Office Hour on Industry Leadership and Collaboration in Ocean Science, Stewardship and Sustainability, with Paul Holthus

Thursday, March 7, 2013, at 7 pm GMT / 2 pm EST / 11 am PST

Live ‘Office Hour’ Chat about the roles that ocean industries — shipping, oil/gas, fishing, aquaculture, and more — can play in informing ocean policy and management, including marine spatial planning. Our guest will be Paul Holthus, Executive Director of the World Ocean Council. The WOC is the global, cross-sectoral industry leadership alliance on “Corporate Ocean Responsibility”. Its members include more than 60 companies from the diverse ocean business community and a global network of over 15,000 ocean industry contacts.

Paul will answer your questions on the needs, opportunities and benefits of industry collaboration in addressing ocean sustainability, the upcoming Sustainable Ocean Summit (22-24 April 2013) and the WOC’s recently announced two-year effort to improve ocean business community understanding, collaboration and participation in US ocean policy and marine spatial planning.

All audience members are encouraged to read a few documents before participating in the chat which may be downloaded from the Upcoming Event notification page.

More about the Office Hour: This office hour is a live online "chat" conducted by typing and reading text - there is no audio component. Our office hour chats provide an opportunity for audience members to ask questions to our guests; audience members may also share their own experiences and insights with the guests and other participants. In other words there is multi-directional flow of information. All participants are able (and encouraged) to post, and all participants are able to view all posts (i.e., nothing is confidential). Inappropriate or off-topic content will be controlled. You do not need to be logged into the OpenChannels site to participate in the chat, but you are encouraged to create a user account and log in so you do not need to type your name in every post.

To post a reply: Simply click the "reply" link. A new comment box will appear just below the comment you would like to reply to. Please post your response in this new comment box, and click "save" to post your reply. 

The chat is now over. It will remain archived. 

Comments

Submitted by Morgan (not verified) on March 7, 2013 - 10:49am

How can marine spatial plannning efficiently work without modifications to existing hard law, like the Magnunson- Stevens Act to assure acountability for incorporation of other uses into that law?

Morgan, the WOC focuses on engaging industry and is not involved in the legal process per se, so I would have to refer this over to another discussion with appropriate people.

Submitted by Morgan (not verified) on March 7, 2013 - 11:13am

My apologies, how do the commercial fishing intersts rank in priorities of the marine spatial planning concept at play in the WOC?

The unique nature and role of the WOC is a cross-sectoral approach to creating industry leadership and collaboration. So commercial fishing interests are able to be engaged in our efforts as much as any other sector. We are working to create an ocean business community that nformed and engaged in shaping MSP that works with all stakeholders and takes into account the critical role of econmic actitvities and the efforts of responsible companies,

Hello everyone! We're gearing up to start the Office Hour now. If you have questions you'd like to direct to Paul, feel free to leave them here now and Paul will get to them shortly. Thanks! -Nick Wehner, OpenChannels Project Manager

Hi Paul. I work for a NGO worried about the tons of marine debris that arrives to Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve (Mexican Caribbean). All residues are carried by tides and currents from other near countries but also from europe and asia. I know several laws and agreements but no sure if really works. Do exist a way to prevent the disposal of residues on international waters?

Carlos, although the vast majority of marine debris comes from land based sources, leadership companies are working to reduce their input of ship borne waste into marine waters. Many companies have policies and practices to deal wtih this. A major constraint in many regions is the lack of port reception facilities. At WOC we are launching a program to get companies working with ports to ensure there are adequate reception facilities for waste discharge.

If the residues comes from ports with no adequate facilities, is possible to have that information? Because we have bottles from UK, jamaica, china, japan, sweden, norway, etc... We need to spot the sources of the residues, is a never ending work to remove the residues with more residues incoming everyday!

Carlos, to calrify, I am not suggesting that the the residues comes fron ports with no adequate facilities, but that if ports had facilities, companies operating on the sea would be able to better ensure their waste is properly disposed of. Since 80% plus of marine debris comes from land based sources and you refer to bottles, I think that the problem you are facing is trash that gets washed out to sea. The problem there is the lack of municipal waste collection and disposal. Finding the sources requires working with the government agencies to address these needs.

My mistake. In the case of the bottles, those are labeled with the country that come from, but shoes, bottle caps, syringes, sandals, cans, ropes, toothbrush, etc. are no labeled and we can't know where come from. We have a big problem indeed. Do you know somebody or some agency can help us?

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