Life in the high seas and deep ocean plays critical but often ignored roles in Earth’s climate, such as carbon storage. The intensifying impacts of climate change, including ocean deoxygenation, as well as some ocean-based climate interventions are now threatening these crucial functions. In this panel, experts will examine oxygen as an indicator of climate change, proposed open ocean-based mitigation, and how biodiversity and climate policy can work together to maintain ocean climate services.
Kirsten Isensee, Programme Specialist, IOC-UNESCO, GO2NE
Lisa Levin, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Scripps Institutuion of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Andreas Oschlies, Professor, GEOMAR, Univ. Kiel
Julio Cordano, Director of Environment, Climate Change and Oceans, Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Sarah Seabrook, Marine Biogeochemist, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research
Nathalie Hilmi, Environmental Economist, Centre Scientifique de Monaco
So I Will yes I okay okay okay can you hear me yes great so welcome everybody um to the second Side Event of this uh second of December in the ocean Pavilion and uh today we will talk about climate change deoxygenation and biodiversity in the high seas and deep seas interactions and policy
Opportunities and um just to remind everybody that uh over 70% of the EET are actually um deep in the deep sea and over 60% of the ocean are areas Beyond national jurisdiction and those areas are quite often not considered when we talk about climate change are not
Considered as well in the UNF C but are in the uh uh bbnj and so how to connect these um two Fields how to as well uh account for these uh ecosystems for the deep sea as well when when talking about climate change how it’s affected but
Also what it the services actually it’s providing in terms of uh carbon storage how is as well deoxygenation and biodiversity loss uh affected in these areas and how um these can be also served serving as indicators for climate change all this will be discussed here
Today and um I’m very happy to be here with already three of the four panelists we are having um uh Jano unfortunately won’t make it today but Natalie he me from Monaco will join us later so um without wasting too much time on me I’m very happy to actually have the experts
Um talking here today and the first one is uh introduce yeah maybe I should introduce myself so I’m kiss from the intergovernmental oceanographic Commission of UNESCO very long they’re providing technical support to the um deoxygenation work group of us and also the decade uh program uh good and uh as
Well some other uh programs but here really uh as well to support the scientist um in uh providing the yeah the the the knowledge uh for action and so therefore I’m now really handing over to the first Speaker who is Sarah cro um sorry who’s a marine biochemist at the
National Institute of water and ADM isphere research in New Zealand and co-lead of the climate working group of the uh deep ocean stewardship and uh she will talk about climate impacts on the deep sea high seas biodiversity uh including deoxygenation thank you can everybody hear me okay yes
Great so I will start us off with a bit of a general overview of climate impacts in the deep ocean and as most of us in this room are well aware the ocean is our greatest climate regulator it has taken in over 90% of the heat from anthropogenic carbon emissions and approximately 25%
Of the carbon dioxide but in providing this service of being this really great carbon or climate regulator um increasing greenhouse gas emissions have been pushing the ocean towards potential tipping points with the heat that the ocean has taken in leading to Ocean warming and ocean deoxy enation and with
This carbon dioxide that the ocean has taken in leading to ocean acidification ocean warming has been increasing every year globally and this has been happening across ocean depths so this heat that the ocean is absorbing it has pervasive extensive impacts all the way down to the bottom of the sea
Floor this warming has been increasing the stratification of the ocean with about a 5% increase in Ocean stratification between 1960 and 2018 and this has been effectively acting to decouple the Deep from the shallow it has been reducing nutrient and oxygen exchange reducing carbon transport and having many other
Impacts simultaneously there have been changes to Ocean circulation patterns these are shifting connections between ocean depths between ocean basins with some areas having decreased transport and some areas is having increased transport this changes ocean carbon sequestration nutrient transport and this even has impacts on weather patterns these physical changes
Happening to the ocean because of ocean warming have impacts on Ocean greenhouse gas storage on Ocean biodiversity the habitability of the ocean and overall ocean productivity such impacts are ocean deoxygenation changes to Ocean nutrient availability and reduced net primary productivity and if we look at Ocean deoxygenation a main theme of
Today warmer more stratified oceans hold less oxygen so as the ocean is warming and as it is becoming more stratified as we just saw it can’t hold as much oxygen within it so since 1960 there has been a 2% global average oxygen loss with up to
40% loss in some ocean reg in some ocean regions and this has a myriad of different impacts three that I will talk about today is uh habitat loss biodiversity loss and impacts to Ocean carbon and nutrient cycling as oxygen minimum zones or omzs expand less life can live in certain
Areas so you can think about that as habitat compression animals either have to leave go somewhere else or face lethal impacts this can impact where fishery species are occurring and where Fisheries economies can um benefit from the um Fisheries industry this correlates also with biodiversity loss with incremental loss
In oxygen leading to varied impact so the more that you get to hypoxic low oxygen conditions the less biodiversity that you have in the ocean system and this also impacts ocean carbon and nutrient cycling um one thing that I think about a lot is impact to the
Sediment system so as you move from oxygenated Waters to hypoxic oxygen Waters you have impacts on the processes that are occurring with the microbes in the sediment with the biogeochemistry within the sediment and that can lead to even the release of methane and nitrous oxide from sediment systems that could
Otherwise be um sequestering carbon away and providing a service to our world there’s also reduced food transport so as the ocean becoming more stratified as you’re having less connectivity less nutrient exchange you’re seeing impacts to nutrient availability and primary productivity which then impacts how much carbon is transported through the ocean to the
Deep sea system and this changes how much metabolism is happening in the open ocean so part of this biological pump where you have carbon absorbed at the seaf Flor and then transported as Marine snow which you can see in this picture here at the bottom um much life within
The open ocean feeds on this material as it sinks to the Deep but then also a lot of Life at the bottom of the ocean is Reliant upon this food making it down there and so some Studies have found um 30% loss predicted by 2,100 in some ocean areas in biodiversity and biomass
Due to there being less food and it’s not just these warming impacts right it’s also ocean acidification and ocean acidification is particularly um problematic within the Deep ocean because the cold temperatures of the deep sea can cause more acidified conditions with less CO2 absorption so
It doesn’t take quite as much CO2 to be absorbed overall in the ocean to then have more acidified conditions in the cold deep Waters that can hold more carbon dioxide and in the deep ocean this contributes to deep sea coral degradation collapse of deep sea coral ecosystems and it also shifts what makes
It to the deep sea similar to this impact to food transport we saw previously um acidification impacts um extend to particle ballasting so how fast particles can sink to the deep ocean but also how they can then be used in the water column by the life within the open
Ocean and these many varied impacts um as we see across many ocean systems are worse at uh at RCP 8.5 are higher emission scenarios than at the lower emission scenarios and the risk scenarios is for for these cumulative stressors um extend throughout deep sea and high seas ecosystems eastern boundary upwelling systems have
Predictions of reduced Fisheries cold water corals we’ll have dissolution of cold water Coral habitats seamount canyons and slopes will have decreased biodiversity Abyssal Plains will have reduced carbon burial and Vents and seeps you could see in some instances in some ocean regions increased methane release from some seep system
And so when we put these into the context of cop 28 we can see these lower emission scenarios they avoid the worst outcomes in the deep sea and that the deep ocean and the high seas are a critical component of climate mitigation and they’re experiencing climate impacts
That will continue to worsen Over time however these deep ocean and high seas ecosystems remain understudied and under represented in climate negotiations and in the policies that come out of them and I wanted to highlight one um information sheet that we have put together Dosey and the deep ocean
Observing strategy um identifying deep ocean science gaps for understanding and monitoring change this is very hot off the press so much so that when these slides were made and submitted we did not have the QR code yet but we do have the QR code now so if you find me after
If you find Lisa we can get you the QR code to download this information sheet but we analyzed thousands of pages of low confidence de otion related items within the AR6 cycle IPC reports and we found that the that the deep ocean related to about 30% of the total
Counted low confidence entries and of these low confidence entries in the AR6 cycle reports it’s predominantly high confidence items that are in the summary for policy makers that come out of it so not only is the de oan low confidence within the reports but then when the
Policy makers get the summary for policy makers these low confidence deepy items are often not within what they are seeing and we found is particularly intensified within the working group three report um on mitigation which could potentially be showing uncertainty in the climate solution space when it comes to mitigation actions that affect
The deep ocean so come find us after if you’d like to get the QR code to see this full sheet and I thank you for your time thank you very much Sarah this was uh very interesting and very comprehensive uh overview about the impact of climate change on the deep
Ocean um and the next one I’m probably not necessary to introduce her but I will do Lisa L Meritus Professor from scripts Institute of oceanography at UC San Diego uh very uh important member of the gone working group global ocean Oxygen Network and the deep ocean stewardship initiative and Lisa will um
Give a little bit more information about deep uh biod biodiversity roads in the carbon cycle uh and threats from resource exraction and Marine CDR okay thank you let me just see something this is a movie and I want to introduce you to blue carbon in action
In the open ocean these are uh cutless fish at 400 meters off Costa Rica and you hear a lot about the importance of the mesopelagic and the role in the carbon cycle but we don’t get to see it very often so I thought I would share that
So um kren’s already told us that you know most of the ocean in fact is deep sea below 200 meters and you know almost two-thirds of it is the high seas and so that is why we are focusing on this topic today and um what I’ll be talking
About is the role of biodiversity in the carbon cycle and uh you know we we are starting to put numbers and dollar signs on this and about half a billion tons of carbon are captured um on the high seas annually and deposited into the deep sea
And the estimated value for this is on the order of almost $160 billion so it’s an important and valuable process um I want to talk a little bit about how this happens and and how biodiversity plays a role and Sarah talked about the biological pump but
There are in fact three pumps that move carbon from the atmosphere into the ocean into the deep ocean the first is the physical pump which actually um doesn’t involve biology it’s just absorption of carbon dioxide and it’s moved down into deep Waters through thermohaline circulation or a great
Conveyor belt the second pump is the carbonate pump where small organisms precipitate calcium carbonate skeletons um and these in the water and then these particles sink into the deep sea and then the third pump is the biological pump where phytoplankton through photosynthesis take up carbon dioxide which goes from the atmosphere to the
Water to the phytoplankton and then they Aggregate and sink or are eaten by small organisms which might migrate downwards or might be eaten by bigger organisms and the carbon makes its way into the deep sea and the biological iCal pump is usually talked about in terms of small
Particles but there are a lot of big organisms in the ocean that play a very important role in transporting and storing carbon and some of these roles are depicted here um there’s a lot of carbon in fish biomass and in whale and Marine Mammal biomass some of uh of that
Is moved into deep water through migrations and whale Falls there are billions of small crustations and mesopelagic fish that move carbon down 500 to 1,000 meters every single day into the deep sea and there are mass migrations across ocean basins that move carbon horizontally so there’s a lot and
Then there’s food webs that move carbon ultimately into the deep sea now um actually let me go back typically diagrams of the biological pump and even the the animal pumps show the Deep ocean uh as a flat Brown Line just like you see here um we
Tend to call it the deep sea but in fact the bottom of the ocean is full of a myriad of different ecosystems each with its own biodiversity and each of these systems plays a very important role in um processing and sequestering carbon so I talked about vertical migrations moving
Carbon um down into vertically into the deep sea there are um some Coastal or I should say Continental margin ecosystems Like Oxygen minimum zones and canyons and fjords and cold water coral reefs that sequester massive amounts of carbon they’re beneath productive areas there are some really vast areas like uh the
Polymetallic nodule zones beneath oligotrophic GS that are just so vast that they sequester huge amounts of carbon areas like seamounts have large amount of biomass that sequesters carbon methane seeps of which there are now we know thousands along our Continental margins sequester um will actually process methane emerging from the
Seafloor and the microbes turn it into carbonate or sometimes into animal tissue and that keeps that methane out of the atmosphere and then hydrothermal vents release a lot of iron which fertilizes the ocean and contributes to primary productivity which takes up carbon so all of the these are just some
Examples of how deep sea ecosystems can uh and do play a really important role in the carbon cycle but they’re also very vulnerable to uh disturbance uh by different kinds of human activities and I’ve listed some here that we know can affect uh bio both biodiversity and their carbon cycle
Services bottom trolling and different forms of of fishing over Harvest and by catch and ghost fishing which is the release of old dead fishing gear um we have contamination we have excavation for cables we have oil and gas extraction going on we potentially could have seabed deep seabed mining um or new
Fisheries for mesopelagic fishes and um and as we heard in the last session and in many other sessions new technologies for carbon dioxide removal and the majority of these activities either emit carbon or remove carbon stores from the ocean or interfere with carbon transfer or potentially could release sequestered
Carbon from the sea Flor and we need to be thinking about these activities in terms of their effects on carbon and climate I mentioned um Marine carbon dioxide removal um um we have a whole series of different technologies that have been proposed um to do this and
They basically all use the deep ocean as the disposal site basically the garbage can for carbon dioxide but almost all of these different technologies will affect marine ecosystems in some way and this figure summarizes um some of the different impacts there’s a QR code up there that
Links to the paper that uh that came out earlier this year that summarizes deep sea impacts but we know that some of the technologies will change the light regime or turbidity regime and change of photosynthesis and and carbon fixation um some of the Technologies like iron fertilization will basically
Um Bel beneath the area cause oxygen loss more o ocean uh deoxygenation and ocean acidification that will release CO2 and consume oxygen as the phytoplankton decays um all of these activities will probably change the vertical migrations of those billions of animals that are moving carbon downward um there uh things like
Macroalgal cultivation and sinking or crop waste disposal will release dissolved organic carbon into the ocean many of these will smother animals on the bottom potentially release greenhouse gases or hydrogen sulfide and ultimately can reduce some natural carbon burial processes so so this is a lot to think
About but we think it’s very important to recognize there are impacts to the deep sea for all of these Technologies um especially at scale and this is I think my last slide I want to talk a little bit about how we think about the deep sea and the high seas in terms of
Climate policy and we have a new policy brief again the QR code is up there about how biodiversity um deep sea biodiversity can be incorporated into UNF C policy elements both nationally determined contributions and National adaptation plans can think about um creating Marine protected areas that have um climate
Change implications or um can help protect carbon uh Services carbon sequestration Services we have the potential in these to introduce no take zones that restore biodiversity facilitate the recovery of whales and fishes that do store and transport carbon we can work to maintain the in Integrity of the mesopelagic ecosystems account for
Climate change in our fisheries management um prevent the release of sea Flor carbon by regulating activities like bottom trolling or seabed mining that might release massive amounts of carbon and and we can avoid damage to Natural carbon cycle processes from uh different kinds of carbon dioxide removal interventions now there are other things
Discussed in this brief and I don’t have time to go into them all but we did think harmonizing um because we are talking about the high seas and a lot of the UNF C policy doesn’t directly apply to the high seas we think uh that the new biodiversity Beyond National Juris addiction
Agreement sometimes called the high seas treaty offers a really valuable opportunity to address both biodiversity and climate together there isn’t a lot of climate in the text of the bbnj agreement but um we can use the mpa and spatial planning uh opportunities to create high seas uh protected areas that
Also protect carbon services and we can link the science bodies we think putting the ipcc together with whatever science and Technical body emerges from the bbnj to address how to handle and and think about the ocean as a whole rather than jurisdictionally or sectorally can be really import important in linking
Biodiversity well making biodiversity and climate action uh happen together and I’ll stop there thank you very much Lisa um and it really shows nicely how how we here maybe talk only about the coastal areas or address in the unfc but in the end the ocean is connected and if we um
Forget about the deep sea if we forget about the areas Beyond national jurisdiction um this whole thing won’t work so thank you very much um we now go to our next speaker who is Andreas o who is um uh senior researcher sorry I have it
Here uh is a professor at the Marine um biogeochem modeling at gomar and the University of Keel he’s um co-chairing the global ocean Oxygen Network and also the global ocean oxygen decade and what he also talked before he’s uh co-chairing the German Mar research Alliance research mission on
Mcdr uh CD CDM and um now he will talk about oxygen as an indicator for climate change yeah thank you so this is uh well we have heard already thanks very much for for that oxygen is declining the ocean has lost according to to observational estimates or compilation
Of uh measurements um more than 2% or 2% doing during the past 50 years 1960 to 2010 right now it’s certainly a little bit more than 2% this is a rapid change so if we extrapolate that we wouldn’t the ocean would be devoid of oxygen in
2,500 years and so this wouldn’t be very good as we all know since if you can’t breathe Nothing Else Matters that’s a slogan of the Canadian Lung Association but it also applies to fish to animals in the ocean uh and this is something we we haven’t been well we have been surp
Surprised the scientists have been surprised by this we we found out about this maybe 15 years ago and uh despite all the excellent measurements that we have oxygen has been measured for more than 100 years with the same method wi clut hydration we just uh had
It was where a teaching module of our summer school two weeks ago to the students how to measure oxygen in the ocean and and that’s an excellent asset to have the same method over more than a Century uh we don’t have that for temperature for any other property in
The ocean as far as I know so oxygen is really a good could be a good indicator for environmental change since we have this historical data set which we don’t have for other climate variables and here is shown what that basically in every ocean Basin we see a decline of
Oxygen that’s the column inventory of the observational estimates of changes and it’s almost red everywhere we red is a decline here and and the right on the right we see the uh profile of this change so it’s happening surprisingly also in the deep ocean and this is uh something we uh we
Still struggle with how to how does it happen most of the deep ocean waters are still pre-industrial they’re older than 200 years and they haven’t they don’t know about fossil fuels but they do see oxygen decline so that might be a fter transition of uh the biological pumps that transport material and changes
Respiration patterns it might also be a change in the ventilation time scares in the clock of the ocean SS so giving it more time for respiration to accumulate and this we have to sort out right now climate models that we do use for ipcc and so on or to assess Marine carbon
Dioxide removal methods they underestimate this globally by Factor 2 to3 the oxygen Decline and in the deep ocean much more so basically they don’t show an oxygen decline in most of the deep ocean so that might be well that’s a serious problem it might be physics might be biology it’s probably physics
The current gas but it’s uh it’s not not good if we want to model carbon or heat uptake as well so that’s uh that’s a challenge and fortunately we have these OB observational data and uh and oxygen well if you don’t don’t can’t breathe nothing else matters it it’s a serious
Problem that I think we have to stress it’s in addition to as ification to Ocean warming and unfortunately that was missed during the Declaration of the ocean Pavilion the um the cop declaration here so we we managed to get into most of the cop and ipcc statements
Now and I think we have to remember this deoxygenation we think does matter and it uh does matter well for habitats uh and that’s shown here it’s a recompilation of of the same data so this spatial map here now sorted for different oxygen classes so if we Define habitats by oxygen thresholds that
Species have most fish can’t live or can’t live well be below 70 micro oxygen around that and uh whoops sorry I’m wrong way and this is the class oxygen class on the horizontal axis here so you see around there the red circle that’s around this 550 to to 110 micro molar
That’s where many animals in the ocean have a threshold currently observed animals in the ocean and we see over these 50 years in the observational data the habitat of these species that need more than 50 to 110 micromo oxygen has shrunk by well 10 to the six cubic kilometers that’s number we can’t
Imagine but if we convert it and this oxygen loss is warming driven that’s what we know from or think we know from Models but the models are not perfect and not correct and we have huge difficulties there but if we relate this oxygen loss to CO2 emissions and convert
That that’s what we believe we can do then every single person of us in Europe we have about 10 tons of CO2 emissions per year per person that’s uh on average we would reduce the habitat by an apartment size every day because of our CO2 emissions so 220 of square cubic
Meters that’s a three room apartment about every day due to our 10 ton per year annual CO2 emissions so that’s a lot and that’s a reason we think why we should be concerned about oxygen but it offers also an opportunity to use oxygen as a indicator for climate damages and global
Warming damages and CO2 emission damages so if you fill up your car next time you can think about this that’s maybe well three houses or so for an average car uh but we can convert every single liter of gasoline or every ton of CO2 to oxygen to habitat loss and that’s a according
To two models our understanding it’s it’s a almost permanent loss for a few well 100 years at least um I think that was already my last yes why bother so that’s habitats are important if we think the ocean is important to us of course the Black Sea
Has no oxygen below the surface layer so maybe we could could live or we wouldn’t even bother about deep ocean anoxia apart from us scientists here but uh still we think it’s not well not a very good strategy to to spend use fossil fuels but uh kill most of the ocean so
And there’s biodiversity there’s lots of uh well mechanism enzymes substrates that may also be of direct human value and there’s some some nice tasting fish as well which you showed on some of the figures so so we have to stop deoxygenation as quickly as possible I think that’s our
Responsibility and even in the deep ocean the deep ocean is most vulnerable because there the conveyor belt circulation will transport uh what we do now over the next few hundred years and that’s a signal that is under way already so we we are committing every
Day harm to the deep ocean in the next few centuries and that’s what we shouldn’t do I mean we have no right to do that just because what want to live more well easily or have a cheaper way of living no this is not environmentally responsible and we we have to stop this
Habitat loss of deoxygenation so oxygen is an not great indicator we have excellent historical data I think we should add it to like warming which has less meaning to us uh because fluctuations day today are so high but if we lose habitats the that has a meaning since if species go extinct they
Don’t come back if uh if it changes again so that’s a well permanent threat and we commit that every single day thanks for your attention thank you Andreas and um what you just mentioned so why do we care why does it matter and I think Natalie will
Talk a little bit about that as well because for some people money is the only Cur which which talks and and I think it’s um it’s also important to recognize that and Natalie Hy is a specialist in macroeconomics and international finance at the Centra santii de Monaco as a section head of
Environmental economics and she has been also lead author of multiple chapters of the IPC Special Report on the ocean and chir sphere and today she will talk about the economic implications of deep se’s role in climate mitigation strategies thank you gon uh hello everybody uh um yeah I’m going to talk
About the import the economic importance of the deep sea and uh their ecosystem Services I think Lisa has already presented all the importance of the deep sea it is very important for the biodiversity but also for the ecosystem services that it renders to the humanity uh uh if we want to understand
The ecosystem Services of the deep sea um we have to do more research we we rely our uh ecosystem Services valuation on the science so this is why we need the scientist to explain to us what the dips is doing and then we can understand
How uh we can give a value to those ecosystem Services especially it’s important for the carbon sequestration we hear a lot about blue carbon and this is important for the carbon Market that uh we speak a lot about finance and the carbon credits but uh we have to understand the science behind before
Doing all this so my two main key messages are the importance of the ecosystem Services of the deep sea and how we can give them a monetary value to um to to show that they are important to show to policy maker that these values are really important and the and the
Private sector also can invest in the protection and the conservation of the deep sea we have four uh ecosystem services and provisioning regulating supporting and cultural services and if we put into those categories the different ecosystem Services of the deep sea you can see that they are really
Important but if you look at the third line uh you can see that even all gas and minerals are here and this is the problem we don’t want to explore and exploit the deep sea without knowing the the secondary effect effect on the the biodiversity and this is really crucial
To understand so now I’m going into the valuation of those ecosystem Services we have already some studies that has been done and you can see the importance of each ecosystem service but the problem look look at the number for the oil and gas this is the production of oil and
Gas and you can understand why uh even some people say that they are doing research some countries are already exploring the deep sea especially in Antarctica for example and um yeah this is the climate service from the deep sea and uh it is really an important number as you can
See and it is annually and this is uh mainly due to the carbon pump and um now about the deep sea as a nature based solution uh because we I I’m working a lot on the nature based Solutions especially in the ocean we know that the the atmosphere is already
Full of CO2 if I want an image I can take like a big a bath bath tube full of CO2 this is our atmosphere it is already full we have to close the tap and this is the reduction of CO2 emissions but it is not enough we have to drain the CO2
Which is already in the in the bath tube and we open the the bath tube and we try to drain this CO2 we have two solutions one is technology and one is nature but both should be you used because we need really all the Sol Solutions the problem
With the technology we still don’t know what is going on it’s like a witch we have a portion and we you know we steer and we don’t know what is coming out but nature is already doing its role from many centuries Millennium ago and um finally if we consider the
Nature-based solution approach we can see that we have many ecosystem services and and we have also tools like uh pollution reduction fisheries management to to to to enhance the benefits from the from the deep sea thank you thank you and thank you to all the speakers for for really providing a nice
Overview from from the scientific basis but also to the application how we might use uh the the the knowledge as well for future actions and uh we have some time for questions if there are any questions from the audience yeahi yeah you need to give Natalie can
You give her the microphone and then we share the other one yeah thank you I have a question for Lisa we have to share that one okay so Lisa you give a very nice presentation and you’re talking about the three common pumps including the Communist counter pump so when I say counter
Because so when you have one more of precipitation of carbonat you’re going to release one more equivalent amount of CO2 B into the atmosphere so how do you comment that this is the one the second one is about deoxidization in the sediment in that case you’re going to
Have more opportunity to preserve the carbon in the sediment but without much enough oxygen that is not good for the animals for the lives down there so what’s your comments on that I I did not totally understand the question so okay I can repeat first car is a counter pump right
The which so you emphasize three carbon pumps one is the carbon is counter pump why it is called counter comp because when you have one more of precipitation for carbonates you’re going to release same amount of CO2 bang into the atmosphere so it’s not a good you’re
Saying it’s not a pump yes this you can you mention I Me Maybe Andreas can answer this question not I’m not the biog geochemist you’re saying one of those pumps isn’t really a pump you’re you said three common pumps right yeah so I was wondering what’s your comments
On this counter process do you have any idea to turn the counter pum to be a positive one no but do you want to comment on yes so so if you if you kill the counter pump by by ocean acidification so then you could have a benefit or more
CO2 uptake or less CO2 production in the surface ocean so that that we we see that in a few times that ecological changes or well negative changes in ecology like killing all calcifiers might have a positive CO2 impact and vice versa and similar for the oxygen so so a dead ocean
Is ideal to sequester all the carbon and an oxy ocean I mean that’s what how the Earth system worked in the past all the black shaes that’s CO2 taken from the atmosphere because there was no respiration in the anoxic oceans and that’s how how the planet gets rid of a
Lot of CO2 in the in in in extreme warming events and in in the historical past so we have this well trade-offs okay what what do we want and do we have the right to mess around with things uh for for some egoistic purposes uh that’s very questionable yeah but it doesn’t go
Into the all in the same direction that’s a problem so we can’t do do that is that is not a management issue I mean that’s the the natural cycle and it’s I think it is confusing to to show on on on slides um calcifying organisms calcifying animals because calcifying animals are really releasing
CO2 they do calcification they precipitate calcium carbonate they release CO2 and then they are animals so they breathe they release CO2 also the the so it is um in fact it confuses the picture to call that carbon storage because yes the calcium carbonate is carbon but in terms of CO2 those animals
Are relasing is not yeah exactly yes okay any more question from the audience for the panel yeah yeah yeah um Hello thank you uh my name is Dia I’m from the ministry of marine Affairs and feries Indonesia perhaps my question to Lisa and Natalie maybe so
I’m very interesting in what you say and and your idea Lisa about talking about um to create MP um uh as a way to taking care of the carbon cycle um process uh in the high seas and and deep and deep sea um and I also agree that you
Mentioned about um uh about the highis and is not become attention with the uh the UNF tric and thanks God we already have this BB agreement and we need to um uh bring this attention to the nf3 and I think it’s not only the high but overall
Ocean issues not become M attention to thisy as far as I know so um um regarding this bbng um agreement so uh one of their their suggestion is to create this abmt right the area based managment tools which is like a creating MP area uh in the area Beyond uh uration
And you are talking about that mostly uh every country uh talking about the um MBA under the jurisdiction even in Indonesia we are struggling struggling for uh creating and expand our MPA into 30 30% of our water into MBA but we still have a problem with how to manage
It and with the a very V area with the uh um uh human resource and the modalities and perhaps um uh um Lisa and and Natalie can can give me or us um lesson learn our suggestion how is um uh the what do you call the encouragement
Uh the need to create this ibm2 or MPA in the area Beyond National jic and what is the benefit and something like that so every country like Indonesia perhaps wants to propose it uh to implement the bb& agreement thank you Lisa and Nathalie yeah okay thank you um so
You’re asking the the motivation for having mpas in the in the high seas and international ocean and you know um well I’m sure everybody here is familiar with 30×30 the only if we did want 30% of the ocean protect we would have to incorporate very large protected areas
In the international ocean and um you know basically an undisturbed ocean is going to H provide intact Services both the carbon Services the nutrient regeneration Services The Fishery services and I think most countries don’t realize how connected the ocean is and that you need a healthy and productive internet National ocean to
Have a healthy and productive exclusive economic zone and to keep your Fisheries um functional and um and productive and so that that certainly is one of the motivations but I do believe that there are climate benefits to Marine protected areas and that um we we tried to get climate vulnerability and resilience as
One of the annex one criteria in the bbnj agreement for creation of protected areas and it’s not there it didn’t get in but that doesn’t mean that when people are considering criteria for establishment of high seas protected areas that they can’t look at which areas serve as climate refugia which
Areas might be corridors that their fishery species need to move back and forth between the ezs and and the high seas and um there there are probably you know many other well let’s see climate many many many other climate benefits that can be incorporated we can use climate projection models to look at
Where species will be moving to in the next 50 or 100 years and and work to protect specific Target taxa as well um so maybe I should let Natalie comment at this point yeah thank you Lisa I think the yeah the science is uh very important to understand and then comes the economic
Valuation so if we show to the policy makers that it will bring more values if we have Marine protected areas maybe they they will be motivated to protect more thank you very much are there more questions from the audience I actually if uh I actually also have one when you
Showed the island gas and I mean that really is um magnitude higher than the other ecosystem services in terms of value I think how how can you help maybe because I think that is one problem communicate as well countries or the the local communities the the Justice aspect
Because it’s oil and gas that’s for developed countries accessible but definitely not for the developing countries and local communities so are there any efforts under way to kind of support in that area so that there is more Justice in in using the ocean sustainably I think just yeah the
Problem is uh with with global warming the ice is melting and uh I’m thinking about the Arctic for example 30% of the world reserve of gas and 15% of the world Reser of oil are in the Arctic so if the ice is melting it will be easier
To go and drill all this oil and gas and this is really a problem so what we have to to implement is maybe regulation because if we have the right regulation it is not allow it to go and exploit the the the oil and gas because we already
Have too much and this is maybe better than really climate Justice because we it is forbidden and that’s it thank you and and I also have one more question actually for Sarah looking at all that and how important the deep ocean is I think we are rather convinced as well most of us
Here in the room but um what are the deep sea climate impacts you think should be most important for the policy makers here at uh cop 28 what are your key messages why um which impacts they should be aware of and and to try to
Avoid yeah thank you uh I think a lot of us who are scientists within the Earth system space we have a really unique perspective about um the policy that is needed for climate change because we we really have a deep understanding of feedbacks in the earth system and we understand like Andrea summarized
Earlier that what we do today is going to we’re going to still see impacts in the deep ocean um for hundreds of years um in some instances even even with mitigation Technologies and so the urgency really lies in how far behind we already are in making a lot of these policies and it’s
Really good we’ve seen a lot of incremental change happening in the climate space but when you consider the feedbacks and when you consider the delays that happen in the earth system we we need transformative change because um there is going to be um a lot of unknown territory that we continue to
Get into as the rate of change continues increasing thank you very much and and also for for Andreas actually looking One impact of climate change the indicator deoxygenation loss of oxygen not only in the high seas and but also in coastal areas uping areas how
How can we stop it actually what can we do yeah we have to stop emissions so that’s the main driver and Coastal summ of course there we still have futri fication so runoff of organic matter and nutrients from Land uh that has be sto has to be stopped and it has been
Stopped in many countries but not not everywhere so that’s an easy solution usually uh and stopping emissions that’s the next uh well immediate uh not so easy solution but that needs to be done if we don’t stop emissions we will continue to to lose oxygen at a higher
Rate we will continue to warm the atmosphere the surface ocean and eventually the deep ocean um and at least current models show that the day we stop emissions we stop upper ocean deoxygenation we don’t stop deep ocean oxygenation so there we have still three qus so four-fold increase in deep ocean
Oxygen loss even if we stopped emissions today so most of this we have realized only one quarter three quarters are still in the pipeline according to current models which are not good uh so we have to improve that estimate but that’s not very reassuring and there are
Now a few where companies green hydrogen producers they also produce oxygen in the electrolysis and there are some ideas to use that oxygen to to well oxidize reoxygenate the the ocean the deep ocean the deep ocean I think there’s no hopes we don’t we can never produce so much
Hydrogen we don’t need it to to have enough oxygen uh to to re oxygenize the deep ocean but maybe it could work on some Coastal embayments which of of economic value with aquaculture hit by deoxygenation and our cor reefs already hit by deoxygenation because so there maybe well at least the
The the mass wise there might be potential we don’t know if technologically it could be done it should be done and the the global ocean oxygen decade program we are trying to to write some some well first policy paper on that what should be um studied
To to get a good well assessment of of potential values of using this waste oxygen right now that’s well produced by all hydrogen production so that could maybe help on some if if applied cleverly but so far we don’t know do you want to mention yes yes yes so thank you very
Much and we have two minutes left and I think uh um give a hand first to all our speakers because this is one of the rare events which is actually addressing high seas or de oxygenation so I’m very happy that we had the chance to talk about
That um Tomorrow there’s also the Earth info day and there we will at the World Cafe have a round table with stoman and uh Lisa le talking about ocean acidification and deoxygenation so there you can also have a dialogue with the expert uh on that
And um so I hope to see many of you there there will be also time I think now for discussion in the corridors but uh thank you very much for for that and uh thank you to the panelist for a great presentation thank [Applause] you