New frontiers in marine exploration

Sliding into the invitingly warm water from one of the tenders of the explorer yacht Asteria, I had my first taste of the magical underwater kingdom off Misool in East Papua, home to one of the most bio-diverse and pristine reef systems in the world. From the clarity of the water to the colours of the corals and the unbelievable marine biodiversity, it was a life-changing moment – a glimpse of world so beautiful yet so alien that it could never be forgotten. It was a bit like experiencing the Pandora of James Cameron’s original Avatar in the cinema in 3D – except this wasn’t a fictional world, it is what lies just beneath the surface of our extraordinary blue planet. Imagine what else the seas contain.

That we are all so ignorant of what treasures lie so close to us is clear – scientists estimate that we only know 10 percent of what lives in the world’s oceans. What is also clear is that the health of the oceans is vital for the future survival of the planet, and not just in terms of food – marine organisms and the waters they live in act as giant heat and carbon sinks and the world’s largest generator of oxygen. It’s why the superyacht industry’s own non-profit Water Revolution Foundation is backing scientific research into Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs), for example.

But there is so much more that we don’t know about the oceans, and yet so much more that the oceans can teach us. It has led the philanthropic Nippon Foundation and the Nekton Foundation charity in the UK to launch a new, far-reaching initiative they call Ocean Census. Its aim is simple – to speed up the discovery of new marine species before it’s too late. “The Nippon Foundation, together with the Nekton Foundation, is ready to embark on an ambitious mission to protect the ocean environment by unlocking the mysteries of the marine ecosystem,” says Yohei Sasakawa, Chairman of The Nippon Foundation. “We are now setting out into a romantic adventure filled with passion and dreams. Although there are close to 200 separate countries, there is only one single ocean and it is a common asset of all humankind. The ocean is a fundamental element for our co-prosperity.”

For Rupert Grey, Chairman of Nekton Foundation, there is an urgency to the need for faster discovery. “The ocean holds four billion years of our evolutionary heritage and this priceless asset is now at grave risk,” he warns. “It is a significant failure in our generation’s stewardship of the planet to know so little about so much. Ocean Census’s objective is to redeem that failure.”

Ocean Census is, as ocean advocate Emily Penn describes it, “the largest programme in history to discover ocean life”. Its aim is to accelerate the discovery of new species to 100,000 over the next 10 years, but the programme is also designed to run into the future and in so doing to change fundamentally our rate of discovery. It is important, because rising ocean temperatures threaten to cause a mass marine extinction event, meaning we could miss out on valuable knowledge.

Indeed, studying marine life before it is lost is not only key to further unlocking our evolutionary understanding but also to unlocking resources that have developed in novel forms of marine biochemistry that could have a huge positive impact on our own species. “It can be new anti-cancer agents or antiviral drugs,” explains Professor Alex Rogers, Ocean Census Science Director. “There’s a new painkiller that’s just been found in a marine snail, so there’s this huge library of biochemicals out there in the ocean that we’ve only scratched the surface of. It’s a four-billion-year library of solutions to problems which we face as humans, so as we lose species we are losing parts of that enormous library of information.”

The programme aims to involve people from all walks of life and from all corners of the world. And key to the whole mission will be the expeditionary element, where scientists go to sea and use the latest technologies – sensors, submersibles and more – to gather the data.

It is here in particular that the superyacht community will play its own part. Citizen science has become a key motivator for many superyacht owners, offering their vessels as platforms for research, hosting scientists when the yacht visits key and often remote areas, and undertaking scientific and observational projects as owners and crew that feed data into research programmes and even climate models. Indeed, it’s something that Nekton Foundation is already involved with through the Yachts for Science initiative.

It’s particularly pertinent because superyachts frequently visit interesting but remote areas of the world’s seas and oceans far from commercial routes, and increasingly with reduced impact on those areas thanks to advanced technologies and a fervent desire to interact with nature without harming it. Yachts also offer a wealth of critical services, with many offering full dive stations, tenders, and even submarines that can be utilised by visiting scientists. Further, there is a real and increasing appetite to play an active role in conservation and discovery among superyacht owners and guests.

“The truth is, it’s science that really seems to motivate superyacht owners these days,” says Rob McCallum – founding partner of EYOS Expeditions which is one of the partners of the Yachts for Science project. “And Ocean Census is the most fantastic opportunity that we’ve had to date to better understand the complexity of life in our oceans. This will bring a huge group of people together to provide the conduit of knowledge which will expand our understanding of the oceans – and what we understand, we care for; and what we care for will last us into the future.”