#13 In Troubled Waters? Profit and Pollution on the High Seas with Olive Heffernan

Discover the untamed expanse of our planet's high seas with Dr. Olive Heffernan, a distinguished science journalist and author, as she navigates through her latest work, "The High Seas: Ambition, Power, and Greed on the Unclaimed Ocean" Dr. Heffernan’s unique perspective, fueled by her upbringing in the coastal town of Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, and her transition from fishery scientist to authoritative voice in science journalism, promises to immerse you in the legal and ecological intricacies of these international waters. With half of the Earth's surface and a staggering 95% of its living space encompassed by the high seas, we uncover the pressing need to redefine resource ownership and management in this vast and largely ungoverned domain.

Plunge into the murky waters of the global fishing and mining industries where labor abuses and ecological threats loom large. The tales of exploitation and illegal activities on fishing vessels reveal a grim reality, while the contentious practice of deep-sea mining poses a difficult dilemma: can we reconcile the demand for critical minerals for green technologies with the preservation of fragile ocean environments? Dr. Heffernan shares thought-provoking insights into the challenges and potential solutions for these industries, highlighting the broader implications for our planet and society.

We also explore ambitious initiatives aimed at harnessing the ocean’s potential in combating climate change. From the cultivation of seaweed to the distribution of iron dust, and even the deployment of olivine rock for carbon capture, the conversation takes a critical look at the prospects and pitfalls of enhancing ocean carbon sequestration. Finally, we turn the spotlight on ocean-based literature with a discussion of Richard Powers' novel "Playground," which eloquently captures the environmental struggles of island communities. Join us for this compelling journey into the heart of oceanic challenges and storytelling.

More inspirations from Olive Heffernan...
Website: www.oliveheffernan.com
Link to her latest book: The High Seas: Ambition, Power, and Greed on the Unclaimed Ocean

Please visit our website, www.businessandsociety.net, for more inspiration.

Chapters

• 1:05 Why ocean as a career?
• 3:34 What are the high seas?
• 6:50 Deep water fishing
• 10:49 How profitable is high seas fishing?
• 14:43 Poor working conditions and human rights abuses in fishing vessels.
• 17:34 What is deep sea mining?
• 19:56 What are the benefits of deep sea meaning?
• 23:25 The UN law of the sea
• 25:54 Ocean plastics
• 30:23 Ocean as a major carbon sink
• 36:27 Managing differences of opinion/setbacks
• 38:59 Skills required for leaders working to build sustainable businesses?
• 39:58 Book recommendation

Transcript

Senthil

00:03

Hey, it's Senthil here. Welcome to the Business and Society podcast. Every fortnight, we speak to a world-leading thinker to better understand the role of business and society. Joining me today is Dr Olive Heffernan. Olive is an award-winning science journalist who writes about oceans and climate change. A freelancer, she has published in Nature, national Geographic, scientific American and BBC Wildlife, among other outlets. Previously, olive spent a number of years with Nature covering climate change, including as inaugural chief editor of the research journal Nature Climate Change. Her new book, the High Seas, was published a few months ago under the subtitle Greed Power and the Battle for the Unplanned Ocean Warm. Welcome, olive, congratulations on the book and delighted to have you on our podcast. 

Olive

01:01

Thank you, it's such a pleasure to be here.

Senthil

01:08

You grew up in a seaside town near Dublin City and in your book you say that it planted a curiosity about the sea. Many of us were intrigued by the mystery of seeing our own childhoods, but did not end up exploring the high seas as a career. What made you to choose this path? 

Olive

01:24

You know, I think the ocean has been such a pivotal interest of mine for as long as I can remembur and I think you know I attribute that to growing up by the sea in this town called Dún Laoghaire, which is about 15 kilometres south of Dublin City Centre on Ireland's east coast, and when I was growing up it was the location of the main ferry terminal on that coast of Ireland. So daily we had, you know, boats coming over from the UK. There was a big harbour with lots of yachts. We owned a guest house, so people came to stay with us daily, often having travelled by sea with stories to tell, and I'm sure that sparked my imagination. But you know, I just had this idea that the subsea world was full of wonderful and mysterious creatures, and I became fascinated with it. And I was particularly fascinated with the ocean beyond the horizon from as far back as I can remember. But you know, my first experience of engaging with the ocean was rock pooling and doing surveys for a nonprofit called Coast Watch, you know, collecting samples, seeing if there was, you know, water pollution and discovering in fact that the waters that I had paddled in since my early childhood weren't as pristine as I had imagined. So that's what kicked it all off, I think, and it just went from there. 

02:44

I did a degree in zoology with a thesis in marine biology, and then I did a PhD. I moved to the UK when I was about 24, 25 to become a fishery scientist, and a couple of years into that, I suppose, I realized that I wanted to write about the ocean rather than research it myself. So, I have been working as a journalist or an editor for the last 20 years. I first became a journalist, then I became an editor covering climate change, and then I went back to being a journalist and often freelanced for the last 12 years, and I think you know it's not that I don't think about writing about other things I do, but somehow it just always draws me back in. It's like my interest in this can never be fully satiated, and I think that's why I've spent the last five years thinking about the high seas. 

Senthil

03:34

Excellent. And let's talk about the high seas. It's one of the fascinating books I have read in recent times. What are the high seas and why do you think it's essential for societies to learn about it? 

Olive

03:47

Well, thank you. You know, I think for many of us, the high seas, it represents something almost, you know, mythological or metaphorical. We think of it as a place of storms and shipwrecks and you know we think of it as a wild west of our planet, a frontier, you know where anything goes. But I think what is less appreciated is the fact that the high seas is a legal definition. Okay, it actually describes those waters beyond national jurisdiction and in practical terms what that means. If you think about a coastal nation, you know maybe Australia usually there is territorial seas that extend 12 nautical miles from shore and a nation basically has complete sovereignty over the resources and that space. Then there's an exclusive economic zone that typically extends out 200 nautical miles from shore and a nation has first rights over the resources in that area. Beyond that, everything's the high seas. So, it covers half the surface of our planet. You know, if you think about it in practical terms, it's kind of divvied up between the five major ocean basins the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the Atlantic Ocean, the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, the Arctic Ocean plus the Mediterranean Sea actually. So that's where it is and it's amazing because it is not just half the surface of our planet. It is 95% of the living space on Earth. Because if you think about these waters, they are so deep. On average they're 4,000 meters deep so with that depth comes enormous volume. You know, if you think about the planet in purely volumetric terms, most of it is deep ocean. So, it's important. And what's also important is that it belongs to nobody. So, it's basically an unclaimed space with unclaimed resources, and that's important. It has huge implications for how we manage that space and for who gets to use and profit from those resources. 

05:45

Now I think what's important to say at this point is that the high seas is kind of a colloquial term that refers to all of this space beyond national jurisdiction. If you think about the water okay, the international waters in that space the resources belong to nobody. So, if you go and fish something from the water, you can profit from that, and you don't have to share those profits with anyone. But if you think about the seabed, the international seabed, beyond national jurisdiction, that actually belongs to everybody and that sounds similar, but it's different. It means that if you mine minerals, for example, from the international seabed, by law you have to share the profits with everyone on Earth, not all of the profits, but a portion of them. 

06:29

Okay, so it's. You know, all of that space is kind of governed. It's a bit different whether it's the water column or whether it's the seabed, but you can think of it generally as the largest global commons on Earth and it's ours to either pillage or protect. And that's what I wanted to explore in this book. What's our future relationship with this unclaimed half of our planet? 

Senthil

06:50

Wow, that's quite a bit to unpack there. Let me start with deep water fishing. Could you tell us about the enterprises or the industry there? Are they big companies, smallholder fishermen or state-owned enterprises? Who are these companies? 

Olive

07:07

Well, let me start by saying there's five nations that are fishing the high seas predominantly. Okay, so that's China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Spain. Those are the nations that have a distant water fishing fleet and China really dominates that. So, China estimates, or says, that it has approximately 2,600 deep water fishing vessels, but a few years ago an independent analysis said China's distant water fishing fleet was closer to 17,000 fishing vessels. And I mean, even if you compare China's own estimate to, say, a country like the US the US only has 250 distant water fishing vessels. So, China is really dominant out there. And you know it's estimated that 100 companies own 36% of the fleet. 

08:01

But the truth is it's really hard to actually unpack who owns vessels on the high seas, and the reason for that is that there are structures in place that allow companies to conceal their identity. So, one of those structures is called the open register. It's also known as a flag of convenience. What that means is that if you are a vessel owner and say, for example, I don't know, you live in Australia or you live in the US, you could flag your boat to Panama. So that means when you're out at sea, you're flying the Panamanian flag and that allows you to flout environmental regulations, to use cheap labour, to avoid or evade income tax and also to conceal the identity of your vessel or your ownership of your vessel through a shell company, and so most of the vessels that are on the high seas like right now I think there's about 100,000 vessels on the global ocean at any one point in time 73% of those are flagged to an open register. 

09:08

So, you can see the problem that there is a lack of transparency, and there's a purposeful lack of transparency in the fishing industry. You know it has been allowed to operate with impunity on the high seas because it's a remote part of the planet. Up until about a decade ago, there was no way of even knowing who was out there, where they were or what they were doing. But in the last decade what we've seen is non-profit organizations one in particular called Global Fishing Watch has used the satellite communications of vessels at sea to actually track, almost in near real time, the entire global fishing fleet, and it can see where they are and what they're doing. But it's a challenge. I mean, they have ways of even avoiding that. They can do what's called going off the radar, so that just means you switch off your transponder, your communication device, and you go dark and at any one point in time. About 20% of the global fishing fleet is estimated to be operating under the radar and presumably doing something nefarious. 

Senthil

10:15

Wow. So, we don't know who these companies are. Who are the owners of the ships at least a predominant part of it. 

Olive

10:24

Yeah, there's a lot of a lack of transparency. You know, even if you look at the biggest seafood producers, seafood suppliers in the world, these are huge corporations that have many, you know an entangled web of suppliers of little. You know fishers and operators and companies feeding into their supply chain, and it's complex. You know it's very difficult to find out who exactly owns what. 

Senthil

10:49

It also seems high seas fishing is not very profitable. That's what I understood from your book. You write less than 0.01% of commercial fish landings come exclusively from high seas. So, what is the incentive for this industry? 

Olive

11:05

It's really fascinating to me, you know, when you think about how unsustainable high seas fishing is. I mean it causes a lot of damage, let's say, because a lot of it is unregulated. And like just to give you a number, 95% of the fish species that traverse the high seas at some point in their lives are unregulated or unmanaged. So only 5% are managed within an organization. Okay, and that means that there's a lot of overexploitation, there's also a lot of bycatch, so it's a lot of unsustainabilities. And I kind of thought well, maybe there has been a trade-off, somehow, like somehow, we've decided as a society that it's profitable and that it's contributing to global food security. But I was amazed to find out that neither of those things are true and in fact there was an analysis a few years ago that looked at individual high seas fishing trips and it worked out that 54% of those fishing trips would be completely profitless unless they were buoyed up by government subsidies. 

12:11

If you think about it as an industry, you know to get to the high seas it's expensive. You need a large boat, you need a lot of fuel, you need plentiful supplies, you need a large crew. So, it's an expensive endeavour and the margins are quite slim and countries are subsidizing this so that it continues. And what's amazing is that you know, if you just think about it, even in terms of the amount of fish protein that is consumed annually globally, only 2.5% of that is fished on the high seas. The high profit side of it is things like tuna, long lining, but the rest of it, things like fishing for squid, generally, yeah, profitless. So, it's incredible and that has lent a lot of conservationists to make an argument that we could close the high seas to fishing and, in fact, it would have huge benefits for society. 

Senthil

13:03

So why do they do that? Is it like a geopolitical game? 

Olive

13:08

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just geopolitical. You know, when you think about some of the fishing that happens in places like you know, even the Southern Ocean, there's been a big pushback against nations such as China and Russia to create more marine protected areas in that part of our planet because they want a presence there. You know, you can't think they're making a ton of money doing this, but they seem to want a presence on the global ocean and it's such an interesting thing that industries exist, I mean. I guess another example might be, you know, tar sands as a sort of a fuel source. Apparently, that's completely profitless but it's buoyed up by governments. I don't really know why that happens, other than it seems to be geopolitical, like they're keeping a finger in the pie. Maybe, in case things change, they're interested in just, you know, keeping it going. 

Senthil

14:01

Interesting, so just like the race to Mars or Moon. In fact, you wrote that we know more about other planets than sea. Is that correct? 

Olive

14:10

At a certain level. I mean, it's hard to compare a flat surface, you know, like the Moon, to the deep ocean, which is infinitely more complex and three-dimensional, and you know we have spent more time in the deep ocean than we have on the moon. But I think at a certain resolution we have mapped the moon in more detail than we have the deep sea and there's a huge effort underway now to map the deep-sea floor, the entire seabed, by 2030 at a similarly high resolution. So that's underway. 

Senthil

14:43

I'll come to the deep sea in a minute, but one last question on the deep-water fishing. You talked about labour. We often hear about poor working conditions and human rights abuses in fishing vessels. Is it getting better or worse? What have been your observations? 

Olive

15:00

Well, I think there's far more awareness. I think you know, just to give you the background. I mean, the reason that it happens is, as I mentioned, these fishing trips are expensive and that incentivizes the owners to basically use any means they can to boost their profits. And so, what happens is that, you know, young men, typically from Asian countries, are offered the opportunity to work on the high seas. Once they're at sea, they are basically captive, right. They are often forced to work, you know, 22 hours a day. They, you know they don't have enough food, they don't have enough sleep, they're beaten. It's, you know, the working conditions are absolutely unimaginable. 

15:47

And you know what happens a lot of the time is they use this thing called transshipment. So, imagine you've got a fleet of longliners out on the high seas fishing tuna. There is a large cargo ship called a reefer. So, this reefer basically comes out to those vessels, and it resupplies them with food and with fuel and then it takes their catch and lands the catch for them and that allows those vessels to stay at sea for maybe three years at a time, so once you’ve joined the vessel, how are you going to disembark? You can’t, you’re basically captive and this is an ongoing problem. I'd say it's only in the last 10 years that the UN Office of Drugs and Crime has said that transnational organized crime is I rife on the high seas. 

16:15

It's a hotspot for it, the illegal fishing side of it. It kind of goes hand in hand with other criminal activities. So, if you think about someone who is probably happy to fill their hold of their boat with endangered species is also happy to do other things. Like you know human trafficking, drug trafficking, arms trafficking it all goes hand in hand and often the fishing industry is being used as a sort of a legitimate front for any criminal enterprise. I think the fact that there's so much more awareness and, as I mentioned, they can now have, they have means to actually track and trace these vessels and send patrols to capture them. So, I think it is being handled, it's definitely improving, but I think there's still a huge way to go and there are reporters who have dived really deep into this. There's a great book called Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina and he details in a lot of depth you know how these people are captured, how they're being treated and what's being done about it. It's fascinating and deeply disturbing. 

Senthil

17:34

It is disturbing. Moving to the deep sea mining, Olive, what is deep sea mining? In very simple terms. 

Olive

17:42

Yeah. So, you know, it's sort of as a concept that's been around since about the 1960s that we could send machines down to harvest these critical minerals from the deep seabed. And there's three types of deposits that are found scattered throughout the world's oceans, but the one that has attracted most attention is a type of deposit called a polymetallic nodule. Essentially it looks like a rock, but it's not a rock. It's something that has accreted organically over millions of years. It starts its life as something like a shark's tooth on the seabed and then sediment builds up in layers around the shark's tooth over millions of years and in that sediment is, you know, grains getting trapped that are rich in ores such as cobalt, copper, nickel, lithium, manganese. So, there's many different metals contained within this one rock, and the idea of it is, if we plucked the rocks off the seafloor, we could extract these critical minerals and use them to build particularly green technologies, for example batteries for electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines. 

18:54

So, because of that growing demand for those particular minerals and metals, there has been a renewed interest in the idea of deep sea mining, particularly in the last 20 years. So, of particular interest is one region called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, and this is a vast abyssal plain. It's located in the Pacific, between Hawaii and Mexico. It's about the size of Europe and it's about five kilometres deep at its deepest point. So, you know this is deep at its deepest point. So, you know this is… It's very technologically challenging to imagine, imagine mining that. It's a huge technological challenge. I mean, you think about it as an environment. It's you know there's intense pressures, it's freezing cold, it's very quiet environment which is undisturbed at present. So, there's been a lot of concern about the potential environmental impacts of letting this industry start. So far nobody has mined the deep sea anywhere, but they have been exploring the possibility for the past 20 years. 

Senthil

19:56

Interesting, so this would be the first time they're getting deep into that sea and start this mining. I read in your book and you also flagged it briefly you're very concerned about the environmental damage caused by deep sea mining, but some organizations, such as the US Government Accountability Office, argue that deep sea mining could reduce the negative effects of land-based mining, such as toxic wastewater, deforestation, soil contamination and even the use of child labour in some parts of the world. They also expect deep sea mining to decrease the country's dependence on foreign imports of critical and other minerals. I'm keen to hear your thoughts on that perspective. 

Olive

20:38

Yeah, I mean, of all the topics that I cover in the book, deep sea mining is possibly the one that I've spent most time reporting outside of the book. You know I've written about it for other publications such as Scientific American and exploring some of these questions that you're asking me. I don't think there is good evidence that deep sea mining would decrease land-based mining, partly because the same companies aren't involved in this, at least right now, like Rio Tinto, which is one of the world's largest commercial mining operators, and they, you know, oversee mines in places like Congo, where they would mine for these critical minerals like cobalt, and they've said they have absolutely no interest in seabed mining. So right now, it's mostly small startups who are interested in doing this and they're looking to get a foothold in this industry. So, in the short term, even if it started, I don't see there being any suggestion that it would stop land-based mining with all of its associated problems, such as child labour. 

21:43

The other thing is that we know very little about the deep-sea environment and what scientists have discovered. For example, they've discovered in the last five years that 90% of the species that they're finding there have never been seen before by anyone on Earth. They are entirely new to science. That suggests that it's quite an unknown world to us. Another discovery made this year was that the nodules themselves actually produce oxygen in the deep sea, and that is a mind-blowing discovery that suggests the nodules could form the base of these entire communities. 

22:18

If you remove them, you don't know to what extent you'll change the ecosystem. Their removal, obviously, is permanent, because it takes millions of years to form them. So I think there's huge unknowns and huge uncertainty about the environmental impacts, such that it would be hard to actually compare, you know, deep sea mining to land-based mining from an environmental perspective at this moment in time, and because of that, there is a growing moratorium, a growing call for a moratorium, which is essentially just a 10-year pause to allow two things to happen One is for scientists to collect more information on the potential impacts and the other is to allow regulations to develop. At the moment, there are no regulations overseeing deep sea mining. The UN has basically been trying to formulate those regulations for many years and they're still in the process of doing that through this body called the International Seabed Authority and that has jurisdiction over mining. They're trying to formulate the regulations which would give the green light to industry. 

Senthil

23:25

There are so many fascinating things I learned from your book. I live in Melbourne. There is a long seashore here. Reading your book opened my mind to look at seas in very different ways. On seabed mining, you also wrote about the revenue sharing or profit-sharing model. Correct me if I'm wrong. There is a kind of unwritten law or rule which states that you make the profit, and you have to divide it and give it to countries. Could you talk a bit about that? 

Olive

23:52

Yeah, so it's really interesting. Essentially, the UN law of the sea is a kind of a constitution for the oceans, and it was… you know, it came into force in 1994. Its big gap is that it didn't put in in practice ways of protecting, you know, in practice ways of protecting the water, so it didn't allow for big marine protected areas to be created in the ocean. But what it did do was it made the deep-sea floor, the international seabed, the common heritage of humankind. So that's the phrase that's used. It means it is our common heritage; we all own this and we should all benefit and profit from its exploitation if that happens. 

24:38

So, in reality, that would probably be mining, and it basically created the International Seabed Authority, which is an autonomous organization affiliated with the UN and that basically has this very challenging mandate of protecting the deep sea from harm while also facilitating mining, so that it could generate these profits and share them with the world. 

25:02

And in practical terms, what it means is that there are 30, and if you take the Clarion-Clipperton zone, for example this place between Hawaii and Mexico, right now there are 30 claim areas that have been allocated for mining, and each claim area is divided into two portions and one portion would be mined by, say, the contractor would get all of the profits from that, but the other half would be… it would have profit sharing. So, the idea is that every claim area has some portion of its profits going to… you know, maybe it would go back into a fund for ocean conservation. You know, that's probably how it would work in reality and those are the regulations that they're still trying to work out right now. So how would this actually work in practice? How would people profit from this or benefit? 

Senthil

25:54

Well, let's move to ocean plastics. How big is plastic pollution in the high seas? Do we have any estimates of the size and whether it's growing? 

Olive

26:05

Yes, I mean it's interesting. So, one of the things that I found out during the reporting for this book was that the first piece of land-based plastic ever found in the ocean was on a plankton survey off the west coast of Ireland in 1967. So, before that, no one had found a piece of plastic in the ocean from land, but now it's such a growing problem. I mean, right now, the statistic that you'll hear most often is that 80% of the plastic that you find in the ocean originates on land, and it's something you know. It's things like soda bottles or plastic bags or tires, and you'll often hear that this happens because there are, you know, coastal nations in developing countries like Indonesia and Brazil, with what like lacks waste management policies. But I think you know what you'll hear less often is that actually 20 companies on earth are responsible for half of that plastic pollution and it is growing. I mean, I think, by one estimate, I think by 2025, there will be something like 1.5 million tons of plastic metric tons by weight in the ocean, and I think it's important to remember that we have actually doubled our plastic production since the 1990s and if we continue which you know it is likely to continue this trend and it will have trebled by 2060. So, it's a growing problem and I think the ownership of the problem is important. Corporate ownership, like this kind of accountability, is important because 99% of plastics are a byproduct of fossil fuel production and those corporations like Exxon and BP are looking at a future where people are divesting from fossil fuels and they're wondering what their revenue stream is going to be. 

27:57

BP has said that 95% of its future production will be for plastics, will be for the purpose of producing plastics. So, I really think we need to get to the root of that problem, you know, to stop this. It's basically an epidemic, isn't it… A plastic epidemic in the oceans? I mean, you asked whether it's present on the high seas. Absolutely like plastic has been found at Point Nemo. Point Nemo is technically the furthest point in the ocean from land. It's been mapped and, yeah, they found microplastics there a few years ago. So, it's pervasive and it's growing. 

Senthil

28:35

Yeah, that's really shocking. You talked about Point Nemo while I was reading your book. I just went to Google Maps and plotted Point Nemo and realized wow, there is some island in some corner of the earth. 

Olive

28:49

Absolutely. I think it's been described as a mass of water surrounded by more water. You know, if you're at Point Nemo, you're not seeing any land anywhere close to you, are you? 

Senthil

29:01

Goodness, such a shame. Do you see any hope on plastics? Look, I mean I work in the sustainability space, and I interact with businesses mostly to do with smallholders and their supply chains, but I often hear narratives about their investments in reusable, recyclable plastics. There's certainly a lot of intention. As a person who has seen this thing, do you see hope here? Or it's just like a greenwashing that's happening in a very active way. 

Olive

29:32

I think you have to stay hopeful, really to stay engaged in this space. I mean, there's so much energy being directed at this. You know the UN is negotiating a global plastics treaty, so they are trying to regulate it from the top down. You have lots of innovation in not only, I suppose, designing plastics that would decompose quickly, but also bacteria that are plastic munching machines. You know there's so many tools that we could deploy here, and I think it will happen. It's like any of these conversations around climate change. It's the rate at which it will happen is the concern it needs. Everything needs to seem to happen more quickly than it's happening. You know, I'm hopeful that we will find an alternative. I just don't know how quickly it will happen. 

Senthil

30:23

We know that the ocean is a major carbon sink. Could the high seas help to meet climate targets such as in the Paris Agreement? I mean by adding to other efforts to remove carbon from the atmosphere. What are the limits of the ocean as a carbon sink? 

Olive

30:39

Yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating topic. I think that, just to start off by saying, yes, the ocean is a massive carbon sink. It holds 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere. It holds 20 times more carbon than is held in all of the plants and soil on land. So, it is our most important buffer against climate change, partly because you know it's taken up 25% of the carbon that we've admitted into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. It's also soaked up 90% of the heat that we've generated from using fossil fuels. So, you know it's an incredible ally in our fight against climate change, if you want to think about it that way. 

31:22

And that happens through different mechanisms, like carbon enters the ocean and is sequestered in the ocean chemically, you know, co2 dissolves in water, so it enters chemically. But also, through biological processes phytoplankton when they grow at the surface of the sea in warmer months, they soak up carbon from the atmosphere and then they're eaten, or they die, and they fall and go down deeper in the sea. And you know this biological process… that is the biggest way that carbon gets out of the atmosphere and into the deep ocean. The other way that it happens is just physical processes, just vertical currents that you know take carbon down from the sea surface into the deep ocean. But by far the most important mechanism is biological. 

32:09

It's worth saying that one of the things that's involved in this is actually the biggest animal migration on earth. It happens every single day of our lives. So, every single day trillions of individual organisms move from the deep ocean, particularly from a midwater layer called the twilight zone, and they come up to the surface to feed. So, they feed on all those things, like you know, phytoplankton plants and then they return to the deep sea and by doing that they bring that carbon with them because eventually they will either be eaten by something else or they will die, or they will excrete, and all of that is carbon. So that enters the deep sea and the scale of it is immense. I mean, I think on an annual basis it's just that process alone, that animal migration is removing an amount of carbon that's equivalent to the US annual greenhouse gas emissions. So that's quiet, it's quite significant and it's an amazing service that we should be incredibly grateful for and that I think largely we're unaware of. 

33:15

So, there's lots of ideas about how we might enhance this process or we might enhance carbon capture by the ocean and store more of it in the deep ocean to keep it out of the atmosphere, because once carbon gets below a thousand meters, it stays there on timescales of the thousands of years. Below 500 meters it will stay there for hundreds of years, but if it gets into the abyss of the ocean, then it stays out of the atmosphere on very long timescales. So that's what we're looking to enhance, and there are so many suggestions of how we might do that. There's ideas, for example, massive cultivation of seaweed. Could we have these huge seaweed farms on the high seas and then harvest up that seaweed and bundle it into bales and dump it in the deep ocean… because if you don't harvest it at the right time, obviously the carbon would just go back into the atmosphere. So, it's all about harvesting it and sequestering it in the deep sea. Another idea is that we could sprinkle iron dust on unproductive parts of the ocean that are limited in iron, and that would boost the production of phytoplankton, and then, of course, that would that phytoplankton or any of those algae would end up either being eaten or they would die and fall down to the deep sea, thus bringing the carbon with them. Another idea is that we could actually sprinkle like large quantities of crushed rock, like olivine rock, and the idea is that it would bind with CO2 and that it would turn into bicarbonate which would get sequestered into the shells and skeletons of sea creatures and similarly, then, when they go down to the deep sea or die, that would become buried in the deep ocean. So, there's loads of ideas and the issue is that the research is very preliminary. 

35:14

For such a long time we were very focused on carbon sequestration on land. 

35:19

I mean, it must just be a kind of a fault of being human that we're so land focused when so much of our planet is ocean. 

35:26

And it's only really in the last decade that we've turned our attention to the possibility of the high seas providing a solution to this problem. But you know it's not without consequence. You asked me about the limitations. You know it's important to remember that as carbon enters the ocean it makes it more acidic. Seawater is now more acidic than it has been at any time in the last 2 million years and the more heat that enters the ocean, the more carbon that enters the ocean, the less it becomes able to continue this service. Its buffering capabilities become decreased. So, it's a balance. You know we can't just do all of this entirely without consequence. It's literally something that we could do while we get our act together and start to reduce the amount of pollution that we're actually putting into the atmosphere, because that's what we really need to do. But this could be an ally in the short to medium term to help us get to where we need to be. 

Senthil

36:27

Olive. Let's move to the segment how I did it, where we ask all our guests three personal questions to draw lessons from their life and career. How do you handle differences of opinion and setbacks? 

Olive

36:40

Well, differences of opinion. I think it's so important to be respectful of where people are coming from. As a journalist, you want to listen to everybody, and you want to allow people and sources to have the ability to change your mind. You want to remain open-minded, so I think that's important. One of my ambitions with this book was to allow readers to make up their own mind, and I think I said that at the beginning of the book that we might not all agree on how we use this unclaimed space, but we should all be aware of the conversation. You know, on issues like deep sea mining or starting a new fishery on the high seas, people will have different opinions, and I think it's important to allow people to reach their own conclusion. My job is to give them all of the facts and, to you know, just do the best job of reporting it that I can possibly do, and to respect that people will take different things away from us. 

37:37

Setbacks wow, I mean there were quite a lot. It was like a perfect storm of setbacks, because I started this project in 2019. And I did a lot of my at sea reporting. My field trips happened in 2019, and they were supposed to continue into 2020. And I think at the beginning of 2020, I was coming back from Antarctica when I heard about this virus and, of course, then we entered the COVID pandemic, and we were in lockdown. 

38:08

I mean, I was homeschooling my children for the best part of two years, and it was incredibly hard to, I think, for me as a writer. I mean, many writers would say this you just need periods of unbroken time. You need periods where you can really have a laser-like focus on a story and I think you know that's challenging when you've got something else, you know that is happening in the world and happening in your own life. So, thankfully, I came out of that period and the pandemic ended and my children went back to school, and I was able to finish my book, and I suppose I had to be innovative and think about different ways into the story when my sea trips were cancelled, so I had to reinvent some things in that way. There were other challenges, but that was probably a really significant one. 

Senthil

38:59

Interesting… In your experience. What are one or two essential skills required for leaders working to build sustainable businesses? 

Olive

39:09

Well, I think part of it, you know, and I've thought about this a lot in the last few years with regard to my own life is just not letting perfectionism get in the way. You know, don't let it be the enemy of the good. I think that a lot of people are afraid to, you know, put their heads above the parapet because it's so easy to be accused of greenwashing. And I think transparency is key. You know, it's really important to just be honest about the limitations of whatever you're doing, but not to let those limitations stop you from trying, because this is a big challenge. Sustainability is a huge challenge. It's hard work, it's big work, and you know you'll meet roadblocks along the way. So, I think you know, being transparent, being honest, but not being defeated by the fact that it's not going to be perfect. 

Senthil

39:58

Finally, can you recommend a book or two to our listeners? 

Olive

40:03

I'm reading two amazing books at the moment. So, I often do this, I'll read more than one book at the same time, and I'd like to recommend those. So, the first one is called What If We Get it Right, and that is by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, who is an ocean scientist based in the US, and it basically looks at positive visions of the future. So, what if we did get it all right? What might it look like? I think that's… it's a very important book, really amazing. And the other book that I'm reading is Playground by Richard Powers, and that's a very evocative novel about ocean pollution, but it's told from the perspective of a local on a small Pacific Island faced with terrible pollution, and really beautifully written. I mean, I love reading ocean-based books, so I could go on, but I think those are two really current books that everyone should read. 

Senthil

40:57

Excellent. Thank you so much, Olive, for joining me and sharing your valuable perspectives. 

Olive

41:02

It was such a pleasure talking to you today. Likewise, thank you for such great questions and for your interest in the book. I really appreciate it. 

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