World Oceans Day: what for?
The World Oceans Day was created in 1992 to remind everyone of the major role the oceans have in everyday life, to inform the public of the impact of human actions on the ocean and to develop a worldwide movement of citizens for the ocean. This special day is the occasion for the whole world to mobilize and unite on a project for sustainable management of the world’s oceans. This year, the theme for the Day is “Our oceans, our future” and for the occasion, the United Nations headquarters in New York are hosting an international conference on the oceans will be hosted from June 5th to June 9th 2017.
Live webcast of the conference on UN WebTV
FollowThree research projects supported by the BNP Paribas Foundation
For the BNP Paribas Foundation, Oceans are also an important environmental subject. And we therefore support three big research projects to understand the future of the oceans: the EFOCE project, for example, aims to assess the effects of the ocean acidification that we expect for 2100. Five European scientific institutes experimented on two open-top chambers placed at a depth of approximately 12 meters under water. This project took place off the southern coast of France, near Villefranche-sur-Mer.
These descend to a depth of 1,000 meters and carry out, for the first time, all kinds of measurements autonomously: temperature, salinity, pressure, the quantity of dissolved oxygen, light...
The data is then collected and studied by the research teams to better understand the evolution of the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. The data can be accessed by all through the following link.
Finally, we support another project which concentrates on the impact of climate change on the ecosystems provided by coral reefs. These are indeed home to the world’s greatest marine biodiversity (they represent 30% of all marine biodiversity!) and provide many services to humans: fishing, tourism, coastal protection, etc. However they are extremely sensitive to changes in the environment (warming, acidification, pollution, overfishing).
The 12 researchers conducting this project have a double aim: to assess the role of each coral reef fish species in the different ecological services, and also reconstruct and quantify the impact on environmental perturbations. This will allow them to more accurately predict the consequences of current global warming on the services provided by the reefs.
