The outlook may not always appear great, but a workshop of more than 100 multi-disciplinary researchers has this week set out to show there are more positive pathways available for the world's oceans.
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Organised by the University of Tasmania's Centre of Marine Socioecology, the workshop aims to bring together minds from across the university, the CSIRO and beyond - from ecologists to engineers and policy experts.
The spark for the event, dubbed the Future Seas Workshop, came in response to the United Nations declaring 2021-2030 its Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
It will seek to address 12 challenges faced by the marine environment across issues like plastic pollution, food security and climate change, against the UN's own Sustainable Development Goals.
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"I thought it would be good to look at what the future could conceivably look like at the end of that decade," said Professor Gretta Pecl, CMS director and leader of the workshop.
"What trajectory we're on ... but [also] if we actually used the knowledge and the information that we have, what it could technically look like by 2030."
A key aspect to the workshop is its collaboration with Indigenous researchers and knowledge holders from across the world: fishers from Greenland, an elder from a small island off Taiwan, and members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.
Another will be a focus beyond what needs to happen, to how those decisions should be made at a community, regional and global scale.
A series of journal articles produced from the workshop will each contain "pathway to action".
The Hobart-based event began on Sunday and will conclude on Friday.
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