Safeguarding the Oceans through Data Sharing
By: Good Data Initiative
Tags: Open Data, Marine Biology, Conservation, Technology, Oceans

Listening to the Not-So-Silent Waters

In the dark, cold, not-so-silent waters of the Canadian Atlantic, twenty-odd hydrophones — microphones that detect sound waves underwater — anchored to the ocean floor are continuously recording.

In my work as a marine biologist, I listened to hours of these ocean soundscapes: I learned to recognize the staccato of rain drops; the high-pitched frenzied whistles of dolphins; the loud and regular clicking of a sperm whale. The near-constant background thrum of vessel noise would crescendo into a roar with a passing boat, dominating the soundscape for several minutes until the vessel moved off.

While my research focused on identifying and monitoring cetaceans by their vocalizations or echolocation clicks, these acoustic data also contain a plethora of other information about the ocean and the creatures in it. Increasingly complex oceanic technologies and acoustic analyses are allowing us to ‘see’ this information we would not otherwise have access to.

‘Underwater microphones’ are only one part of a network of ocean acoustic recorders on the continental shelf of eastern Canada. These large, expensive hydrophones [1] are boated out to locations of interest, lowered carefully to the ocean floor, and left to record for a year to 18 months before they are retrieved for data analysis and replaced by another device. Besides these long-term deep-sea hydrophones, there are several other sources of acoustic data in the northwestern Atlantic. Four offshore oil platforms on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland constantly record and monitor the sounds of the ocean.

Photo: Hydrophone being prepped for deployment. (Via PMEL, credit: Lauren Roche)

In addition to these passive acoustic monitoring technologies, active acoustic monitoring is used for natural resource exploration. Seismic and geophysical surveys emit loud and powerful sound waves that bounce off objects in the ocean, the topography of the ocean floor, and the materials that make up the ocean’s crust, returning to the source of the sonar at different rates and from different directions to construct an image of the ocean and the ocean floor [2].

Terabytes and terabytes of this oceanic acoustic data covering thousands of cubic kilometres are collected and stored on hard drives locked in fire-proof storage rooms [3]. Depending on the purpose, timed or random samples might be selected for analysis by researchers, or a large portion of the dataset might be combed through by algorithms to identify phenomena or patterns of interest. This oceanic acoustic data can provide insight into weather patterns, currents, sea ice formation and breakup, vessel traffic, and marine mammals.

Acoustic data can also be combined with other oceanic data such as temperature and currents to model how sound travels in the ocean — in effect, creating an ocean soundscape [4]. In the case of marine mammal science, acoustic data provide insights into the location and presence of cetaceans, with important implications for their management and protection. More real-time monitoring of cetaceans can mitigate vessel-whale collisions: For example, a collaboration between Ocean Networks Canada and the Vancouver Port Authority mandated vessels slow down when whales were acoustically detected in the vicinity of shipping lanes [5][6].

The Plight of Oceanic Data

The recent proliferation of oceanic data collection and analysis technologies offers an opportunity to better understand the ocean. Despite covering 70% of the surface of the planet, more than 80% of it remains unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored [7]. Data are being collected wherever resources and motivation exist to overcome the financial and logistical challenges posed by the often harsh, vast nature of the ocean. However, few people know that most ocean data are under the control of private companies mostly concentrated in oil and shipping [8].

From JASCO Applied Sciences: “Map of the AMAR acoustic recorders deployed off the Canadian East coast for the first of 2 years of underwater acoustic monitoring, Aug 2015 through Jul 2016” (JASCO)

Only a fraction of the acoustic data collected in oceans, including in the waters off eastern Canada, are available to governments, academics, and policymakers. The Canadian government owned two of the twenty-three hydrophones operating in the Canadian Atlantic from 2015 to 2017. (The other nineteen are owned by a private environmental impact assessment consultancy, serving the oil and gas, marine construction, energy, fisheries, and defense sectors.) As an undergraduate researcher, and then a government biologist, the dataset I used to ascertain the distribution and habitats of endangered beaked whales was extremely limited. Even the data owned by government agencies are often unavailable or inaccessible to other researchers or the wider public [9].

Comprehensive and accurate data is crucial to protecting the ocean and its resources. My analyses of acoustic data allowed me to identify areas that were critical habitat for beaked whales; these same areas were earmarked by the Canadian government as potential Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). While vast amounts of oceanic data remain locked away, enormous areas of the ocean go unmonitored. The ocean supports all life on earth and plays a crucial role in mitigating rising global temperatures. Sustainable management of its resources, informed by data and evidence, has the potential to address the threats of overfishing, pollution, unprecedented biodiversity decline, and climate change.

We have reached an age where big data has arrived in the marine sphere. Satellites, autonomous underwater vehicles, hydrophones, animal-attached sensors, and other sources collect a variety of data, including temperature, conductivity, salinity, dissolved nutrients, dissolved gases, ocean currents, noise, and vessel GPS positions, just to name a few. The explosion of the quantity and quality of oceanic data produced and/or collected offers enormous potential to protect the ocean if made widely available and accessible. Both scientists and policymakers have identified effective cross-sector data sharing as a key tool in ensuring the sustainable management of the ocean [10][11].

Challenges and Gains of Sharing Oceanic Data

The importance of data sharing has been increasingly recognized as critical to furthering development across multiple sectors including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and banking. Organizations such as the Open Data Institute (co-founded in 2012 by web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and world-leading AI expert Sir Nigel Shadbolt) are among those that have embraced a mission of demonstrating the value of open data for affecting positive global change [12].

Due to the efforts of mission-driven organizations like ODI, open data is now touted by governments as a way to increase transparency and accountability. The open data movement has so far been successful in unlocking many government datasets based on the potential benefits, with alternative models of data sharing also now on the rise within the private sector. A recent report on the value of corporate data sharing further highlighted the opportunities for manufacturing companies to increase the performance and value of their products through data sharing [13]. Despite challenges such as privacy concerns and proprietary interest risks, companies are recognizing its value.

However, corporate data sharing has until now been largely restricted to the private sector. Data is a valuable resource — one which is disproportionately owned and controlled by private companies. Especially in the marine sphere, there are significant obstacles to collecting oceanic data. The unique financial and logistical challenges of the seemingly limitless and often international ocean environment mean that corporations with greater access to resources, capacity, and flexibility than governments, research institutions, or third sector organisations, produce and control the vast majority of oceanic data.

The potential of corporate data sharing to contribute to the public good is evident in the case of oceanic data. Vast quantities of oceanic data collected by the marine industries — including oil and gas exploration and extraction, shipping, commercial fishing, and offshore wind and turbine farms — could inform the conservation of marine resources; contribute to tackling climate change; and even enable increased public scrutiny of activities in international waters. In the hands of governments, research institutions, non-profits, or the public, oceanic data has enormous potential to add value by addressing critical environmental and societal issues. We have the technology, and the data exist. Why has not more been done?

Despite these opportunities, much oceanic data collected by private companies remains locked away, with access barred to public and charitable organisations working on behalf of the environment that could stand to benefit from using this data. In thinking towards the future of the ocean, it is worth asking: Of the many models of data sharing that exist, which would best facilitate and foster private-public partnerships between these data-rich corporations and government and/or non-profit environmental organisations? This is not just a question of selecting an ideal model; it is a question motivated by the importance of the oceans, by how little we still know about them, and for the good of all the life on earth that these vast, harsh oceans support.

Imagining the Future: Viable oceanic data sharing models

In answering this question, one possible viable framework to foster corporate data sharing is that of the ‘data collaborative’: An exchange between private and public organizations extending beyond a partnership where they collaborate together by collecting, sharing, or processing data with the purpose of creating shared value from the resulting data.

The author of the concept, Stefaan Verhulst, a professor and researcher at the GovLab at NYU, claims that this model allows corporate data to be leveraged to address a societal challenge while still retaining its private-sector value [14][15]. A ‘data collaborative’ might take one of several forms, including a research partnership, trusted intermediaries, corporate data pooling, application programming interfaces (API), intelligence products, or prizes and challenges [16]. Examples in the past of successful data collaboratives have included the MDEEP (Mobile Data, Environmental Extremes, and Population) Project between leading telecommunications providers, the International Center for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), and the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, as well as MIT’s Laboratory for Social Machines.

A ‘data collaborative’ offers a useful framework through which to imagine a renewed marine data ecosystem: One in which the vast quantities of oceanic data already produced by companies could be shared with governments, researchers, and citizens to tackle societal or environmental issues. Data already collected and stored by marine industries contains enormous potential for monitoring and research. With access to acoustic recordings from a network of industry hydrophones, marine biologists like me could make significant advancements in mapping the presence and distribution of cetaceans across a large geographical range. An extensive, thorough, and up-to-date knowledge of the presence of cetaceans can help industries mitigate the potentially adverse effects of their activities on marine mammals. Better and more consistent data can not only facilitate mitigation measures, but also increase the transparency of these marine industries — raising the public’s awareness of industry conservation efforts or inversely, holding these same companies accountable as necessary.

Technology is a tool; what we chose to do with it is an extension of what we, as a society, value. The proliferation of ocean technologies and data could lead to further exploitation of marine resources, damaging not only fragile oceanic ecosystems but our ability to successfully tackle climate change. Alternatively, these innovations could be harnessed to improve our knowledge and management of the ocean. Sharing these oceanic data through private-public partnerships can ensure they are used to safeguard the ocean.