Opening Remarks to DSBS Symposium

 

I helped organized and opened up a science symposium at the 16th International Deep Sea Biology Symposium.  These are my remarks.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone, depending where you are.  Why don’t we go ahead and get started.

Hello, my name is Angelo Villagomez with the Blue Nature Alliance and I’d like to welcome you all to “Achieving Truly Global Stewardship of the Deep Ocean.”  I will be your host for the next two and one half hours as we explore actions and ideas that will help achieve fairer access to the benefits and stewardship of the deep ocean. 

First off, I want to thank all of you for joining us today.  Issues of ocean justice and social equity can sometimes be difficult to discuss, and doing so openly and honestly requires a great deal of trust and humility.  We ask that you listen actively to what the speakers and other participants have to say.  I realize that listening for agreement can be sometimes difficult for people in our chosen profession – but I’m putting the ask out there regardless.

We are at a unique point in the history of deep sea science and exploration where we can take a look at how we have conducted our work in the past, and recognize that we haven’t included all of the people, countries, ideas, and worldviews who could contribute to our understanding of the deep sea.  Our point in this symposium is not to criticize the past, but rather to learn and grow to improve science.  I hope that some of the ideas you hear challenge you; and conversely hope that your ideas challenge us.

This will be the first of what we hope is a series of presentations in the coming months, where through traditional scientific presentations, a panel discussion, a short film, and the use of Sli.do to interact, collect input and data from all of you in real time, we plan to co-create a document – either guidelines or a code of conduct – that can help support the pathway to achieving a truly global stewardship of the deep ocean.

A quick reminder to all of you before we begin -- please submit questions and comments using the conference website or Sli.Do.  The link to our Sli.do should be in an email – and hopefully someone can pop it into the chat right now.  Lucy is monitoring those and will ensure that the organizers see them.

But before we truly get started, I’d like to first recognize my co-organizers, Lucy Woodall, Paris Stefanoudis, Daniel Wagner, Diva Amon, and Kerry Sink.  And now I will pass it over to Dr. Howell.