Monitoring ocean change and variability along 170⁰W from the equator to ice edge

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT ONLY - DESCRIPTIVE TRANSCRIPT COMING

[Title on screen: From research vessel to regional resilience]

[Dr. Bea Pena-Molino]

Hi, I'm Dr. Bea Pena-Molino. I'm a physical oceanographer. We're on board the RV Investigator, and we're on our way to the equator now.

We departed Fiji some time ago, and the purpose of this voyage is to travel from the equator all the way to the sea ice edge close to Antarctica.

And we'll be collecting observations of the ocean from the surface all the way to the bottom, which is around five kilometres in this part of the world.

And we'll have a stop in New Zealand, halfway.

We'll get fresh team on board, and some people get off, and then we'll continue down south along the single line.

So the voyage, the actual work, will continue down to the ice edge.

We hope we can get as far as 70 degrees south or thereabouts, and then we'll return back to Hobart, which is Investigator's home port.

This voyage has a number of research questions that we're trying to address, but they're all about connecting the physics, the chemistry, and the biology.

So we're trying to understand how the ocean is changing, and both that can be as a result of climate, but it can also be what's driving our climate.

And because of those changes, the environment is changing, and all the creatures that live in the ocean are feeling those changes.

So we want to see that impact from the physics to the chemistry to the biology.

And because the ship is the only tool we have to observe the full depth of the ocean, it is critical that we're here in order to provide that information of that deeper part of the ocean that we can't see from satellites or the surface.

[Question on screen: Why is international collaboration important?]

[Dr. Bea Pena-Molino]

This voyage that we're on at the moment, it's part of an international effort that goes by the name of GO-SHIP. There are many nations contributing to it.

It's been going on for decades now, and the key aspect is that no single nation can collect observations over the entire ocean.

So we all take responsibility for some of the sections, and they all get shared and put together to produce a global picture of the ocean.

So it's through that international collaboration that we can look at some things like how much heat is the ocean taking globally, or how much carbon is in the ocean at the moment.

Working with Pacific partners in our research and this particular voyage is really important for two reasons.

We need to understand what their needs for observations are, what they need to know in order to adapt to the changing climate and make the decisions that are going to have an impact in the coming years.

But we also need to share our knowledge, both in terms of data, the data is as much theirs as it's ours. But we need to share our capability, and training is a very important aspect of this voyage.

And we're very lucky to work along with SPC and POGO to engage more trainees for the voyage to participate in each leg.

The two on board at the moment are having a really exciting time.

[Sulueti Savou]

Bula Vinaka. My name is Sulueti Savou, and I'm from the Fiji Hydrographic Office.

I'm part of the RV Investigator, and my role on this voyage is working with the CTD sampling team, as well as supporting bathymetric data processing within the hydrographic team.

Coming from Fiji, the ocean is part of who we are. It connects our islands, provides food and livelihoods, and is deeply connected to our culture and our everyday lives.

Professionally, the ocean is also my workplace. As a hydrographer and a nautical cartographer, I have spent years surveying, mapping, and representing it.

But being on this voyage has allowed me to understand that there is still so much happening beneath the surface that we cannot see.

I'm looking forward to gaining as much practical experience as possible from the scientists, the researchers on board.

I'm especially interested in seeing how different types of oceanographic data is collected, processed, and interpreted.

Coming from a hydrographic background, I normally work with the ocean from a navigational and seafloor mapping perspective.

So this voyage gives me the opportunity to see the ocean from a much broader scientific perspective.

[Maisy Lus]

Hi, everyone. My name's Maisy Lus. I am from Papua New Guinea.

I am a marine scientist, and I'm currently working as the National Ocean Acidification Consultant with the Asian Development Bank.

And currently, my role on the voyage is, I will be working as a volunteer fellow. I'll be assisting the team with the work that they'll be doing on board.

I'm excited about the voyage, and what I'm most looking forward to is interacting with my peers that will be on board and also the different scientists there, learning from them.

Also getting that hands-on experience, I guess, that's something that I've always been wanting to do.

I have been involved in deploying and working with oceanographic sensors, but at a smaller scale, and I'm really excited to see how this all comes together at a bigger scale on a large research vessel.

And also working with bigger teams, seeing how they coordinate with each other and also the sampling as well as we travel from New Zealand all the way down to almost Antarctica.

So yeah, and I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing some icebergs and meeting new people on board and working with them, learning from them, and also it gives them an opportunity to learn from me as well.

So knowledge exchange, and yeah, I'm looking forward to a wonderful life-changing learning experience.

[Question on screen: Why is the Pacific Ocean important to the global climate system?]

[Bea Pena-Molino]

The Pacific Ocean, it's fair to say, is that it is one of the main drivers of our climate.

When we look at our planet from space, we see a lot of blue, and about 50% of that blue is actually the Pacific Ocean.

And because of that, because it's got that huge area that is in contact with the atmosphere, a lot of what we call climate modes of variability occur here in the Pacific, and in particular through the tropical Pacific.

So if we want to understand what the future is going to be, not just in the Pacific, but for the globe, keeping an eye on the Pacific is really important.

[Question on screen: How is climate change affecting the Pacific?]

[Bea Pena-Molino]

The Pacific is one of the most climate impacted parts of the globe. The waters around here are warming faster than the global average.

The sea levels are rising, and a lot of the islands around the Pacific are being quite challenged by that.

But the ocean is also becoming more acidic, which means that a lot of the coastal ecosystems will have a hard time delivering the services that they've been doing in the past.

[Sulueti Savou]

I have witnessed changes occurring along our coastline, especially in Fiji.

Speaking from experience, within our marine environment, some coastal communities are increasingly affected by erosion, flooding, and changes to their shorelines.

Working in hydrography has also made me more aware that the marine environment is not static.

That is why continuously collecting accurate ocean and hydrographic data is so important.

[Maisy Lus]

The world that we live in isn't the same as 20, 30 years ago.

And in places like Papua New Guinea, you can definitely see how the changes in the ocean have been affecting livelihoods and people in our coastal communities.

You can see now in coastal communities, people are facing the impacts of climate change, and climate change is really here in places in Papua New Guinea, especially in remote places, in remote islands, you can see that people are facing issues such as scarcity of resources.

Some of them are forced into a situation where they may have to migrate because of sea level rise and the ocean eroding their shorelines.

You also have them facing the effects of saltwater intrusion, which is affecting their agriculture and they can't grow healthy food on their islands.

And even, there's limited access to fresh water, and a lot of effort is spent by people locally just to go out and fish, and look for fish to sell at the markets or use to earn an income and support their livelihoods.

So yeah, the ocean and the changes that are currently taking place are affecting everyone in our community and not just people on the islands, but people on the mainland as well.

[Question on screen: What are scientists measuring on this voyage?]

[Bea Pena-Molino]

We're going to collect a whole range of ocean data, and these range from things like temperature, which is probably the thing that most people think when we think about climate.

But we'll be looking at things like dissolved carbon and dissolved oxygen.

So the ocean has dissolved oxygen in it, which is very critical for fish, especially for some of the critical fisheries in this area.

We'll be looking at nutrients in the water. Nutrients are critical for the phytoplankton that grow in the ocean that take a lot of the carbon from the atmosphere, and we're going to be looking at carbon as well.

One of the very exciting things about this voyage, is that we're also collecting what we call environmental, eDNA. And this is a critical tool that is quite recent, and we have data from the last repeat of this voyage so we can assess biodiversity changes through eDNA.

So one key aspect of this voyage is the fact that we've been repeating the same observations now for a number of years.

So 10 years ago, we were here on Investigator as well, and we're following the same track we followed down there.

And one of the key aspects of this voyage is to see how things have changed from 2016 to now.

This project is a very important contribution to our efforts to collect long-term data. When we talk about long-term data, we're talking about data that we've accumulated over decades, not just years, but decades.

And the key to this is climate evolves over very slow scales.

So we need to be able to repeat our observations periodically over a number of decades in order to be able to say whether there's long-term change or is it just variability.

It's going to look different from year to year.

And in having those long-term observations, we're also able to calibrate our models. We know the best way to decide whether our model is going to be a useful tool to predict the future is to see how well they predict our present time.

So we use these long-term records to calibrate our models, and then we can use them to do the predictions.

[Question on screen: What technology is being used on this voyage?]

[Bea Pena-Molino]

We brought with us a pretty wide range of technologies. Technologies are critical.

Observing the ocean is quite challenging, especially at the depths that we're going to be working on. But we have a few main tools that we'll deploy, we'll put in the ocean over and over.

And some of these allow us to take samples, physical water samples, all the way down to the bottom of the ocean.

So through doing this, we'll be able to take the environmental eDNA samples. We'll be able to look at carbon and at nutrients amongst other things.

We also have some really good instruments that will allow us to look at the very small motions that happen in the ocean that help distribute the heat and carbon that we're putting into it.

And then, we have what we call profiling floats.

This is a critical aspect of the work we're doing because the ship can only be here now, and it can't be in multiple places at multiple times.

So the floats will allow to extend the record we're collecting beyond the time we are at sea.

For some of the observations we are collecting, we'll have to stop. Basically, the ship will literally put the brakes on, and we'll put our instruments in the water.

But for some of the things, for some of the technologies that we're bringing on board, we actually don't need to stop.

So we can collect observations while the ship is moving. So that really amplifies the amount of data that we're able to gather in the time we'll be at sea.

[Question on screen: What impact will this research have?]

[Bea Pena-Molino]

This research is going to have impact in a number of ways. It's part of a collaborative effort.

There are many nations collecting data such as this one, and we all contribute this data to global repositories.

So that means that the data is public for anybody to use it. And because it's public and it's accessible, that means that opportunities for discoveries and for new science are amplified through the sharing.

So from our part of the project, we've been in charge of this particular line for a number of years.

But together with all of the other global observations that are collected, we can provide information to things like IPCC reports.

We can help calibrate our climate models and our weather prediction models, and through those, have a better idea of what the future is going to look like and be more prepared for it.

[Sulueti Savou]

Good decisions require reliable evidence and accurate data.

Whether we are talking about climate change, marine resources, or coastal development, even safer navigation, we need to understand what is actually happening in our oceans.

Scientific observations allow these decision-makers to base their actions on evidence rather than assumptions.

[Question on screen: Why are Pacific perspectives important to ocean and climate science?]

[Sulueti Savou]

Pacific researchers bring important perspectives because the ocean is not distant from us. It's a part of us, and it's part of our everyday lives.

We bring scientific and technical knowledge, but we also bring an understanding of our islands, communities, and local environments.

Pacific people are experiencing many ocean and climate changes directly.

So our researchers should not only participate in international science, but also have strong voices in shaping the research, the research questions, and also the solutions that can affect our region.

[Maisy Lus]

I guess for Pacific Islanders, I think the one thing that I like about us is that sense of community that you get.

I guess that's something that's quite unique and different from other parts of the world, and just the different cultures.

So in the Pacific, you have the Melanesian culture, the Polynesian culture, and the Micronesian culture, and within these different cultures, I guess one thing that holds all of us together is that sense of community.

And you will see that in our research, even though it's scientific, it's always tied to the community, and then you have our traditional knowledge and culture.

So apart from just doing the science and collecting the data, I think what's different in the Pacific is we try to see how that science and that data connects to the community so that something meaningful is brought out of that.

[Sulueti Savou]

This is actually my first research voyage outside Fiji waters, so it's a completely new experience and very exciting.

It has been challenging at times, especially adjusting to being at sea for such a long period, but it has also been an incredible learning opportunity.

I’m working alongside people from different scientific backgrounds, and seeing opportunities.

I hope to gain knowledge, practical skills, and exposure, mainly exposure to different areas of ocean science that I can take back home with me.

I also want to build connections with other international researchers.

Ultimately, I hope that what I learn here can contribute to strengthening the ocean science and hydrographic capability in Fiji.

[Question on screen: What message would you like delegates to take away?]

[Sulueti Savou]

So my message would be that the Pacific may consist of small island countries, but we are part of a very large ocean region.

So what happens to the ocean directly affects us as small island countries in the Pacific.

It also affects our future, and voyages like this show why continued investments in ocean observations and scientific research, technology, and training for Pacific researchers is very important.

For me, personally, being here demonstrates what can happen when Pacific professionals are given opportunities to participate in voyages like this with other international researchers.

We can learn from others, but we also have knowledge and perspectives to contribute.

The Pacific should not only be a place for research and where research is conducted, but also people from the Pacific should be part of the research.

[Maisy Lus]

Climate change is not just a global issue.

It's already affecting people in our communities across the Pacific, and we need strong global action.

[Logo and text on screen: CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.]

[Text on screen]

We thank all our voyage partners and collaborators including:

• Pacific Community (SPC)

• Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO)

• Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP)

• Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS)

• Earth Sciences New Zealand (ESNZ)

• Minderoo Foundation

• GO-BGC (US Argo)

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

• Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)

With support from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)

For further information visit www.csiro.au/mnf