Marie Damour: Changes affecting the health of oceans

Photo / Thinkstock

Opinion

The ocean regulates our climate while generating half of the oxygen we breathe. More than three billion people worldwide rely on fish as a significant source of protein. Yet as vast as it is, our ocean is facing major challenges and we've already begun to see changes that could impact on both the United States and New Zealand.

Recently, in remarks for Pacific Day at the New Zealand Embassy in Washington DC, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Pacific Ocean "is the connective tissue" that binds the United States and New Zealand. Our mutual reliance on the resources from the same ocean necessitates coordinated action.

In June, Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully attended Secretary Kerry's Our Ocean conference at the US Department of State, a conference which highlighted three key issues: sustainable fisheries, marine pollution and ocean acidification.

Ocean acidification threatens biological communities, and the economies that depend on them. In the United States, for example, one of every six jobs is marine-related, and more than one-third of our Gross National Product originates in coastal areas.

The United States and New Zealand are working closely to address the challenges created by ocean acidification through knowledge-sharing and scientific collaboration, as we've started to understand just how serious this problem is.

In 2008, Oregon and Washington State lost 80 per cent of their shellfish hatcheries' production due to the impacts of ocean acidification, threatening a US$300 million industry and the livelihoods of more than 3000 workers. Scientists and industry leaders responded by deploying new technologies to monitor ocean acidification in coastal seawater, allowing shellfish farmers to detect changing ocean conditions and adapt their farming practices in response.

In December 2013, the US Department of State partnered with New Zealand government departments, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, the Cawthron Institute, Sanford Limited, and the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation to co-sponsor a workshop entitled, Future-proofing New Zealand's shellfish aquaculture: Monitoring and adaptation to ocean acidification.

While there is, as yet, no evidence that ocean acidification has impacted on shellfish aquaculture in New Zealand, proactive and adaptive approaches can strengthen New Zealand's NZ$ 350 million per year aquaculture industry before damage might occur.

To follow up the workshop's success, the US Embassy hosted one of the organisers, Dr Todd Capson, a renowned US ocean scientist and current science and policy adviser to the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership in Washington DC, as he toured New Zealand delivering lectures and meeting government and industry representatives, academics, and students.

Like Secretary Kerry, he emphasised that while adaptive techniques are critical, it is also important that society addresses - in global partnership - the primary cause of ocean acidification: carbon dioxide emissions.

The United States is taking a leadership role seriously in tackling emissions head on. In June, President Obama proposed landmark power plant emissions rules, which would cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Last month, at the 45th Pacific Islands Forum in Palau, our two countries announced that we would co-sponsor a multi-nation ocean acidification workshop on the margins of the UN Small Islands Developing States Conference in Samoa this week.

This workshop will aim to build capacity to monitor ocean acidification in order to fully comprehend a problem that could alter the state of our oceans for tens of thousands of years. Working together, we can continue to protect our oceans and the people that depend upon them.

• Marie Damour is Acting Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Wellington.