Last month, diplomats, advocates, and lawyers from around the world gathered in Kingston, Jamaica for the second part of the 30th session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the intergovernmental body charged by the United Nations with regulating mining, and minimizing its impacts, in international waters.
Among the participants was a contingent of scientists, including Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences’s own Vice President for Research Beth Orcutt. Orcutt has attended several meetings of this body with the Deep-Ocean Stewardship Initiative, a global network of science ambassadors that has official observer status with the ISA.
DOSI and the scientists like Orcutt who attend these meetings and engage in these policy conversations are there to explain what we know — and often, just how little we know — about the deep-sea environment and what information is needed to fill those knowledge gaps.
Photo 1: Orcutt speaks as a representative of DOSI at the recent ISA meeting on July 10 (Credit: IISD/ENB | Andrés Felipe Carvajal Gómez).
Photo 2: The DOSI delegation pose for a photo during the second part of the 30th session of the ISA in Kingston, Jamaica.
