Anja Murray: Radical changes required to let the oceans recover

Irish Examiner

a day ago

Summertime is when many of us love taking time out by the seaside. Watching over the open expanse of ocean, feasting our eyes on stunning turquoise depths of each incoming wave, feeling the invigorating freshness of sea air.
Walking along the shoreline we might watch and listen to terns, global migrants who breed on Irish coastlines during the summer months, feeding on small fish caught fresh from the surface of the sea, enthralling us with their elegance as they swoop and dive. We might immerse ourselves in the blue-green waters, exhilarating and energising mind and body with the joy of sea swimming.
As conscious as we are of our island nation state, we are only vaguely aware that Ireland's marine territory spans more than 10 times our territorial land mass.
We are also generally aware of our dependence on the sea for much of our wealth and resources, yet don't tend to consider just how much we impact the health of ocean ecosystems with our activities. For most of history, humans have rightly considered the oceans as being far too large for us to ever inflict much of an influence upon.
Everything is ready in Nice, France, for the UN Ocean Conference.
Starting Monday, world leaders, scientists and other civil society representatives from around the world will come together to share their perspectives and solutions to #SaveOurOcean. https://t.co/1qJ91HbXkN pic.twitter.com/s4FJebCyJk — United Nations (@UN) June 8, 2025
Yet over the past 50 years, it has become clear that human activities are causing life threatening harm to the fabric of ocean life.
This is the subject of the third United Nations Ocean Conference that has been taking place this week in Nice, France. As international law and multilateral cooperation are being sorely tested and challenged on several fronts at present, the Ocean Conference is a vital opportunity for international governance and policy to prevail, with the task none other than charting a path to a liveable future for all of us.
Oceans, and the life they contain, actively shape conditions for life on land. Marine plankton constitute as much as 90% of life in the open seas and maintain the balance of atmospheric gasses that sustains all the rest of us, including regulating climate by absorbing excess carbon dioxide, moving heat around the planet, and producing the oxygen that all other lifeforms depend on. Plankton of course are the basis of every marine food chain, their distribution and abundance tightly embroiled with the millions of species on both land and in water.
Perhaps beginning with hunting whales, the largest animals on the planet, until many species were threatened with extinction, humans started to exert a significant impact on the health of marine ecosystems. Fishing has always taken place, and is not inherently bad for the ocean.
But the combination of technological advancements, rapid growth in fleet size and massive subsidies for industrial fishing that have caused fish to be harvested faster than stocks can replenish. Overfishing is now officially recognised as the most significant driver of declines in ocean wildlife, pushing target and non-target populations to the brink of collapse.
And lest we think that Ireland is innocent in this, we are one of the worst offenders when it comes to overfishing.
On top of these pressures, the oceans have been absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a process that has, until recently, been buffering and delaying the impacts of climate change, but has been causing acidification in marine waters. Ocean temperatures, specifically sea surface temperatures, have been soaring, with about a quarter of the world's oceans experiencing marine heat waves in 2024. Last summer's extreme marine heatwave off the coasts of Ireland raised sea temperatures by 5°C. There is another marine heatwave underway currently. It is hardly surprising that the ecological equilibrium of the world's oceans are wobbling toward a fall. And if that happens, we will all go down.
All of this is to say that international cooperation to address the pressures and implement solutions is crucial. This is why the gathering of more than 50 heads of state this week in France, along with scientists, activists, and business executives, is a deeply hopeful event.
While many have turned to scepticism about the potential of such UN conferences to chart international agreements that go far enough to be effective, it is worth remembering that international summits such as these are still the most viable way of collectively agreeing and implementing solutions to global problems. These processes are also the only opportunity that small island states have to influence global politics.
The UN Ocean Conference has been working to develop international governance and mobilise financial resources for a suite of measures to protect the healthy functioning of the world's oceans. One of the key aspects of this is securing the ratification of the 'High Seas Treaty', a legally binding instrument to protect the high seas beyond national jurisdiction. A moratorium on deep-sea mining is also on the agenda.
Many civil society groups across Ireland and internationally have also been focusing energy on the need for a scaling up of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Ireland has made progress in recent years, having increased the area of MPAs from less than 2.5% in 2022 to just over 9% by 2024, though still leaving a long way to go to achieve the EU Biodiversity Strategy target to protect at least 30% of the Irish Maritime Area by 2030.
A swathe of marine biodiversity hotspots that are in urgent need of legal protection have been identified and proposed by the Fair Seas campaign, a coalition of civil society groups across Ireland. Another essential component of progressing the Irish MPA network is the long awaited Marine Protected Area Bill. The UN Ocean Conference puts much needed pressure on Ireland, as an island national, to progress long overdue national policy while simultaneously being part of the momentum for urgent multilateral action.
Globally, the oceans are changing faster than any time since the ice age. This time, it is human activities that are the agents of the transformation. We, too, are capable of transformation, once we understand that radical change in human activities is the only way we can allow the oceans to recover. For this, the success of international cooperation is a prerequisite, a necessity for a viable future.