Harnessing Data and Tech for Ocean Health and Sustainability Conference

We urgently need more powerful tools for ocean exploration, stewardship, and sustainability.

Date

November 18–19, 2022

Location

Stanford University campus

At this first “Stanford Oceans” conference, participants discussed technologies that could transform management by governments and communities, engage businesses, and help catalyze sustainability and accountability at scale. Climate change is causing upheavals in ocean ecosystems, growing demand for food from the sea, and overexploitation of natural and cultural resources. We urgently need more powerful tools for ocean exploration, stewardship, and sustainability to face the potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on markets, livelihoods, and food security.

We brought together Stanford’s researchers with scientists and practitioners from around the world to present and discuss cutting-edge research, key needs, and opportunities around three pillars:

1. Improving our ability to collect ocean data
2. Unlocking new analytical capabilities to extract impactful insights from ocean data
3. Supporting the co-design of platforms that enable the use of ocean data and insights to inform the decision-making of public and private actors

Advances in data and technology offer unprecedented potential. For example, advances in genomics, biologging, and ocean sensing are rapidly expanding our capacity to track and understand ocean change. New mapping and modeling tools are revolutionizing our capacity to integrate cultural resources into local economies. And, over the past few years, the use of satellites to track large fishing vessels across the ocean has illuminated the possibilities of the digital revolution to enable action by governments and markets. Now, there is the opportunity to expand monitoring capacity to support the protection of natural and cultural assets, to transform data streams into useful and usable information, and make it accessible to users and decision-makers.