(Narrator) We live on a blue planet.
The oceans have always played a fundamental role
in supporting all life on earth.
They cover 70% of the planet’s surface,
produce more than half of the world’s oxygen,
and are still home to more than three-quarters of all animals.
Humans have used the oceans for thousands of years in our stories,
our songs, and for passage across the globe.
Today, 90% of the world’s trade moves by sea.
As the world’s population rapidly approaches eight billion people,
and areas of habitable land for agriculture and development
are in ever shorter supply,
we are increasingly looking to the oceans to meet humanity’s needs.
New technology has meant most of the industries we’ve seen grow on land
are already expanding into the marine environment
and many others are set to follow.
This is called the Blue Economy and it is booming.
The Australian Blue Economy
is currently valued at around $47 billion annually
and projected to more than double in the next ten years.
On land,
industrialisation and development have led to issues of degradation,
habitat loss, resource depletion, and pollution.
In contrast, for much of the ocean,
habitats and ecosystems are still in relatively good condition.
To keep it that way and to avoid mistakes made on land
we need to eliminate or minimise risks while maximising opportunities.
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The ocean is a cultural touchstone for many Australians
and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
have a long and unbroken custodianship of our seas.
The Australian Marine Estate is larger than our land area.
However, close to 100% of this area is already being utilised by shipping,
fishing, and recreation.
Our oceans are busy and about to get a whole lot busier.
How will even more users affect each other?
What will their combined effects mean for marine ecosystems?
How do we manage all this in the face of climate change,
invasive species, disease outbreaks and pollution?
CSIRO has the tools needed to help improve our understanding
of these risks and deliver potential solutions.
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We can use habitat models and mapping
to bring together large quantities of data and identify which areas
might be more or less sensitive to off-shore development.
We can even discover which species are present in an area
without interacting with them by sniffing out their DNA
in water samples using environomics.
We can draw all of this knowledge together in ecosystem models,
virtual copies of our oceans.
We can then use those models as flight simulators
to explore the environmental and socio-economic implications
of different future pathways.
These tools and many others feed into CSIRO’s cutting edge approaches
for risk assessment that can help ensure that the very design
of the Blue Economy benefits the environment as well as its users.
We can support a sustainable and equitable Blue Economy.
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For example, fish farms can be built on the idea
of multi-trophic aquaculture.
This is where multiple species are cultivated to process waste
and nutrients in the water, co-benefitting each other,
increasing production,
and even capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Every new piece of marine infrastructure
could be designed to include habitat for marine life.
Even their life cycle could be considered
so that when a structure reaches its end of life
parts of it could remain as a habitat
for the now established marine community.
This isn’t limited to new structures either.
Existing off-shore infrastructure can be re-purposed right now.
Carbon capture systems have the potential to reuse drilling rigs
and pipelines to pump carbon back into the earth.
Far away from the electricity infrastructure on land,
marine businesses could utilise renewable energy systems to satisfy
their power needs and grow an effective energy production network.
We live in a time of incredible technological advancement
but also in a time where that advancement
can no longer come at a cost to the planet.
We are coming up against significant challenges presented by climate change
and plastic pollution.
The stakes could never be higher for our oceans but there is hope.
The Blue Economy can do something
that terrestrial industries struggle to achieve;
generate economic growth while ensuring a net environmental benefit.
We have the opportunity to build new industries
with the needs of the marine environment at their core.
These industries can be the examples our world needs to move forward,
and CSIRO has the expertise
built over decades to envision and support this future.
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