The time for Ocean Health is now!

The new normal

For the past few years, ‘Copernicus’, the Earth Observation component of the European Union’s (EU) space programme and a leading provider of Earth observation data for our planet and its environment, releases one emergency message after the next, always topping previous messages about record temperatures and weather phenomena on earth. But who is taking notice in our time of multiple crises ?!

Increasingly, we see the impacts of these crises reflected on decision processes and personal crises, like falling ill with Covid, add to it. The more we are under stress, the more mistakes we make. These new scenarios highlight the need for different approaches, new governance and new ‘ways of doing things’. Rapid global transitions are required due to the closing window of opportunity to really make a change to our current trajectory.

Novel approaches

Increasingly, the advantages of multidisciplinary approaches for systemic change are being recognised, for which a holistic, but radical collaborative approach is needed, which at the same time provides hope. The three necessary pilars to accelerate this are: 1) holistic thinking, 2) radical collaboration and 3) accelerated innovation.

Incidentally, the natural sciences increasingly recognise that the climate crisis requires a new way of communicating that reaches people at an emotional level. In other words, we have to ‘think’ more with the heart and ‘feel’ more with the brain as our psychology decides on our success and failure.

Unfortunately, our brains are not that easily rewired – people have to ‘see’ to believe things. Yet in a globalised world we realize that the tasks we face are too enormous for any one person, any part of society, any geographical region around the globe to achieve them alone. We require more connections, more together, more unity towards a common goal. Thus an inclusive, multidisciplinary, common  dialogue encompassing a ‘stock take’ of ‘what is’ and ‘what can be’ may be a first common step towards a new reality.

And as the media report that CO₂ emissions continue to rise and reach new record highs, the urgency of the matter does not disappear.

The human factor

However, as CO₂ emissions continue to rise and temperature records reach ever new heights, it seems to be human nature to polarize and isolate in the face of such threatening future scenarios. And this is our biggest challenge: to consciously go against human ‘knee-jerk reactions’ to polarise and become even more competitive when resources dwindle, and rather make a conscious effort to rediscover the ‘we’, the potential and strength that lies within a community. Because tackling the climate crisis requires inclusion, being able to have ‘difficult conversations’ on the path to finding new ways, and treating each other with kindness and respect at the same time.

Why is thinking differently so hard?

It is now widely recognised that the window of opportunity to address the risks of climate change on human society is rapidly closing – but what is being done about it? The Covid pandemic has shown us how quickly our reality can change as a result of the destruction of nature, which causes viruses to jump species and novel zoonoses to impact every aspect of our lives. Yet after the pandemic, most people appear to want to try and link up to life as we knew it before, without any adjustments. Have we learned any lessons?

In her book from 2020, Maja Göpel invited people to rethink our world in view of the climate crisis, increasing conflicts between rich and poor people and the polarisation of our societies. In an era of increased awareness there is (hopefully) also a willingness for earth stewardship, which implies a paradigm shift that involves shaping trajectories of social-ecological change at local-to-global scales to enhance ecosystem resilience and human well-being (Chapin et al., 2011 a, b). To achieve this, we need to find the courage, develop the language and mobilize the kindred spirits to forge a different path and to develop a culture of togetherness.

OceanHealth as a first step

OceanHealth could be a first step in this direction. Since the ocean plays an important part in the fight against climate change, Ocean Health, just like climate change, is a global responsibility. Using the health of whales and dolphins as indicators of the current state of our Ocean, the story of individual and population health of these sympathy bearers presents a strong invite and entry point to develop a fresh dialogue across disciplines. Thus OceanHealth offers a platform to ‘think-outside-the-box’, bring forward new ideas, however crazy they may seem, and draw on existing knowledge to develop and walk a new path together – a path towards the nurturing and healing of our Ocean. This new approach is discussed in detail in two recent publications on a) the cumulative impacts marine mammals face in times of the Anthropocene (https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-024-00055-5) and b) how a new, transdisciplinary dialogue on OceanHealth and a new knowledge field, Ocean Health Science, propose to address that  (http://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-025-00091-9).

While it may sound idealistic, we know that this is what is required – and it represents such an enormous challenge, that no part of society will achieve this alone.

Finding new ways

A precondition for a transdisciplinary, integrative approach to work is empathy. Furthermore, transdisciplinarity is inherently inclusive and democratic. As these are the values we need to focus on in the age of artificial intelligence, where our work is increasingly being taken over by machines, and our livelihoods and survival are threatened by an ever changing climate, learning to do Ocean Health very much represents the Zeitgeist of our times.

Perhaps a start would be to bring the discussion into citizen assemblies – these represent the common interest, are representative (demographically selected from cross-section of population), inclusive, efficient, legitimate, democratic. And since people can be far more radical than politicians give them credit for, such approaches may facilitate the bigger changes required. As climate anxiety is a growing phenomenon, opening up of such dialogues may well yield new and fresh perspectives.

The need for an activistic science

And increasingly, scientists, particularly those working in the adversity of climate change and biodiversity loss, also feel the urge to become active rather than to continue analysing data, trends, and document species extinctions, marine heatwaves or rising global temperatures. The initiative of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to publish ‘Extinction Alerts’ (https://iwc.int/management-and-conservation/cetaceans-and-extinction) highlights the frustration, sadness and helplessness experienced in these scenarios. Thus a new scientific approach may be needed, one that enables scientists to play amore active role in shaping positive trajectories. Karl Popper defines activism as ‘The tendency to activity and the aversion to any attitude of passive acceptance’.

So what is required is a global and holistic approach of radical collaboration coupled with accelerated innovation to heal and nurture our Ocean system to aid us in climate change mitigation. Thus it goes to reason that in our age of biodiversity loss and climate change, a new approach to science is required, an approach that is rather different from the way we have been doing science and can yield the required changes – an approach of activistic science that can bring about systemic change.

The courage to change

Systemic change happens when one or more players change their behaviour in one or more ways. In this way, the pattern of interactions between the parts in the system changes and ultimately forms a new system that behaves in a quantitatively different way.

Thus the time seems right for Ocean Health Science as a transdisciplinary knowledge field that practises solution-focussed knowledge sharing, and follows a co-creation, co-design and co-development process of inquiry, learning, and understanding in an inclusive manner. Such transdisciplinary workings are characterised by independent thinking, academic liberalism and analytical pluralism.

Jürgen Manemann (2023) conceptualises the required philosophy that needs to form the backbone of these changes; his “Rettende Umweltphilosophie” outlines how our responsibility towards Nature needs to lead to a courage for the utopian, a courage to think and do differently.

The human spirit

As I write this, we learn of ever larger cruise ships roaming the oceans, like the ‘Icon of the Seas’, the biggest cruise ship ever. It is over 350m long, can host up to 7600 passengers at maximum capacity and is powered by liquid natural gas (LNG). A feat of human engineering and ingenuity, no doubt. But all I can think of is the destruction of nature that goes hand-in-hand with it. Just like we appear to be set on colonizing space, we now seem to be focussed on building floating mini-cities in the oceans instead of making our planet ‘habitable’ again. If we could harness such engineering and ingenuity for Ocean Health, I wonder what we could achieve…

Going back to thinking about the possibilities that Ocean Health harbours, gives me a glimmer of hope – and that is the spark we need to hold on to if we want to change our future and the future of our planet.

© Stephanie Plön

References

• Chapin III, F. S., Pickett, S. T. A., Power, M. E., Jackson, R. B., Carter, D. M. and Duke, C. 2011a. Earth stewardship: a strategy for social–ecological transformation to reverse planetary degradation. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 1: 44-53.
• Chapin, F. S., Power, M. E., Pickett, S. T. A., Freitag, A., Reynolds, J. A., Jackson, R. B., Lodge, D. M., Duke, C., Collins, S. L., Power, A. G., Bartuska, A. 2011b. Earth Stewardship: science for action to sustain the human-earth system. Ecosphere 2 (8), Article 89.
• Göpel, M. 2020. Unsere Welt neu denken. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin.
• Manemann, J. 2023. Rettende Umweltphilosophie. Von der Notwendigkeit einer aktivistischen Philosophie. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld.
• Plön, S., Andra, K., Auditore, L., Gegout, C., Hale, P. J., Hampe, O., Ramilo-Henry, M., Burkhardt-Holm, P., Jaigirdar, A. M., Klein, L., Maewashe, M. K., Müssig, L., Ramsarup, N., Roussouw, N., Sabin, R., Shongwe, T. C., Tuddenham, P. 2024. Marine mammals as indicators of Anthropocene Ocean Health. npj biodivers 3: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-024-00055-5.
• Plön, S., Andra, K., Auditore, L., Gegout, C., Hale, P. J., Hampe, O., Ramilo-Henry, M., Burkhardt-Holm, P., Jaigirdar, A. M., Klein, L., Maewashe, M. K., Müssig, L., Ramsarup, N., Roussouw, N., Sabin, R., Shongwe, T. C., Tuddenham, P. 2025. Towards sustainability and beyond with Ocean Health Science. npj biodivers 4: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-025-00091-9.
• Popper, K. R. 1974. Das Elend des Historizismus. 4. Auflage. Mohr, Tübingen.