Racing for Ocean Science and Youth Engagement: Insights from the Youth Ocean Summit, Aarhus, Denmark

I was honoured to be a RISE delegate sponsored by the 11th Hour Racing at the Ocean Youth Summit held in Aarhus, Denmark, from 30 May to 2 June 2023. 11th Hour Racing uses the power of sport to restore a balanced relationship between people and the planet. The Ocean Youth Summit 2023 was a youth-created event that brought together students and young professionals from higher education institutions in Denmark and worldwide, mixing hands-on learning about the ocean with expert talks and dialogues.

The Youth event occurred in connection with The Ocean Race 2023 (the world’s

longest round-the-world sailing race) stopover in Aarhus. The 11th Hour Racing emerged as the winner of the Ocean Race, starting in Alicante, Spain, on 15 January 2023 and finishing in Genova, Italy, on 29 June 2023.

Ocean Youth Summit: Listening and Exchanging Ideas for Healthy Oceans

I was selected as a delegate to Ocean Youth Summit as I have been undertaking research on the health of oceans and marine diversity for the past few years. My focus has been on measuring the impact of anthropogenic activities, such as commercial shipping, on underwater noise levels in global oceans using open data.

I created the webapp, www.MonitorMyOcean.com, to monitor changes in underwater ocean noise levels using over 25 years of hydrophone data from the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. The App has been endorsed by the UNESCO-IOC as a UN Decade Activity. As a part of the Working Group member of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment on low-cost hydrophones, I am also engaged in ocean citizen science research, education and outreach.

Over four days, I met hundreds of people at the Ocean Youth Summit: youths passionate about healthy oceans, sailing members of the 11th Hour Racing Team, local experts, ocean researchers, policymakers, and media personalities. There were opportunities to attend plenary sessions, visit the sailing boats, listen to ocean research, projects, and entrepreneurship taken up by other participants, and participate in working groups on six different themes. The working group sessions ranged from solving biodiversity crises to flood resilience management, connecting ocean health with our well-being, sustainable food from the oceans, giving voice to oceans through culture and creativity and creating blue startups. One of the sessions I found particularly interesting was – Keeping Aarhus above Water: Flood Resilience Management and Urban Development. During the session, the participants quantified the risks of destructive flooding events. They identified flood mitigation measures such as building resilient structures, elevated harbours, and artificial hills. Another session of interest to me was – Inspiration and Tools for Creating Blue Startups, where I learned more about the inspirations and tools various ocean startups drew upon. For instance, the innovative startup, DecaMeal, used a growing invasive crab population to produce high-protein animal feed.

Ocean Youth Summit: My Talk on Ocean Noise Pollution

On the last day of the summit, I gave a brief talk about my ocean noise project at the ‘GEM-stage’ expo for action and solutions alongside two of my fellow RISE Global Winners, Omar Cedrón Ruiz and Allison Dominguez.

I talked about my MonitorMyOcean.com project and how youths can apply their technical skills to open science and open data to make significant contributions to ocean science. While the data gathered about oceans is growing exponentially because of land, ocean and satellite-based sensors, the ocean science community is not. It opens up new pathways for youths to play an influential role, especially in oceanic regions outside North America and Western Europe, where ocean expertise and studies are lacking.

The Ocean Race 2023: Racing for Science

At the Summit, I learned that the sailing teams participating in the Ocean Race were not only competing against each other but also doing science! As these sailing teams go through some of the most remote parts of the planet that are rarely accessible for scientific research, they can gather valuable data about the ocean’s health. The data collected by the sailors is open-source and shared with scientific organizations to improve our understanding of our marine world and the threats it faces. During the 60,000 km-long and six months race, 4.3 million measurements of essential ocean parameters were and more than 400 samples of marine litter were collected using scientific instruments on board the boats. The science data collected during the Ocean Race 2022-23 can be viewed at: https://theoceanracescience.com/ 15 types of environmental data were collected during The Ocean Race 2022-23, including oxygen saturations levels, salinity, carbon dioxide levels, and the presence of trace elements. The data was transmitted via satellite in real time.

11th Hour Racing Team and Team Malizia carried OceanPacks, which took water samples to measure levels of carbon dioxide, oxygen, salinity and temperature, providing insights about the impact of climate change on the ocean. While GUYOT environment – Team Europe and Holcim – PRB took regular water samples throughout the race to test for microplastic concentration.

In addition, the entire fleet was fitted with onboard weather sensors to measure meteorological data, including wind speed, wind direction and air temperature. Some teams deployed drifter buoys in the Southern Ocean to continuously capture these measurements and location data to improve our understanding of how currents and climates change.

Learning about all this data was a delight, as most of my ocean research is based on big data. Accurate, timely and geographically represented open-source data is crucial to solving ongoing and emerging challenges related to oceans and humanity. 

Key Interactions, Learnings, and Opportunities for Collaborations

At the conference’s opening plenary, I had an opportunity to ask a question to Mark Towil, the CEO of the 11th Hour Ocean Racing Team. My question was about their team’s key scientific discoveries using data collected by instruments onboard their boats.

He revealed that their water sample analysis indicated the presence of microplastics even in very remote ocean locations on the ocean race route. It was concerning. It shows that even the remotest oceans have measurable anthropogenic contaminants that would harm marine mammals. Be it underwater noise or microplastics, pollution of all forms has become ubiquitous in oceans. 

I was curious to learn more, as my project – MonitorMyOcean.com, contributes to a healthier ocean ecosystem by monitoring underwater anthropogenic noise pollution. By measuring the decrease in ocean noise during the COVID-19 pandemic using hydrophone data, MonitorMyOcean bridges the gap between research and policymaking for “Quieter Oceans.” I have made research and policy submissions to national and international policy-shaping processes, including the Draft Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Management Plan and Environmental Assessment in the US and the Draft Ocean-Noise strategy in Canada.