Turning on the light below the surface

Kaja Lønne Fjærtoft

By GRID-Arendal

November 9^th, 2017

A recent conference I attended reminded me of the fascinating world on the seafloor. Through projects like MAREANO we get a glimpse of a world that we know less about than the moon’s surface.

The MAREANO project is Norway’s national seabed mapping project and aims to map the offshore coastal areas of Norway by collecting biological, chemical and physical data. As everyone said at the conference, the MAREANO project "turns on the light below the surface" and gives us an insight into an otherwise inaccessible region of our oceans.

The project has received over 862 million NOK since it started in 2005. Which leads to the question -- why is it so important to know what is on the seafloor?

I asked Terje Thorsnes from the Geological Survey of Norway that exact question. Here is what he said:

In addition to giving us amazing footage from the seabed, the MAREANO project collects data that is vital for the protection of Norway’s ocean areas. Geir Klaveness from the Ministry of Climate and Environment focused on the importance of a good knowledge base for ocean management in his presentation at the conference. Below, Geir Klaveness talks about how the Ministry of Climate and Environment use MAREANO data in its marine management plans.

The conference this year had two presentations that really captured my attention. The first was on plastic in the ocean, an area in which GRID-Arendal is working extensively. Products such as the Marine Litter Vital Graphics help us understand how plastic can be transported into our oceans and ecosystems. The plastic can have severe effects on the organisms that live in the oceans. But to see and understand these changes we need to know what the situation is in the oceans today. I talked with Marianne Olsen from the Norwegian Environment Agency about knowledge gaps and how we can ensure that our ecosystems are healthy.

The second presentation that really struck me was on mapping the Arctic – and why the MAREANO project should move north. Vast areas of the Arctic Ocean has been covered in ice sheets, but climate change is melting multi-year sea ice and making new areas of the ocean floor accessible. A paper recently published by, among others, some of my colleagues from GRID-Arendal highlights the new challenges for Arctic marine conservation. I took the opportunity to ask Cecilie H. von Quillfeldt from the Norwegian Polar Institute about her perspectives on seabed mapping in the north.

The aim of the MAREANO project aligns with many of the projects I work on as an intern with the State of the Environment and Spatial Planning team at GRID-Arendal.

One example of this is the project on Marine and Coastal Biodiversity Management in Pacific Island Countries. Vast amounts of data are collected on our oceans every year, but much of it ends up in different databases, or in complex spreadsheets making it hard to access. By creating printed and interactive maps, complex marine data and the relationships between them are accessible for policy makers. By visualising data in this way knowledge based decisions can be made when for instance creating a new Marine Protected Area.

I asked the representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bjørnar Dahl Hotvedt, why he thought it was important for developing nations to map their marine area. Here is what he said:

Understandable and credible knowledge is key to protecting our oceans. By shining a light below the surface, and displaying what we find in an understandable manner, we can work together to improve and develop sustainable practices for our blue planet.