DOSI Experts Spring Into Action in Crucial Month for Deep Ocean Policy

Spring has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, and with it have come major international meetings for deep-ocean policy. All of those meetings have needed reliable scientific knowledge to design effective rules, so our DOSI experts have been extremely active! Here are some of the ways we have participated this month:

Last week, UN delegates were finally able to meet to continue work on the rules for Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, or BBNJ. Since over 90 percent of the ocean habitat for life is in the deep sea, it was extremely important to bring deep-ocean science to the negotiations. DOSI scientists attended the event to share their expertise, and they brought along several key publications. The first, The Deep Ocean and BBNJ: Important Points for IGC-4, focused on high-level relationships between BBNJ negotiation topics and the deep sea. Other policy briefs and papers we shared during the event covered topics including marine genetic resources, capacity building, ecological connectivity, and more.

Our brand new Task Force for the Conservation of  Deep-Ocean Biodiversity has been busy too. Over the past week, leads Diva Amon and Anna Metaxas have added their input to UN meetings on the Convention on Biological Diversity, where DOSI has secured observer status.

Finally, Monday marked the start of the 27th session of the Council of the International Seabed Authority. As states seek to define the rules for seabed mining, DOSI experts are in attendance to help ground those regulations in science. Along with participating in meetings, they are sharing our new information sheet on The Ongoing Science Needed for Robust Deep-Sea Mining Regulations. More news on DOSI’s involvement with the ISA session will be shared on our Twitter throughout the week.

This March has been an exciting month for deep ocean stewardship, and things are set to get even busier as events like the UN Ocean Conference and World Ocean Day draw closer. We hope that you will continue to follow along with our DOSI experts as they communicate desperately needed deep-sea science!