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The world’s oceans not only cover three quarters of its surface, they also drive the global systems that sustain all life. Weather and climate, rain and drinking water, our food supply and even the oxygen we breathe – all are ultimately regulated or provided by the sea.Home to more life than any other ecosystem on the planet, the ocean is the most extreme environment for humans. An estimated 95% of the marine world remains unexplored.Propelled by climate crisis, land resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and a raft of socio-economic challenges and opportunities, marine research is accelerating. Depending on the outcomes of these efforts – to unlock the secrets of the deep, apply the lessons in medicine and industry, and cultivate a sustainable blue economy – humanity’s reliance on the oceans may only increase.
Blue economy
The blue economy encompasses all economic activities connected to the seas, oceans and coasts – from fisheries and aquaculture to ocean energy and marine biotechnology.
According to the European Union’s 2021 Blue Economy Report, the sector generated a turnover of around €650 billion in 2018, and employed almost 4.5 million people.2 Most of the report’s data relates to established sectors, ranging from maritime transport and shipbuilding to coastal tourism and offshore wind energy. All experienced accelerating growth, except for oil, gas and minerals extraction.
The ‘living resources’ sub-sector, which includes fisheries and aquaculture, was deemed ‘in good health’. It generated
€7.3 billion in gross profits – a 43% increase in less than a decade – and was buoyed by investment: up 12.6% in 2018, despite falls elsewhere. However, emerging activities such as ocean energy, marine biotechnology and robotics are developing quickly. The EU foresees these and other developments playing an important role in member states’ transition towards a carbon-neutral, circular and biodiverse economy.
In renewable energy, this involves floating offshore wind, wave and tidal, and floating solar photovoltaic energy. Installed capacities are still small and often not yet commercial, but the EU claims a leading role. In 2020, the bloc had 66% of global wave energy capacity. Public and private R&D expenditure on wave and tidal energy amounted to €3.84 billion between 2007 and 2019.
The UK shares this commitment to marine power, and may yet remain part of the Horizon Europe innovation investment programme, post-Brexit, as well as backing standalone initiatives. As an island state well placed to harvest wind and wave energy, the UK hosts around a third of the floating offshore wind energy pilot and demonstrator projects listed in the EU report.
Investments in the blue economy under the Horizon 2020 research and development programme mostly focused on ocean observation and biotechnology. More than a third of Horizon 2021-27’s €95.5 billion budget will be devoted to climate-related research, including support for the transition of maritime industries to climate neutrality.
The UK Hydrographic office (UKHO) launched a programme in 2020 to support innovators and start-ups seeking solutions to some of the most pressing ocean challenges.3 Apart from accelerating offshore renewable energy, other themes of the ADMIRALTY programme include coastal inundation, maritime risk and insurance, and autonomous navigation.4
Selected participants will gain access to seabed and other datasets, and UKHO experts, along with support for product launches in marine markets. Based on its own research, UKHO estimates that the global blue economy could be worth £3.2 trillion by 2030.5 Across the globe, countries have been channelling more investment into the blue economy as they have recognised its importance, but coordination is complex given the multiple aspects of national and global governance, economic development, environmental protection and sustainability, and international liaison involved.6
Blue growth strategies need to steer diverse research efforts and economic activities to provide coherence and exploit synergies without damaging the environment. This requires investment in skills development as well as multidisciplinary research and innovation to understand the vast scope of the blue economy and its ramifications for numerous sectors. In Europe, emerging sectors tipped to have a large impact include digitalisation in the maritime industry, robotics, surveillance and surveying, desalination, and – not least – marine biotechnology. This wide field is using ocean resources to develop downstream solutions involving food, conservation, health and wellbeing, production and processes. Digitalisation is multifaceted but includes automation of processes such as performance monitoring, energy management and cross-border traffic data sharing. Marine robotics is increasingly important for scientific research, infrastructure inspection and farming.
The mix of organisations driving developments is also diverse, and includes publicly funded research institutes, universities, corporations and collaborative networks.
Notable UK players include the Cornwall Marine Network, a non-profit company owned by 300 marine businesses in the county and Isles of Scilly providing expert support to bring their innovations to market.7
Based in Oban, the Scottish Association for Marine Science is another non-profit dedicated to delivering innovation and education. Its research work stream ranges from seaweed farming to microalgae production.
Ocean Infinity8 is an acquisitive specialist in marine robotics and seabed data analytics. With bases in Austin, Texas and Southampton in the UK, it operates a global fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles.
Bioprospecting
Scientists, like indigenous peoples, have long prospected in tropical forests and other terrestrial ecosystems for natural substances to meet medical and other human needs. In the last 25 years, 50% of all new chemicals approved as drugs have come from ‘natural products’ produced by living organisms.9
The world’s oceans may contain as many as two million as-yet undiscovered species, and they remain largely untapped. There are huge tracts of seafloor to explore. Difficult-to-reach locations, such as deep-sea hot vents and seabed sediments, have hardly been documented. However, advances in diving technology have put these unexplored areas within reach, and developments in molecular biology and genetics allow labs to isolate molecules at a pace unimagined even a decade ago. The sea’s potential as a biochemical resource bank is becoming apparent.
This quest is urgent. Drug resistance is an increasing problem, particularly for cancer and infectious diseases. Meanwhile, ocean warming, acidification and pollution threaten marine ecosystems and biodiversity.
Discovering novel compounds from uniquely evolved deep-sea organisms could be critical to replenishing the drug pipeline.
Systematic searches for new drugs have shown that marine invertebrates produce more antibiotic, anti-cancer, and anti-inflammatory substances than any group of terrestrial organisms. Particularly promising are invertebrate groups, including sponges, molluscs, cone snails and echinoderms, which include sea urchins and cucumbers.10 For instance, the molecule discodermalide – an anti-tumour agent – is extracted from deep-sea sponges.
So far, most invertebrates that produce pharmacologically active substances are sessile (non-moving; except for the cone snail). They may have evolved chemical defences to repel predators, or to compete with other species for space on the ocean floor. Anti-cancer agents would attack the rapidly dividing cells of the competing organism. Another possibility is that filter feeders need powerful chemicals to repel parasites or antibiotics against disease-causing organisms.
Much of the research to identify the medical potential of molecules is still within academic organisations. UK companies in the field include Ingenza11 – a biotechnology company, located in Roslin near Edinburgh, with specialists in molecular biology, fermentation and chemistry working to develop and manufacture high-value industrial products and therapeutic- proteins.
Horizon Discovery,12 part of the American global corporation PerkinElmer, provides cell engineering tools and services for research, drug discovery and development of therapeutic applications from its Cambridge base.
Ayr-based Marine Biopolymers13 is developing a new range of products from a more refined form of alginate – a long- established, safe, natural polymer extracted from seaweed – to widen its already myriad uses in pharmaceuticals, food/ drink, and textiles.
The oceans hold out prospects for other bounty, beyond its living organisms and their chemical properties.
As terrestrial mining struggles to meet the rising demand for electric car batteries, smart phones and laptops, extractors are looking to oceanic geology to fill the gap. Deep-sea mining for precious metals also raises grave concerns of potentially irreversible damage to a largely uncharted environment. This threat to habitats hitherto untouched by dredging or drilling is a new and significant challenge – for national and international attempts to protect marine ecosystems, and/ or for engineering innovation that could minimise the environmental impacts.
Deep research
Pure scientific research is as inherently valuable in the ocean as it is in outer space, if not more so. And the knowledge that may be discovered is at this point unfathomable, though technology is putting the deep ocean within reach.
The ocean is split into five zones according to depth: the sunlight, twilight, midnight, abyssal and hadal zones. It is commonly suggested that humans know more about the surface of the moon than they do about the bottom of the ocean. Learning about this environment can provide insights about our planet as well as chemical and biological opportunities.
As photosynthesis only takes place in the top 200 metres or so of the ocean, life below this depth has adapted to take energy from alternate sources. Hydrothermal vents, found at depths of 2,000m or more, were only discovered in 1977, revolutionising the way we think about the adaptability of life. Organisms in these deep-sea vents convert their energy from chemicals, such as sulphides, emitted in the super-heated water (a process called chemosynthesis).
Increased efforts are now being made to reach the bottom of the ocean and study bacteria that live on hydrocarbons in extremely hostile, light-devoid environments. This pioneering research had wide-reaching implications for the rest of the planet, such as the discovery – by an international team of scientists from Russia, China and the UK’s University of East Anglia – of organisms that can eat the hydrocarbon compounds found in oil.14 Similar organisms have been found to aid the clean-up of oil spills by supporting the biodegradation process, while other bacteria have been found on landfill sites to produce special enzymes able to break down PET and some other plastics.
Given the scale of plastic pollution of the seas – and the challenges of recycling waste plastic – the potential environmental and commercial applications of these and future discoveries could be highly significant, in addition to their contribution to the sum of human knowledge.
Research in this field depends on its own rich ecosystem, ranging from charities and NGOs to academics and corporations active in marine engineering, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and aquaculture.
Based in Southampton, the National Oceanography Centre (NOC)15 is one of the UK’s largest charities, with more than 600 staff, and “one of the few research organisations worldwide with the equipment and expertise to operate at full ocean depth”. The NOC is able to provide scientists with the crucial data gathered via research ships, ocean observatories, moorings, and autonomous underwater and surface vehicles.
The Marine Biological Association (MDA)16 is a learned society in Plymouth operating since 1884. Its work on the complex processes underpinning marine ecosystems is increasing understanding of ocean biodiversity and may be crucial to predicting responses to environmental change. MBA scientists study the molecular and cell biology, physiology and ecology of diverse marine organisms, from viruses, microbes and marine plankton through to giant kelps and large predators such as sharks.
Founded in 2016 by scientists and journalists, Nekton17 is working with ocean nations and other partners with the aim of accelerating learning and sharing knowledge on how best to protect the ocean. Only 8% of the ocean is currently designated as marine protected areas (MPAs), but just 2.5% has full protection. Nekton and its partners aim to widen that to at least 30% by 2030. It mounts missions that combine advanced technology, applied research, knowledge exchange, ocean policy initiatives and public engagement in support of that goal.
That balance between protection and exploitation is likely to become even more critical as the seas change with the climate. Ultimately, the knowledge gained from marine research may be crucial in how it informs humanity’s relationship with – and shapes its dependency on – the ocean, and also in charting a course to the health and prosperity of the world’s growing population, and the sustainability of our planet.
1 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/oceans/
2 https://ec.europa.eu/oceans-and-fisheries/news/2021-eu-blue-economy-report-emerging-sectors-prepare-blue-economy-leading-part-eu-green-transition-2021-05-20_en
3 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukho-launches-new-innovation-programme-to-support-development-of-the-blue-economy
4 https://www.admiralty.co.uk/innovation-programme
5 https://discover.admiralty.co.uk/news/unlocking-the-potential-blue-econom
6 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.00261/full
7 https://cornwallmarine.net
8 https://oceaninfinity.com
9 https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/12fire/background/pharmacology/pharmacology.html
10 https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/medicinesfromsea.html
11 //www.ingenza.com
12 https://horizondiscovery.com
16 https://www.mba.ac.uk
17 https://nektonmission.org
