Last week, I attended the Green Scene of Coastal Georgia’s monthly Eco-Lecture featuring OCEARCH Founder and Expedition Leader, Chris Fischer. Beyond being an extraordinarily passionate and inspiring speaker, Fischer has a special gift of seeing the “big picture,” creating solutions around that picture, and communicating that picture in an accessible way to others. The picture he was laying out for his packed audience last Wednesday was that of the environmental policy paradox.
Coined by Zachary Smith in his book of the same title, the environmental policy paradox is the idea that “we often understand what the best short- and long-term solutions to environmental problems are, yet the task of implementing these solutions is either left undone or completed too late” (Smith 2018, xiv). In Fischer’s case, he saw that there was a disconnect between research and policy implementation exacerbated by unreasonably long timelines. Specifically, ocean abundance and health were declining and the solutions to addressing these myriad issues were taking far too long. Researchers were conducting individual expeditions to study marine life and coveting the data over long timeframes to remain competitive in the grant-writing process. They were falling prey to a system of “publish or perish” and not making the conversion from science to policy in an efficient way.
Fischer’s solution through OCEARCH was to create a business of research expeditions that include many researchers working on separate projects around a single species; typically, white sharks, but other large marine animals that significantly impact their ecosystem as well. By making previously unattainable data from large, top-of-the-food-chain species accessible, the OCEARCH team can work toward solving issues of ocean health and abundance. The process works like this: when the OCEARCH team detains an animal, they can quickly (in about 15 minutes) gather 12 or more samples from the animal, share much of these data in real time, and contribute data to 18 or so different research projects at once through both initial samples and tracking devices. In one 15-minute interaction, the team can gather information about a white shark’s reproductive condition, reproductive cycle, genetic status, diet, gestation period, inorganic and organic contaminant loads, fecundity, parasite species presence, abundance, and infection sites. This drastically reduces the time and data deficit that has long existed for large marine animals in the field of research and directly addresses the environmental policy paradox for ocean ecology. To date, OCEARCH has completed 34 expeditions, worked with 174 researchers, 90 institutions, and contributed to 22 published papers.
OCEARCH’s approach completely transforms the research and policy process by making data collection and distribution collaborative, inclusive and open-sourced. What is most exciting to me as an environmental policy scholar, however, is the applicability of such a model within other ecosystems. The model essentially connects researchers working within the same species category or ecosystem, creates a more efficient data collection process, and then shares the data not only within the scientific community, but publicly. It gets the policy-makers and public involved in the natural world around them in real time. I can see how this model could be applied much more widely and could have transformative impacts on ecosystem health and sustainability.
https://www.ocearch.org/about/
Dr. Heather Farley is a professor of Public Management in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies.
Reg Murphy Center