Building a constituency for the deep ocean is an odd endeavor. The majority of people won’t ever see it. No school field trips to a hydrothermal vent, no postcards from 4,000 meters below the surface.
However, decisions regarding its future are being made in secret somewhere in that dark column of water, which is cold, pressurized, and biologically richer than anyone could have predicted forty years ago. mining licenses. fishing limits. rights to genetic prospecting. People who have rarely visited the deep are gradually dividing it.
| Profile: Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI) | Details |
|---|---|
| Organization Type | Global network of deep-sea experts |
| Year Founded | 2013 |
| Focus Areas | Science, policy, law, economics of the deep ocean |
| Working Groups | Minerals, Oil & Gas, Fisheries, Climate Change, Genetic Resources, Tailings, New Technologies, Capacity Development, Communication |
| Key Engagement | BBNJ Agreement negotiations, UN Ocean Decade, World Ocean Assessment |
| Reach | More than 2,000 members across 100+ countries |
| Notable Programs | Multi-stakeholder workshops, briefings, surveys, assessments |
| Featured Experts | Christine Gaebel (BBNJ Working Group Co-Lead), Marina Garwood (Science Policy Advisor) |
| Affiliated Bodies | International Seabed Authority, UN Regular Process |
| Mission | Ecosystem-based management of deep-ocean resource use |
The Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative aims to bridge that gap. The word “network,” which DOSI uses to describe itself, is doing a lot of work. It’s not exactly a campaign group. Additionally, it is not an academic department. A few thousand researchers, attorneys, economists, and technologists dispersed across continents have come to the looser, more porous conclusion that the deep sea should have a cohesive voice in the formulation of policy. It remains to be seen if that voice is being heard.
You can understand how unglamorous this work is by listening to Christine Gaebel and Marina Garwood, two of the DOSI working group leaders. Gaebel is a co-leader of the BBNJ effort, which is a protracted and difficult UN negotiation concerning biodiversity in waters that are not under the jurisdiction of any one nation.
As one of the few individuals who speaks both ecologist and diplomatese fluently, Garwood manages the coordination of science and policy and attends international gatherings. They don’t romanticize the work either. When you listen to them, you get the impression that they’ve spent a lot of time in conference rooms with fluorescent lighting, debating commas for whole afternoons.
What’s intriguing is the guidance they offer aspiring younger researchers. Gaebel returns to the word “realistic” repeatedly. She advises against entering a UN session and demanding a complete ban on fishing because coastal communities depend on that water, and proposals that disregard them typically fail in committee. For her part, Garwood discusses three pillars: the environment, economics, and people. If you don’t balance them, your science will fail. It sounds clear. It isn’t. Many deep-sea advocates still don’t know what is politically feasible when they get to the negotiating table.
This entire arrangement has a feeling that is both modern and traditional. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has been attempting to turn science into law for decades, which is why it is so old. The deep ocean is one of the last places on Earth where the rules have truly not been established, which makes it new. Dumping mine tailings into bathyal slopes, extracting genetic material from microbes that no one has cataloged, and mining the seafloor for cobalt and nickel are real, not hypothetical, debates. Furthermore, the commercial appetite frequently outpaces the science by years.
DOSI’s wager is that, with patience, interdisciplinary work can influence results before the worst choices are made. Gaebel and Garwood acknowledge that the field still thinks too much in silos. Specialization is rewarded in academia. Generalists who can simultaneously think about five different disciplines are rewarded by policy. It’s more difficult than people think to close that gap.
It’s difficult to ignore how much of this is the result of tenacious, modest perseverance. No press conferences. No viral marketing. Just researchers repeatedly attending meetings that the majority of the public will never learn about, arguing for a location that no one can see.
