Mapping the Atlantic basin ecosystems improves ocean management
As climate change continues and human activities expand into the deep ocean, scientists strive to provide knowledge that will inform sustainable management of marine resources. The EU-funded iAtlantic project is using new ocean technologies, employing innovative approaches and investing in early-career researchers to give Atlantic ecosystems a health check. According to project coordinator J. Murray Roberts: “The ocean is at the heart of Earth’s life support system, and it is changing faster than ever before. iAtlantic has come up with a unique coordinated approach that doesn’t just focus on the science but puts huge emphasis on sharing human and technical capacities.”
New knowledge about the Atlantic basin
The project focused on 12 key zones of international conservation significance in the Atlantic Ocean. iAtlantic sent over 80 missions to these sites and nearby areas to record data, collect samples and run remote experiments on the deep seafloor. As well as scientists, iAtlantic worked closely with stakeholders from industry and policymaking agencies to support responsible decision making. The culminating event of the project was the largest symposium ever convened to discuss implementation of the High Seas Treaty, a legal framework to protect the world’s oceans. Experiments in the field and in the laboratory identified ecosystem tipping points in response to physical changes in the environment. The project developed new knowledge with respect to specific stressors, including: temperature rise, deoxygenation, sedimentation, and pollution from deep-sea mining. iAtlantic developed new knowledge through a host of innovative techniques and technologies. Scientists sampled environmental DNA in the water column, advanced seafloor imaging through machine learning, and showed that shifts in upper ocean systems caused by climate change negatively impact ecosystems underneath. iAtlantic also unlocked important datasets from industry stakeholders that improved mapping coverage of the seafloor, leading to the addition of 571,634 km2 of bathymetry data being added to the public record.
Planning for the future through iAtlantic fellows
Work on the iAtlantic project spanned four continents and is dedicated to collaboration and information sharing. With over 200 researchers from 36 organisations, the partners created a blueprint for collaborative Atlantic research. The project supported more than 50 iAtlantic fellows from countries all around the Atlantic basin. These early-career researchers formed the backbone of the project, and their collaboration points to a bright future for ocean science. Project fellows achieved many successful outcomes in their research. These include evidence of the tropicalisation of the South Atlantic, where scientists observed the poleward movement of warm-water species. Fellows worked on identifying the toxic effects of deep-sea mining on important cold-water corals. They also created ecological time series that shed new light on the impacts of climate change on Atlantic ecosystems. Fellows engaged with one another through online events that included 16 workshops and 27 webinars. According to iAtlantic fellow Beatriz Vinha: “The intergenerational and interregional experience of iAtlantic is essential to help shape a more inclusive and multidimensional next generation of deep-sea scientists.” A fundamental goal of iAtlantic was to provide access to scientific evidence that informs sustainable governance of the Atlantic Ocean. All project publications are accessible via zenodo, and the project’s spatiotemporal data is available through the GeoNode platform.
Keywords
iAtlantic, ocean, Atlantic basin, environment, climate change, ocean management, open ocean, blue economy
