Webinar Ethics and the Ocean

Official Program

Introductions

Felix Appelbe (Ocean Ambassadors): Ocean Ambassadors was founded in 2018 by Felix Appelbe.

A solicitor, farmer and conservationist, Felix is an alumnus of Atlantic College, which was where his life-long passion for the oceans was born. He has founded a number of charities including Save the Elephants, The Contributive Society and most recently, Ocean Ambassadors. 

Olivier Adam (Sorbonne University): Prof Olivier Adam is a specialist in bioacoustics and works on sounds emitted by cetaceans since 2001.

His main research deals with the humpback whale songs, the mother-calf interactions in humpbacks, and the social structures of sperm whales. He also studies the effects of anthropogenic activities on marine mammals. He regularly participates in radio broadcasts, film documentaries and he was the curator of the whale exhibition, called Baleinopolis, held in Paris in 2019-2020.

Session #1: How to include ethics in anthropogenic activities?

John Childs (Lancaster University, UK): “Ethics for Understanding Deep Sea Mining”

Dr John Childs John, Senior Lecturer, is particularly interested in the political ecological dimensions of natural resource extraction, including the study of minerals, precious metals, oil and gas. The emergence of deep sea mining represents a new push into oceanic depths that, in turn, demands new thinking. Yet, for all the excellent work that is surfacing across academia and policy, gaps remain. The deep ocean has an ethics which is political. This relates directly to what both good policy and good science look like and is crucial to understand so that the shortcomings of terrestrial mining activity are avoided in an oceanic context.

Nadège Gandilhon (Institute d’Alembert, Sorbonne University, France): “Ethical reflections on the monitoring of marine mammals in the case of marine construction sites: example of limits”

Currently, Dr Nadège Gandilhon joined the Institute d’Alembert Sorbonne University, where she works within Olivier Adam’s Team on the analysis of underwater soundscapes. Previously, she worked on the census of cetaceans in the Guadeloupe Archipelago as a researcher at the University of the West Indies and then as the scientific officer of the AGOA Marine Mammal Sanctuary. She is currently interested in the impacts of human activities on marine mammals, and acts as an expert for public administrations and private companies.

Tom Pickerell (Global Tuna Alliance, UK): “The new voice of ethics for the oceans: the supply chain”

Dr. Tom Pickerell is a marine biologist with nearly 20 years’ experience in seafood sustainability, including wild fisheries and shellfish aquaculture, certification schemes and consumer guides, and social responsibility in seafood. He also is a founder of Tomolamola Consulting, a sustainable seafood advisory service for businesses.

Dr. Pickerell is the Executive Director of the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA), an independent group of retailers and supply-chain companies working to ensure that tuna fisheries meet the highest standards of environmental performance and social responsibility. Hehas also worked for NGOs in the UK and the US, was Technical Director at the UK Seafood Authority and worked in a variety of different policy and strategy roles in fisheries and aquaculture for the UK government.

Adélie Pomade (Amure, University of Bretagne Occidentale, France): “The vulnerability of marine protected areas and stakeholders : ethical issues of dialogue and participation”

Dr Adélie Pomade works on the role of civil society in the production of Law, the elaboration and implementation of legal rules and the construction of environmental public policy. Therefore, her researches take place in the intellectual current of adaptive Law. She works on environmental cross-cutting issues linked with climate and biodiversity, she studies the potential of tools or approaches which emerge outside the scope of law to assess their articulation with the legal sphere. She uses the concepts of co-construction, scenarios, to adapt law to the evolution of socio-ecosystems. Her researches are very influenced by the notion of internormativity. As a consequence, she considers the legal discipline in a dynamic and integrated perspective, in constant dialogue with sociology, political science and ecology.

Session #2: Ethics for sustainability

Michèle Barbier (Institute for Science and Ethics, France): “Provide an ethical dimension into ocean science'“

Dr Michèle Barbier is a marine biologist educated in the medical field and has more than 20-yearexperience in marine sciences and in management of large international consortium. She is now Independent Ethics Expert for the European Commission and has been involved in many projects dealing with Intellectual Property Rights and legislation. The presentation aims to provide an ethical dimension into ocean science. Ethics for ocean science is a reasoned reflection and a set of actions based on technological progress to develop oceanic knowledge that takes into account external dimensions, which are environmental, societal, legal, political, social, economic, historical, philosophical and cultural (Barbier et al., 2018). Laudable and responsible behaviour is necessary for ocean science and society to support the sustainability, stability of our oceans and the resilience of the Earth system.

Konrad Ott (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany): “Future ocean

sustainability”

In 2012, Prof. Dr. Konrad Ott accepted a professorship at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel. Between 2012 and 2018 I participated in several research groups at the University of Kiel, such as the excellence initiatives “Future Ocean Sustainability” and “Roots”. The working group has grown significantly in terms of personnel in recent years (see research projects). His current research interest concerns a social-theoretical foundation of environmental ethics and sustainability.

Susana Borràs (Università degli Studi di Macerata, Italy): ”The ethics of care in the rule of Law:rights of Nature to protect the oceans”

Susana Borràs is Associate Professor of International Environmental Law. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, she is the Principal investigator of the Project CLIMOVE (Climate Migration from a gender perspective). The overall aim is to provide a comprehensive and innovative socio-legal analysis of climate change-induced migration in the EU from a gender perspective. Susana Borrás conducts research on the interaction between governance and innovation. As a social scientist, her specific research interests are in the field of innovation policy and governance. One of her leading questions is, what governments can do to foster socio-technical innovation in the economy, and how research and innovation policy can be designed to more problem-solving addressing grand challenges. Understanding that governmental action is embedded in a democratic governance context, issues of social legitimacy, policy learning, as well as organizational dynamics are inescapable questions for transformative innovation.

Lyne Morissette (M Expertise Marine, Canada): “Ethics and empathy for ocean conservation: how to coexist with endangered species"

Dr Lyne Morissette owns a B.Sc. degree in biological sciences from Université de Montréal (QC Canada), a M.Sc. in Wildlife Management from Université du Québec à Rimouski (QC Canada), and a Ph.D. in Zoology (specialized in marine ecology and ecosystem functioning) from the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia (BC Canada). She did a postdoc in conservation biology & marine mammal ecology at the Arizona State University with Dr. Leah Gerber, and another one in theoretical ecology with the Canadian Research Chair in Biodiversity at University of Guelph, under the supervision of Dr. Kevin McCann. Dr. Morissette has a long record or accomplishments and research collaboration all around the world. She has a world-renown expertise in marine mammal ecology, conservation, and biodiversity and published her work in the most prestigious journals such as Science. In all her projects, she advocate for an approach linking research, conservation and education as the best way to protect the oceans for future generations.

Margherita Cappelletto and Rita Giuffredi (National Research Council, Italy): "Grounding Ocean Ethics while sharing knowledge and promoting environmental sustainability: empowering Young Ambassadors as agents of change".

Technologist at the Department of Earth System Science and Environmental Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy with a background in Astronomy and Astrophysics and a Master in Science Communication, Margherita Cappelletto works at the interface of science and policy, including international cooperation/networking programmes and projects development targeting marine and maritime science. Since 2014, she has been supporting the integovernamental R&I Initiative BlueMed for blue jobs and growth in the Mediterranean area, joined by 16 countries.

From 2016 to 2021 she was the project manager of the EU funded project BlueMed Coordination and Support Action. Recently, she has been engaged in the preparation of the proposal for the EU Partnership on Sustainable Blue Economy coordinated by Italy and has been supporting the Italian Oceanographic Commission in developing the Mediterranean Programme for the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and joined the Italian delegation at the General Assembly/Executive Council of the UNESCO-Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

Rita Giuffredi works in Milan at the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment of the National Research Council (IREA-CNR). After graduating in particle physics, she devoted to further develop her studies on science with a master's degree in science communication at SISSA in Trieste and a PhD focusing on narratives in EU research policy discourses, carried out at the University of Bologna. At the same time, she worked for four years at CERN (Geneva) as a science communicator within a European project for the development of new diagnostic tools based on technologies developed at high-energy physics colliders (PicoSEC-MCNet). Since 2018, she has been collaborating with the European H2020 project BlueMed CSA, which was in charge of coordinating and promoting the European initiative of the same name on research and innovation for “Blue” growth in the Mediterranean area ; she dealt with the aspects related to science communication, and public and youth engagement. She is also involved since 2021 in the BRIDGES project, oriented towards the emergence and critical discussion of scientists; narratives and experimenting hybrid, reflexive and transdisciplinary research practices, focusing on complex socio-ecological issues, and in particular on the case study of soil fertility. Her research interests mainly focus on knowledge production, research policies, the relationship between science and democracy and the public communication of science.