talking about mud on the sea floor is, you know, it it it, I’ve I’ve done it. I’ve done outreach talks where I’ve I’ve said these things but it’s. 

00:37:17 Dr Kate Hendry 

Often to an interested audience, an audience who’s interested in the. 

00:37:20 Dr Kate Hendry 

This place getting that across to the general public I think is really important and also keeping in mind that the public isn’t just one mass 11 homogeneous mass of people, there are so many different people out there who have different interests in, in the sea floor. So it might be people from. 

00:37:40 Dr Kate Hendry 

1. A fishing community, for example. Understanding the impact of coastal sediments on the ecosystem that fundamentally supports the.

00:37:51 Dr Kate Hendry 

Fish that they catch. 

00:37:53 Dr Kate Hendry 

it might be the people who want their iPad and and so need to have. 

00:38:00 Dr Kate Hendry 

The green technology to power their iPad, so I think. 

00:38:05 Dr Kate Hendry 

Understanding differences in the points of view of the different stakeholders involved, I think is really. 

00:38:10 Dr Kate Hendry 

Critical it’s not. 

00:38:11 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Just about communicating the science itself, it’s about communicating the fact that the deep sea is a site with which we’re involved and that we’re going to become more involved in. 

00:38:18 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah. 

00:38:20 Dr Kate Hendry 

Absolutely. And communicate it. Communicating it in a meaningful way to the different stakeholders involved, yeah. 

00:38:28 Dr Kate Hendry 

And how about so turning that around, why are you interested in talking to marine scientists? 

00:38:34 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Well, that’s an excellent. 

00:38:35 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Question. 

00:38:37 Dr Laurence Publicover 

I mean, I think there, you know there is for me this kind of latent fascination with the deep sea and I think, you know, I’m, I’m I suppose in my kind of moments of self critique I’m aware that there is there is something in my fascination with this unknown space that is. 

00:38:53 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You know, potentially even part of the problem, actually, you know, kind of going down the desire to go down to the deep and to meddle in things that we that you know that perhaps we don’t fully understand. you know, it’s the same sort of impulse that that takes you into space, I suppose. But the consequences here seem more profound, potentially, or at least the closer to home because they really are quite close to home. 

00:39:15 Dr Laurence Publicover 

but I I mean, I think the. 

00:39:17 Dr Laurence Publicover 

More I so I. 

00:39:18 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Started working on the oceans. 

00:39:20 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Looking at the late plays of William Shakespeare, which have a lot of oceans in them, and I started thinking why there’s so many oceans here and then I I started looking at the deep ocean in particular and thinking, you know, why in these plays that are tragedies and are mainly set in courts in Denmark and Scotland, you know, are these images of what are these images of the deep sea doing there? You know what? What are they trying to evoke? What are they trying to convey? 

00:39:42 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Or particular problem or kind of epistemological problem. If you like a kind of theory of knowledge, and that’s that’s where they often seem to come in at moments where. 

00:39:50 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Others uh didn’t quite understand themselves or were kind of uncertain of what they were saying, or they were uncertain about what someone else was thinking. And it’s this language of kind of measuring the deep that in particular came up there. And I said that was my starting point. It was a literary starting point. But the more I started thinking about the deep ocean. 

00:40:08 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And how it’s portrayed in literature, the more that I realized that I I had to try and understand some of the other contexts. 

00:40:15 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So legal context, for example, and and these are not separate, they’re overlapping. I mean the way that you think about. 

00:40:23 Dr Laurence Publicover 

The the ocean and the deep ocean and the way that that’s inscribed in literature is absolutely connected to the way that lawyers think about the ocean as a site that. 

00:40:31 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Is. 

00:40:31 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You know, in some ways, beyond nation states, that isn’t really kind of possessable in the same way because. 

00:40:40 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You can’t stand on it. You can’t defend it. You can’t grow things. 

00:40:43 Dr Laurence Publicover 

On. 

00:40:43 Dr Laurence Publicover 

It so I got interested in that kind of legal language of trying to, I guess. I mean, poetry is usually OK with leaving things unknown and undermarketed and and sort of in a way, actually that’s what poetry quite likes because that’s, you know, it gives you kind of scope for imaginative. 

00:41:00 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Or legal language tries to define things, and So what I found so interesting about. 

00:41:06 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Legal definitions of the sea and who gets to own what and who gets to govern. What was this kind of attempts to grapple with something that is really hard to grapple with and and the the lawyers who kind of left it alone and said, well, it’s beyond legal space precisely because they couldn’t, you know, get their arms around it. But there’s a real argument about, you know, in in legal circles and has been for hundreds of years over. 

00:41:26 Dr Laurence Publicover 

How the seed should be categorized? So I guess that took me out into the kind of legal stuff. And then from there you start thinking about the geopolitical stuff. 

00:41:33 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And you also start thinking about the science of it or the, you know, the animals who live in the deep, you know, these literary studies are also, you know, fascinated by the animals of the deep, in particular whales. I think, you know, whales. 

00:41:48 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Play a huge. 

00:41:48 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Role in literature of the oceans, most obviously in Moby Dick. 

00:41:53 Dr Laurence Publicover 

But in lots of other uh texts and and and uh, you know, plays and novels as well. And so I I think you know I I just became more and more interested in in how humans and oceans interact and the deep ocean is. 

00:42:05 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Is perhaps the site where those interactions are strangest, because they’re least meti. It’s it’s when they’re at they’re least material, but most imaginative is what I would say. The deep sea seems to evoke in us. 

00:42:17 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Really strong emotions, but quite obscure emotions and sometimes also quite contradictory emotions. I mean, for example, because you know ships sink to the sea floor and treasure is on board those ships, the deep sea often gets evoked in literature as a site of kind of infinite wealth. If only you. 

00:42:36 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Could get to it. 

00:42:37 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And in a way, what what I find fascinating about deep sea mining is it’s almost a kind of realization of that fantasy that’s been there for so long that if only we could access the deep, we could pull up this enormous amount of wealth at the same time, the deep ocean is imagined as this site that you really shouldn’t be in, that it’s transgressive to try to get to. 

00:42:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Umm. 

00:42:59 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And yet, the human desire for knowledge which you know in kind of Christian theology and other theologies is always, you know, a bit dangerous. There are certain things you are allowed to know, but there are certain things that you know you shouldn’t know. So, you know, don’t eat the apples from all the trees and the deep ocean gets gets kind of involved in that as well as the site. That’s kind of, you know, desirable precisely because you shouldn’t. 

00:43:19 Dr Laurence Publicover 

There. So yeah, I I guess that’s a a long way of saying that it’s it’s this site of enormous imaginative power in literature. And I think in scientific literature as well, people like William Beebe who go down there in the oceans and talk about what it’s like to be down there. I I find fascinating. 

00:43:40 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So yeah, I I think it’s the seabed is just one of those places where. 

00:43:44 Dr Laurence Publicover 

But. 

00:43:45 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Once you start thinking about it in one context, literature for me, you start immediately thinking about it in other contexts, and it’s wonderful to talk to people from so many different faculties, whether it’s the political sciences or you know, marine sciences or or chemical oceanographers who who share this interest in the deep sea as of space. And while we may come at it from different angles. 

00:44:07 Dr Laurence Publicover 

I think you know there there are areas of shared interest, possibly mostly to do with access and how difficult it is to access and kind of knowledge and how difficult it is to know that. I think you know can can help us shed light on one another’s research. 

00:44:22 Dr Kate Hendry 

Yeah, I think so. I’d, I’d fully agree with that. Yeah, absolutely. 

00:44:26 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So, Kate, I suppose you know one of the pleasures for me of talking to Someone Like You, who actually goes to the oceans, is that while I’m, I’m sitting in my office and and reading about the. 

00:44:35 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Oceans. 

00:44:36 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And and reading about what my poets thought about the oceans. 

00:44:39 Dr Laurence Publicover 

You’re actually out. 

00:44:40 Dr Laurence Publicover 

There exploring them and spending time on a. 

00:44:43 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Research vessel for. 

00:44:44 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And and and getting that whole experience of being at sea. 

00:44:47 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So perhaps you could just. 

00:44:49 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Say something more about that. 

00:44:51 Dr Kate Hendry 

So, well, yeah, I I said I’m a I’m an oceanographer who specialises in chemistry and so I I look at the the chemistry, sea water and my you know the very big overarching question of my research is how does climate change impact the chemistry of the oceans and really you get those big changes. 

00:45:11 Dr Kate Hendry 

In the oceans at the interfaces. So at the at the Land Ocean interface at coastal regions, for example, but also at the sea floor, the sea floor ocean. 

00:45:20 

Yes. 

00:45:21 Dr Kate Hendry 

So I look at in particular, the cycling are really important nutrients. So the things that keep the Alva alive, so look at how the sea floor releases things like nitrate, phosphate and dissolved elements like silicon and iron and so on that are needed for life. So that’s what I do, I will. 

00:45:40 Dr Kate Hendry 

Also work with modellers and physicists trying to understand how the uh, nutrients that are released from the sea floor then get cycled around the ocean. Do they get to the surface where they’re needed, for example? 

00:45:52 Dr Kate Hendry 

UM&UM. 

00:45:55 Dr Kate Hendry 

That I work with biologists as well sort of thinking about the the biological impacts of of these this cycling. 

00:46:02 Dr Kate Hendry 

So what’s it like to to be at sea? UM. 

00:46:07 Dr Kate Hendry 

I mean, I I absolutely love being at sea. It’s, uh, sort of quite strange environment. It’s it’s in a way, uh. 

00:46:15 Dr Kate Hendry 

Can be quite isolating your you are stuck on a ship with just a very small number of people, so one one of the large UK research vessels, there might only be 50-60 people on the ship, so you get to know each other very well. But there’s there’s really a a shared goal towards what you’re trying to achieve, so there’s a very strong. 

00:46:36 Dr Kate Hendry 

1. Feeling of a of a team, I suppose. And you’ve got this, this one scientific driver or set of drivers that you’re really focusing on and and so it’s enormously rewarding I, I suppose.

00:46:50 Dr Kate Hendry 

It’s exhausting. You know, you have to put a lot of work in. It’s expensive going to sea, so you have to get as much out of it as you can. The UK research vessels, for example, usually operate 24 hour operations. So you have shift working going on. So it’s. 

00:47:08 Dr Kate Hendry 

It’s it’s tiring but but rewarding. 

00:47:12 Dr Laurence Publicover 

So, Kate, what would be your? 

00:47:14 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Message to policymakers in relation to the seabed. 

00:47:17 Dr Kate Hendry 

There, there are so many things to to talk about. There are so many. 

00:47:20 Dr Kate Hendry 

Messages, but I think. 

00:47:22 Dr Kate Hendry 

To try and summarise it, I suppose you know the oceans are in inherent in and I think the the three key scientific challenges going forward which you know which are climate change, loss of biodiversity and and society. 

00:47:37 Dr Kate Hendry 

I think it really comes down to those three things. 

00:47:39 Dr Kate Hendry 

And not only do the oceans play a key role, but the sea floor is, you know, primary factor in in all of them. So I think the message is the sea floor matters to us. Yeah, how about you? 

00:47:52 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Yeah, I think I’d say that we need to invest more. I mean both financially, but just in terms of kind of thinking about. 

00:48:00 Dr Laurence Publicover 

A A relationship with the seabed that we’ve kind of developed and initiated without necessarily kind of realising as global citizens that we’ve that we’ve done it, that we are kind of involved in this area even if we sometimes think of it as as alien and and that we need to be more conscious of that involvement than we currently are. And I think the other thing is that any solution or or plan as to the future of the sea. 

00:48:21 Dr Laurence Publicover 

That needs to be global. I mean in in the more literal sense that you know it needs to involve. 

00:48:28 Dr Laurence Publicover 

People from from all nations, including landlocked nations, but also in in the more sort of metaphorical sense that it has to be global, it has to come at things from lots of different perspectives. I mean, you know, scientific perspectives, economic perspective, perspectives. It has to balance out the different strategic goals of the UN like eliminating. 

00:48:48 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Poverty, but at the same time taking climate action and sometimes those those goals may conflict. But we need to think about how they do so in relation to the seabed and and find a workable solution. 

00:48:58 Dr Laurence Publicover 

And we also need to realize that the seabed means different things to different people. In particular, you know that it’s not just a resource space, it’s not just a dumping ground, it’s a burial ground. For example, for for a lot of people, you know, particularly those. 

00:49:17 Dr Laurence Publicover 

Who? Who died on slave ships and were tossed overboard. The Atlantic is a huge burial ground for for Africans that were forcibly transported across the Atlantic and from the 15th century onwards. So I think we need to be conscious of its, of its various meanings and and bring as many people into the conversation as possible. 

00:49:37 Dr Laurence Publicover 

When we think about its future. 

00:49:45 Cabot Institute 

You can find out more about the Cabot Institute for the environment at bristol.ac.uk/cabot.