1 - A clean ocean - Working Groups

How to achieve - A clean ocean where sources of pollution are identified, reduced or removed

Society generates a vast range of pollutants and contaminants including marine debris, plastic, excess nutrients, anthropogenic underwater noise, hazardous chemicals, organic toxins, and heavy metals. These pollutants and contaminants derive from a wide variety of land and sea based sources, including point and non-point sources. The resulting pollution is unsustainable for the ocean and jeopardises ecosystems, human health, and livelihoods. It will be critical to fill urgent knowledge gaps and generate priority interdisciplinary and co-produced knowledge on the causes and sources of pollution and its effects on ecosystems and human health. This knowledge will underpin solutions co-designed by multiple stakeholders to eliminate pollution at the source, mitigate harmful activities, remove pollutants from the ocean, and support the transition of society into a circular economy.

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Chairs

Cath Waller
Cath Waller is a lecturer in Environmental Marine Biology at the University of Hull, UK. She competed her PhD with the British Antarctic Survey and has continued to work in both polar regions since then. Her research focuses on shallow benthic ecosystems and the impacts of anthropogenic stressors (including climate change and microplastics) on the habitats and communities. She also researches vectors for the introduction of non-native species into the Southern Ocean. She is Co-Chair of the SCAR Action Group Plastics at the Poles, and leads the Environmental Plastics Research Group at the University of Hull.
Clara Manno
Clara Manno is a biological oceanographer from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) who has focused her research on studying the resilience of Southern Ocean marine ecosystem and carbon cycle to anthropogenic climatic and not climatic stressors such as ocean acidification and microplastic pollutions. She is a member of the steering committee of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) research group “Plastic in the Polar Environment” and she is PI of a Future Leaders Fellowships by the United Kingdom (UK) Research and Innovation focus on microplastic impacts in Southern Ocean (CUPIDO).
Jeff Bowman - 0000-0002-8811-6280
Jeff Bowman is a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. His lab studies the role of marine microbes in the Earth system with an emphasis on the Arctic and Antarctic.