Balancing Exploitation and Conservation in the Deep Sea: Challenges for Science

There is increasing interest in exploiting the resources of the deep sea. Commercial fisheries as well as oil and gas extraction are already common and widespread. There are emerging new pressures from potential deep-seabed mining. Science has a critical role to play in providing information to support management and policy if such activities are going to proceed in a way that can balance human needs for resources, but also ensure sustainability of the environment. 

A good understanding of the environment, the structure and function of its ecosystems, and knowledge of the nature and extent of impacts is required to effectively manage exploitation. However, the complexity of deep-sea ecosystems and a lack of comprehensive data can make this task very challenging. Some of the lessons learnt the hard way in assessments of environmental impacts across several industries include insufficient baseline data, inadequate understanding of impacts, limited attention to an ecosystem approach, and poor assessment and consideration of uncertainty, 

This talk is based on my experience over several decades of researching deep-sea environments, some lessons learnt the hard way, and a personal view on some of the options to consider going forward. I will focus on several of the key environmental challenges above, and discuss the role of environmental risk assessments that can ensure scientific studies are targeted at the most important ecological components and impacts, that more attention is given to describing and quantifying ecosystem functions as a basis for assessment, and that adaptive management approaches are developed to address high levels of uncertainty in our understanding of the deep-sea environment.

The focus will be on scientific issues, but I also consider some aspects of their application to, and integration with, elements of process, policy and management that can help the goal of balancing exploitation and conservation in the deep sea.