Latest news with #U.N.OceansConference
Time Magazine
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
How Jaws Wreaked Havoc on Marine Conservation
Jaws was one of Hollywood's first viral summer blockbusters—a global, collective event from the moment it opened in theaters exactly 50 years ago this week. To mark the date on June 20, Steven Spielberg has filmed a new introduction to the movie, which will have a summer run in theaters. Millions born long after the movie last disappeared from big screens still know the plot of the 1975 thriller: A terrifying great white shark attacks fun-loving beach-goers, sets off a panic, and is hunted down by a local sports fisherman. The iconic line 'don't go into the water,' seemed to live on in memory for years. A half-century on, ocean advocates lament the impact the film had on the public's view of sharks. Among its fiercest critics is endurance swimmer and U.N. patron of the oceans, Lewis Pugh. Raised in Plymouth, U.K. and Cape Town, South Africa, Pugh gained fame for his long-distance swim across the icy Geographic North Pole in 2007 without a wetsuit. He has also swum the Antarctic sea, and over long distances in every ocean in the world—including last month in the waters around Martha's Vineyard where Jaws was filmed. Speaking to TIME at the June U.N. Oceans Conference in Nice, Pugh says the world is still suffering the aftereffects of Jaws. Environmentalists say the film led to the wide destruction of shark populations, and that it instilled fear in many about swimming in the sea, markedly setting back the cause of ocean conservation for generations and inspiring a rise in shark trophy hunters. For the past few years, Spielberg, now 78, has expressed remorse over Jaws —even though it sealed his major-league status as a director, while he was still in his 20s. 'I regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and film,' he told the BBC in 2022. 'I truly and to this day regret that.' Far from Hollywood, on a dockside in Nice, while politicians holed up in the U.N. conference debating how to save the oceans, Pugh spoke about the film's impact, and how to rewrite the story of sharks. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. TIME: The movie Jaws really portrayed sharks as villains. Pugh: It turned them into monsters. And they are nothing of the sort. They are essential to a healthy ecosystem. They are like the lions of the savannah. Imagine taking out all the lions in Africa. Very soon the wildebeest, the zebra, the impala, everything would be overgrazed, and there would be no food. There would be an ecological collapse. It's the same with sharks. How are you marking the 50 th anniversary of the movie? I went to Martha's Vineyard, which is where it was filmed, and did the first unassisted swim [without a wetsuit or goggles] around the island. It was to me [about] introducing sharks to a new generation. I swam around Martha's Vineyard over 12 days. It's a big island, it's just over 100 kilometers, or about 60 miles. I've been swimming for 40 years, and Martha's Vineyard turned out to be the toughest swim of my life. We suddenly went into a 10-day storm. Martha's Vineyard is incredibly exposed to the North Atlantic. It's out on Cape Cod. We had 10 days of really, really bad weather. Some days I went literally just one mile in the right direction. It became very, very challenging to just keep calm and carry on. It would be calm, then I'd go over some sea grass which was black and whipping around. Nature can be very, very tough. Steven Spielberg seems to now regret Jaws. He expressed regret on the British radio show 'Desert Island Discs.' Has there ever been a movie that's been more detrimental to the environment? And also: It terrified swimmers and ocean-goers for a generation—actually more than a generation now. It had a very significant impact. What's the story we need to tell instead? We really do need to change that narrative about sharks. They are incredible animals. They've survived five mass extinctions. They are older than the dinosaurs. They are incredible, they are essential, and they are really threatened. I always tell people these numbers: First, 50: It's been 50 years, and we now need a new narrative for the next 50. The second one is 274,000: That's the number of sharks that are killed on average globally every day by commercial fishing. How is that possible? It's a number that is so deeply shocking. The other great threat to sharks other than commercial fishing is indifference. People believe sharks don't matter. They do matter. You take out all the sharks and you will have a watery desert. The third number is: If you multiply 274,000 sharks killed a day, it's about 100 million a year. If that is not ecocide, I don't know what is. Why are they being killed on such a giant scale? [Many] kill sharks for their fins or for food, or they're killed while they are trying to catch something like tuna in nets. What fish do you eat? I don't eat fish. I don't any seafood. I eat a little bit of chicken. Look at what's happening to the fish populations around the world... What if the fish are farmed? I would want to know where the food is coming from that the fish are fed. There's this extraordinary situation where to farm salmon you need large amounts of anchovies and sardines to feed the salmon. In my view a lot of it is done very unsustainably. The numbers are shocking: It takes 10 times the sardines in order to get one kilogram of salmon. [The industry says the ratio is closer to 1.7 kilos of wild-fish feed for a kilo of salmon] You are hoovering up the ocean in order to get a product which is higher up the value chain to sell to people in America or Europe. It's a very personal choice what you eat. What I've learned is when you tell people what to eat, very, very quickly you divide people. But our oceans have been so overfished, and we're sitting here right now on a sea, the Mediterranean, which is one of the most overfished in the world. Are you hopeful that leaders will work together to protect the oceans? You've got to be very careful about hope. It can be an abdication of responsibility, a feeling that some other countries are overfishing, that some countries are damaging the environment, that someone is going to come up with some magical solution. You have to earn hope, by taking action every single day. We've got to face reality head on. The stability we have had with our climate for the past 12,000 years has now ended. I see that because I'm in the ocean. I'm in the Antarctic frequently. What do you think these politicians could be doing? The leaders have got a very important responsibility. The decision whether to take action now, or not to take action, will impact every person on this planet, and the whole of the animal kingdom. It's a very big responsibility. The big changes I'm seeing from 40 years in the ocean: The impact of the climate crisis. I swim a lot in the Arctic and the Antarctic and see the ice melting so quickly. Ice is essential for the health of the planet, keeping it in a temperature we can live in. I swam the length of the English Channel for 49 days. I saw a few dolphins, one shark, sea birds, and nothing else. And I had my head in the water for 49 days! What I did see is lots and lots and lots of jellyfish. That is a sign of warming water. The last thing I'm seeing is plastic pollution—everywhere, even places where humans have never been, like in Antarctica or high up in the Arctic. There's the conveyor belt of currents taking plastic from a beach in Florida, into the north Atlantic high up into the Arctic. Is there a sense of urgency among governments? No. If there was a sense of urgency they wouldn't speak about preserving 30% of the oceans by 2030, which is what all the nations have agreed. And in order for that to become international law 60 nations have to ratify it into law. It's underwhelming. And it shows that they don't understand the scale and the speed of the crisis coming at us. We've been focused on every single other crisis. The environment always gets kicked down the line. Nature won't wait until you have time to negotiate deals. So why did the U.N. call the global oceans conference this month? It's important. You have governments, you have NGOs, you have business, you have scientists, coming together. They need to knock their heads together and find solutions. The ocean impacts all of us. You can't be isolationist when it comes to oceans. Is it important that the U.S. has taken itself out of the process? It's extremely important. They have an enormous coastline. They have enormous influence in the world. As I say, you can't be isolationist when it comes to the environment, and believe you can look after your own waters and you'll be fine. No, it doesn't happen like that. Americans have added so much over the years to the debate. It's better to be in the room and share your thoughts, than not being in the room.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
How AI Can Help Save Our Oceans
Some AI startups are trying to track and limit overfishing. Credit - Jeff J Mitchell—Getty Images At this week's U.N. Oceans Conference in the south of France, delegates need only glance outside the conference hall at the glittering Mediterranean for a stark reminder of the problem they are trying to solve. Scientists estimate there are now about 400 ocean 'dead zones' in the world, where no sea life can survive—more than double the number 20 years ago. The oceans, which cover 70% of Earth and are crucial to mitigating global warming, will likely contain more tonnage of plastic junk than fish by 2050. And by 2100, about 90% of marine species could be extinct. But for all the grim talk among government officials, scientists, and investors, there is also much discussion about something that might help: Artificial intelligence. AI has been used by oceanographers for many years, most commonly to gather data from robots sitting deep underwater. But scientists and environmentalists say breakthroughs just in the past few years—first, with generative AI, and since this year with vastly more sophisticated agentic AI—open possibilities for which they have long been waiting. 'What is very new today is what we call the 'what if' scenarios,' says Alain Arnaud, head of the Digital Ocean department for Mercator, a European Union intergovernmental institution of ocean scientists who have created a 'digital twin of the ocean'—a forensic baseline examination of the global seas. Depicted on a giant live-tracking monitor mounted in the conference's public exhibition space, the 'digital twin' shows dots of 9 billion or so data points beamed up to satellites from underwater cameras. While that type of data is not necessarily new, innovation in AI finally allows Mercator to game out dizzyingly complex scenarios in split-second timing. 'Is my tuna here? If I fish in this area, at this period, what's the impact on the population? Is it better in that area?' Arnaud says, standing in front of the live tracker, as he described just one situation. Until now, turning vast quantities of data into policy and actions has been dauntingly expensive and lengthy for most governments, not to mention the nonprofit environmental organizations and startups that have poured into Nice this week. But now, some say the focus on oceans could open a whole new tech front, as countries and companies try to figure out how to reduce their environmental impact and as AI applications proliferate. 'The potential is immense,' says investor Christian Lim, who heads the ocean investment fund for Swen Capital Partners, an asset manager in Paris. 'You're investing in innovations which transform massive industries,' he says, citing the $300 billion global seafood industry, and the global shipping industry, which transports more than 80% of the world's cargo. Lim, an ardent free-diver (he dived near the conference site this week) quit his finance job in 2018 to launch his own ocean venture-capital company, before joining Swen. 'I looked around and realized no one was doing this,' he says. 'I decided to do it myself.' Lim is among many in Nice this week discussing how to launch money-making ideas to help oceans regenerate. The Norwegian startup OptoScale, for example, launched in 2018 to tackle a major problem in the region's oceans: industrial salmon fishing. A single OptoScale AI-enabled camera dropped into a cage with about 200,000 fish calculates each salmon's weight in real time, and beams it back to the office computer to calculate the exact amount of food to provide the fish—a huge savings in cost, waste, and ocean pollution. The startup now has contracts with big fishing companies, and Lim, an early investor, sold out last month to New York investment firm Insight Partners. Water pollution is being tackled by Swedish firm Cognizant, which harnesses agentic AI to help companies track the water quality of rivers and water networks in the U.K.—a persistent issue for which utilities companies have been fined. 'Three months ago we discovered two sewage networks that were supposed to be closed off in the 1970s,' Stig Martin Fiskaa, who heads Cognizant's ocean program, told a conference panel on Tuesday. The company plans to make its AI application freely available this week. 'It has only been tested in the U.K.,' Fiskaa says. 'We are pretty confident it can work anywhere in the world.' Meanwhile, OnDeck Fisheries AI, a Vancouver startup, captures video footage from fishing vessels, then uses AI to identify specific species caught or thrown into the ocean. This helps crack down on rampant illegal fishing. It can also avoid companies and countries posting people on-board to monitor fishing; several have been murdered for exposing large-scale violations. 'It is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world,' says Ronald Tardiff, ocean innovation lead for the World Economic Forum's center for nature and climate in Geneva. 'OnDeck can have AI spot every instance where someone threw something overboard and identify exactly what it is.' Some say that if small-scale AI ideas show they will make money, big companies could well rush in. 'Build a prototype that proves itself, work out a business model, and then bang, it's investable,' Frederick Tsao, chairman of Singapore's TPC shipping giant, told TIME in Nice on Wednesday; he has spent days meeting with top officials and scientists, and says he has found many potential collaborators for ocean regeneration projects. 'The money is here,' he says. Until those investable ideas gel, many in Nice say ocean regeneration is severely lacking in investments—compared to on-land climate projects. 'The technology is here, and it's powerful,' Stephen Keppel, president of Pvblic Foundation, a Miami nonprofit funder, told a panel in Nice on Tuesday. 'We are not lacking data. We're lacking interoperability, and the way to turn it into action.' Contact us at letters@
Time Magazine
11-06-2025
- Science
- Time Magazine
How AI Can Help Save Our Oceans
At this week's U.N. Oceans Conference in the south of France, delegates need only glance outside the conference hall at the glittering Mediterranean for a stark reminder of the problem they are trying to solve. Scientists estimate there are now about 400 ocean 'dead zones ' in the world, where no sea life can survive—more than double the number 20 years ago. The oceans, which cover 70% of Earth and are crucial to mitigating global warming, will likely contain more tonnage of plastic junk than fish by 2050. And by 2100, about 90% of marine species could be extinct. But for all the grim talk among government officials, scientists, and investors, there is also much discussion about something that might help: Artificial intelligence. AI has been used by oceanographers for many years, most commonly to gather data from robots sitting deep underwater. But scientists and environmentalists say breakthroughs just in the past few years—first, with generative AI, and since this year with vastly more sophisticated agentic AI—open possibilities for which they have long been waiting. 'What is very new today is what we call the 'what if' scenarios,' says Alain Arnaud, head of the Digital Ocean department for Mercator, a European Union intergovernmental institution of ocean scientists who have created a ' digital twin of the ocean' —a forensic baseline examination of the global seas. Depicted on a giant live-tracking monitor mounted in the conference's public exhibition space, the 'digital twin' shows dots of 9 billion or so data points beamed up to satellites from underwater cameras. While that type of data is not necessarily new, innovation in AI finally allows Mercator to game out dizzyingly complex scenarios in split-second timing. 'Is my tuna here? If I fish in this area, at this period, what's the impact on the population? Is it better in that area?' Arnaud says, standing in front of the live tracker, as he described just one situation. Until now, turning vast quantities of data into policy and actions has been dauntingly expensive and lengthy for most governments, not to mention the nonprofit environmental organizations and startups that have poured into Nice this week. But now, some say the focus on oceans could open a whole new tech front, as countries and companies try to figure out how to reduce their environmental impact and as AI applications proliferate. 'The potential is immense,' says investor Christian Lim, who heads the ocean investment fund for Swen Capital Partners, an asset manager in Paris. 'You're investing in innovations which transform massive industries,' he says, citing the $300 billion global seafood industry, and the global shipping industry, which transports more than 80% of the world's cargo. Lim, an ardent free-diver (he dived near the conference site this week) quit his finance job in 2018 to launch his own ocean venture-capital company, before joining Swen. 'I looked around and realized no one was doing this,' he says. 'I decided to do it myself.' Lim is among many in Nice this week discussing how to launch money-making ideas to help oceans regenerate. The Norwegian startup OptoScale, for example, launched in 2018 to tackle a major problem in the region's oceans: industrial salmon fishing. A single OptoScale AI-enabled camera dropped into a cage with about 200,000 fish calculates each salmon's weight in real time, and beams it back to the office computer to calculate the exact amount of food to provide the fish—a huge savings in cost, waste, and ocean pollution. The startup now has contracts with big fishing companies, and Lim, an early investor, sold out last month to New York investment firm Insight Partners. Water pollution is being tackled by Swedish firm Cognizant, which harnesses agentic AI to help companies track the water quality of rivers and water networks in the U.K.—a persistent issue for which utilities companies have been fined. 'Three months ago we discovered two sewage networks that were supposed to be closed off in the 1970s,' Stig Martin Fiskaa, who heads Cognizant's ocean program, told a conference panel on Tuesday. The company plans to make its AI application freely available this week. 'It has only been tested in the U.K.,' Fiskaa says. 'We are pretty confident it can work anywhere in the world.' Meanwhile, OnDeck Fisheries AI, a Vancouver startup, captures video footage from fishing vessels, then uses AI to identify specific species caught or thrown into the ocean. This helps crack down on rampant illegal fishing. It can also avoid companies and countries posting people on-board to monitor fishing; several have been murdered for exposing large-scale violations. 'It is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world,' says Ronald Tardiff, ocean innovation lead for the World Economic Forum's center for nature and climate in Geneva. 'OnDeck can have AI spot every instance where someone threw something overboard and identify exactly what it is.' Some say that if small-scale AI ideas show they will make money, big companies could well rush in. 'Build a prototype that proves itself, work out a business model, and then bang, it's investable,' Frederick Tsao, chairman of Singapore's TPC shipping giant, told TIME in Nice on Wednesday; he has spent days meeting with top officials and scientists, and says he has found many potential collaborators for ocean regeneration projects. 'The money is here,' he says. Until those investable ideas gel, many in Nice say ocean regeneration is severely lacking in investments—compared to on-land climate projects. 'The technology is here, and it's powerful,' Stephen Keppel, president of Pvblic Foundation, a Miami nonprofit funder, told a panel in Nice on Tuesday. 'We are not lacking data. We're lacking interoperability, and the way to turn it into action.'
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Explainer-What is the High Seas Treaty to protect world oceans?
By Virginia Furness LONDON (Reuters) - While many countries have agreed to take steps to protect the vast, ungoverned swathes of the world's oceans, they have yet to see their High Seas Treaty go into effect. This week's U.N. Oceans Conference in the French city of Nice hopes to change that. WHAT IS THE HIGH SEAS TREATY? The treaty, signed in 2023, provides a legal framework for creating marine protected areas on the "high seas", or the ocean areas that lie beyond any national jurisdiction. Currently, less than 3% of the oceans are under some form of protection, although altogether the world's oceans cover two-thirds of the planet. The treaty contains 75 points covering areas such as protecting, caring for and ensuring responsible use of marine resources, and includes a provision for requiring environmental impact assessments of any economic activities in international waters. The treaty also aims to ensure that all countries have fair and equitable access to the ocean's resources. While it is widely referred to as the High Seas Treaty, officially it is called the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty. As of Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said 50 countries had ratified the treaty, with 60 needed for it to go into effect. Separate to the High Seas Treaty, countries agreed under a 2022 U.N. biodiversity pact to put 30% of their territorial waters under conservation. WHY DO WE NEED AN OCEAN TREATY? Oceans support coastal economies and livelihoods through tourism, fishing, shipping, mining, offshore energy and more. Oceans also absorb about a third of the world's carbon dioxide, or CO2 - the primary gas driving climate change - while ocean-swimming phytoplankton provide about half of the world's oxygen. But marine life is now struggling, and human industry and development are almost entirely to blame. More than 1,500 ocean plants and animals are now at risk of extinction, and that number is expected to rise amid ongoing pollution, overfishing, ocean warming and acidification, according to scientists at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Additionally, new threats to ocean organisms and ecosystems could emerge in coming years in the form of deep-sea mining for rare-earth minerals. In Nice, Macron is expected to urge countries to support postponing sea-bed exploration while researchers work to understand deep sea ecosystems. Scientists are also concerned about the possibility that governments could look to modify ocean chemistry to boost its capacity for absorbing CO2 - a scenario that researchers say could help to limit global warming but could also have unintended consequences. WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS FOR THE TREATY? Macron's news on Monday of 50 governments having ratified the treaty means it is still short by 10 signatures. The treaty will enter into force 120 days after 60 countries have ratified it. Work then begins on setting up institutions and committees to implement the treaty, while its signatories expect to hold a first conference within a year. Despite its involvement in the original treaty negotiations, the United States under current President Donald Trump is not expected to ratify the treaty. WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING AT THE U.N. OCEANS CONFERENCE? Macron is co-hosting this third U.N. Oceans conference with Costa Rica, and with at least 55 heads of state, business leaders and civil society groups expected to attend the five-day event. Aside from discussions to advance the treaty, delegates are also expected this week to discuss overfishing, water pollution and other threats to marine life. They'll also be looking for fresh ideas on how to pay for it all - with ocean-linked financing lagging far behind other sustainable investment areas. For the five years spanning 2015-2019, ocean-related spending totalled $10 billion. By comparison, the U.N. estimates that every year at least $175 billion is needed for marine protection. The last U.N. oceans summit was held in Lisbon and co-hosted by Kenya in 2022. The next, co-hosted by Chile and Korea, is set for 2028.
Straits Times
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Explainer-What is the High Seas Treaty to protect world oceans?
General view of the opening of the third UN Ocean Conference Monday, June 9, 2025 in Nice, France. Laurent Cipriani/Pool via REUTERS LONDON - While many countries have agreed to take steps to protect the vast, ungoverned swathes of the world's oceans, they have yet to see their High Seas Treaty go into effect. This week's U.N. Oceans Conference in the French city of Nice hopes to change that. WHAT IS THE HIGH SEAS TREATY? The treaty, signed in 2023, provides a legal framework for creating marine protected areas on the "high seas", or the ocean areas that lie beyond any national jurisdiction. Currently, less than 3% of the oceans are under some form of protection, although altogether the world's oceans cover two-thirds of the planet. The treaty contains 75 points covering areas such as protecting, caring for and ensuring responsible use of marine resources, and includes a provision for requiring environmental impact assessments of any economic activities in international waters. The treaty also aims to ensure that all countries have fair and equitable access to the ocean's resources. While it is widely referred to as the High Seas Treaty, officially it is called the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty. As of Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said 50 countries had ratified the treaty, with 60 needed for it to go into effect. Separate to the High Seas Treaty, countries agreed under a 2022 U.N. biodiversity pact to put 30% of their territorial waters under conservation. WHY DO WE NEED AN OCEAN TREATY? Oceans support coastal economies and livelihoods through tourism, fishing, shipping, mining, offshore energy and more. Oceans also absorb about a third of the world's carbon dioxide, or CO2 - the primary gas driving climate change - while ocean-swimming phytoplankton provide about half of the world's oxygen. But marine life is now struggling, and human industry and development are almost entirely to blame. More than 1,500 ocean plants and animals are now at risk of extinction, and that number is expected to rise amid ongoing pollution, overfishing, ocean warming and acidification, according to scientists at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Additionally, new threats to ocean organisms and ecosystems could emerge in coming years in the form of deep-sea mining for rare-earth minerals. In Nice, Macron is expected to urge countries to support postponing sea-bed exploration while researchers work to understand deep sea ecosystems. Scientists are also concerned about the possibility that governments could look to modify ocean chemistry to boost its capacity for absorbing CO2 - a scenario that researchers say could help to limit global warming but could also have unintended consequences. WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS FOR THE TREATY? Macron's news on Monday of 50 governments having ratified the treaty means it is still short by 10 signatures. The treaty will enter into force 120 days after 60 countries have ratified it. Work then begins on setting up institutions and committees to implement the treaty, while its signatories expect to hold a first conference within a year. Despite its involvement in the original treaty negotiations, the United States under current President Donald Trump is not expected to ratify the treaty. WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING AT THE U.N. OCEANS CONFERENCE? Macron is co-hosting this third U.N. Oceans conference with Costa Rica, and with at least 55 heads of state, business leaders and civil society groups expected to attend the five-day event. Aside from discussions to advance the treaty, delegates are also expected this week to discuss overfishing, water pollution and other threats to marine life. They'll also be looking for fresh ideas on how to pay for it all - with ocean-linked financing lagging far behind other sustainable investment areas. For the five years spanning 2015-2019, ocean-related spending totalled $10 billion. By comparison, the U.N. estimates that every year at least $175 billion is needed for marine protection. The last U.N. oceans summit was held in Lisbon and co-hosted by Kenya in 2022. The next, co-hosted by Chile and Korea, is set for 2028. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
