Uncorrected Evidence 470

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Science and Technology Committee

on Wednesday 4 July 2007

Members present

Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair

Dr Evan Harris

Dr Brian Iddon

Chris Mole

Bob Spink

Dr Desmond Turner

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Dr Sharon Thompson, Senior Marine Policy Officer, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; Dr Malcolm Vincent, Director of Science, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Professor Ian Boyd, Sea Mammal Research Unit, University of St Andrews; and Dr Tom Tew, Chief Scientist, Natural England, gave evidence.

Q368 Chairman: Good morning and I first of all apologise to our witnesses for a slightly late start this morning; we have been somewhat flexed by the changes in the Government's structure and we needed to have a discussion about that. This is not quite the last of our oral evidence sessions on investigating the oceans because we have the Minister and NERC to come but it has been a fascinating subject. We welcome four very distinguished scientists to start with on the first panel: Dr Sharon Thompson, the Senior Marine Policy Officer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Dr Malcolm Vincent, the Director of Science at the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Professor Ian Boyd from the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews and last but by no means least Dr Tom Tew, the Chief Scientist for Natural England. Dr Tew, I ask that you chair your panel and you can deflect questions if you cannot answer them.

Dr Tew: I can certainly try.

Q369 Chairman: I will begin with you, Dr Tew, and ask you, why do we know so little about the biodiversity of the oceans?

Dr Tew: Clearly, there are significant challenges to do with the difficulty of getting information but I do not think that those challenges are insurmountable and, for me, the issue is largely around the way research has been structured, funded and integrated, or rather the lack of structure, function and integration. As end users, we are finding all kinds of instances where we simply have a paucity of data to do what we need to do to protect the environment.

Q370 Chairman: Whose fault is it then?

Professor Boyd: May I answer as a practising scientist and one who has to deliver the data. I think that there are some very specific challenges within the marine environment. It takes a lot to get to first base there, a bit like working in the polar regions. A large investment is required; it is a very complex dynamic system. As a result of that, our knowledge base in the marine environment is much, much poorer than it is for the terrestrial environment.

Q371 Chairman: Where are the huge gaps?

Professor Boyd: I think that some of the biggest gaps are just, what is there and where is it? We only know that for very specific coastal regions. The deep oceans are largely a mystery to us, for example, and the microbiology in the oceans is something that is only just being unfolded.

Q372 Chairman: During this inquiry, witness after witness has told us that the deep oceans are absolutely crucial to the future of the earth and the planet.

Professor Boyd: It is a matter of having the logistics to get to the deep oceans. They are a very, very difficult and complex part of the planet to reach.

Q373 Chairman: So, it is logistics rather than a failure of science to appreciate the significance of the deep oceans?

Professor Boyd: I would say so. I think science has always said that the deep oceans are very important; certainly in the recent past it has said that the deep oceans are very important. It is also key skills as well. If we are not practising in those areas, we are not bringing on key skills as well. That is fundamental too.

Dr Tew: However, those logistics do not apply to the inshore and near shore and, even there, we have a great paucity of information on where biodiversity is, what value it represents to us as the human species and what the effects of human impacts are. Data are missing on all of these issues. I think the driver is that the marine environment is largely hidden from public view. The glories of the marine environment and the plight of the marine environment are largely hidden and, for instance, we are sleepwalking towards a situation where we might not even get a Marine Bill and, if we get a Marine Bill, we might not have proper duties and proper mechanisms. I believe that the drivers there are lack of public engagement.

Q374 Chairman: Dr Vincent, why does it matter? Why is it important?

Dr Vincent: At the moment, in terms of biological data, we have about 10 to 15 per cent of what we actually require to take any practical action to regulate human activities in relation to the UK continental shelf waters. So, while we have fairly good data in relation to the geophysical side, particularly the substrate, the topography bathymetry, knowledge of the seabed biology is quite meagre. When we are actually trying to manage major human impacts such as fishing, such as energy, such as (?) extraction, we are actually more able to determine whether these are likely to have a severe impact or not. We do not know what is there and we do not know what the effect of human activity is having on it as a generalisation and that is why it is important. In answer to your previous question, I think that there has been a major shortfall in the systematic survey of even UK continental shelf waters down to, say, 500 metres, let alone the continental shelf in the deep oceans, and I think that is a major problem for us in the UK.

Dr Thompson: From our point of view, we would agree. If we could use a comparison with terrestrial survey work at least from the point of view of birds, we feel that for a long period of time the Government have had the advantage of organisations such as ourselves who have used volunteers to go out and collect that information for free and that is something that we want to do; we want to help that process along saying where we think sites need to be protected, but we are not in the same situation offshore to be able to do that. It is very expensive to go offshore and, as a charity, we cannot do that. We think, agreeing with Dr Vincent, that we need to have systematic surveys offshore including inshore as well as the deep oceans.

Q375 Chairman: With the huge emphasis we have seen in climate change certainly over the past five years - since I have been in Parliament the emphasis has gone up massively - has that had a positive or negative effect in terms of what is happening with the seas and the oceans?

Dr Thompson: As far as protecting it, I think it has been a bit of both. What it has brought up on the agenda is the fact that climate change impacts are not only happening on land, they are happening in the marine environment and that we need to look after our environment and climate change has certainly brought that to the fore. On the flipside, what has tended to happen is, with such a direct focus on climate change and reducing the impacts of that, we have forgotten that we also need to protect biodiversity as well and remembering that a lot of this biodiversity and the functions of the marine environment actually help us mitigate against climate change impact. So, it is trying to get that balance between renewable energy, for example, but not damaging those systems that actually help us already.

Q376 Dr Turner: Dr Vincent, I have listened to your comments about the clear lack of knowledge for our marine ecosystems on the continental shelf and I am particularly interested in offshore renewable energy and am quite appalled by the inordinate delays that occur in the consenting process for offshore development of either offshore wind farms or even the first commercial trans(?) turbine. It has taken an enormous amount of time and it has clearly been impeded by the lack of knowledge for the ecosystems and indeed almost the cynical feeling that it was a wonderful excuse to get companies to take over research to fill the gaps in somebody's knowledge. Do you think it is essential that we actually have a concerted effort to get to grips with these ecosystems in order that we can rationalise this whole process?

Dr Vincent: I think the instances which you gave, the renewable energy and the wind turbines, are instances where innovative technology took the scientific community, in biodiversity sense, a little by surprise, so there was not enough lead-in time to prepare to gather the information we needed to answer the environmental questions that were posed. In relation to the turbine in Strangford Lough(?), for example, we really do not have a great deal to go on in order to evaluate the likely damage of that turbine, ditto the wind turbines in the inshore and offshore zone. There is only a certain amount of evidence available to us to determine whether or not that is going to be a bad thing. There will inevitably be some circumstances whereby innovative technology will simply take us by surprise. However, our lack of basic understanding about what is there, as has been said before, and about how ecological processes work in the environment will always need to be resolved. Fishing will continue in some form and other human activities will continue in some form, so there is a basic systematic need for knowledge as to what is there and how it is going to be impacted by different activities.

Q377 Dr Turner: Let us go back to the Strangford Lough example because it is a good one. It nearly did not happen because of fear of what turbines would do to the seals which I am fairly convinced was totally unfounded because seals are far too smart. It is totally ironic because the local horse mussel population had been rendered extinct by totally unregulated fishing and most of the marine damage on our offshore waters has been done by fishing, not by renewable energy installations which are by and large a method which is benign and, as to the concern about seals in Strangford Lough, what is most affecting the seal population there is climate change because habitats and species are moving north. Are marine biologists in this sort of context keeping a proper sense of proportion?

Dr Tew: We have a seal expert here.

Dr Vincent: I would like to respond on the horse mussels. I think that the damage was entirely predicable in Strangford Lough; it would inevitably have had that result and should have been more strictly controlled.

Professor Boyd: I am not sure if I should admit to this but I am advising the company that is putting the turbines into Strangford Lough and Environmental Heritage Services ---

Q378 Dr Turner: We can have a talk afterwards.

Professor Boyd: I think that there were some misconceptions in what you say about, for example, climate change and change in the seal populations. We do not know that. Seal populations are changing in that area and they are changing in Northern Britain in general. That may be a natural dynamic process. When Marine Current Turbines turned up in my office to ask what the effect was going to be on seals, my honest answer as a scientist was that I could not say because, as Dr Vincent said, this is a new technology and we have no previous experience of it. My advice was that we have to go ahead with this anyway but let us take a step-by-step approach and let us come to some sort of conclusion about what the impacts might be and let us try to mitigate along the way. I think that was a sensible measured approach to it and that is what is happening.

Q379 Chairman: I did not really follow that but I am sure that you and Dr Turner can have a chat with a cup of tea afterwards. All of you have mentioned the issue of collecting data and making sure that we have good, reliable datasets and in fact one international census, the Census of Marine Life, is in an attempt to try to catalogue much of what is happening. What part does the UK play in that and how effective is it? Can anyone pick that up?

Professor Boyd: In the next session, you will have Professor Graham Shimmield talking to you and he is Chairman of the European Centres for Marine Life, so it would be much better if he answered that question.

Q380 Chairman: You sound like a politician!

Dr Tew: In terms of English and UK approaches, the 2005 State of the Seas report Charting Progress was almost entirely unable to put any kind of measures on any of the things that you would want to use as indicators. I think that it is a strong indicator of the paucity of data out there at a national level.

Q381 Dr Harris: I want to ask you about issues to do with conservation, SACs, planned SACs and the planned MPAs and under the new Bill. We have heard in evidence concerns that the research base to accurately allocate criteria to develop these areas is not adequate. Who is responsible for doing the research required or judging whether it is sufficient and is the system working well heading towards the proposals for MPAs and SACs?

Dr Tew: For SACs, the duty is upon the Government to designate these sites under European legislation and it is a government responsibility. There is good news here because the Government have recently set aside considerable funding for SAC survey particularly for reefs and sandbanks. So, it is not all good news but the Government are responding to the need for more information. It is the forward look in terms of the MPAs which is the more worrying with no, as we have just said, coordinated or integrated view on habitats and ecosystems offshore.

Dr Vincent: There are ways of coping. There is a tendency to translate practices on land to sea in terms of the Government's thinking about the sorts of data that you need. As Professor Boyd has said, in actual fact, that is unreasonable in many respects. It may be that we have to change the way that we think and be prepared to accept rather lesser data in support of measures at sea than on land. We have just got ourselves into a sort of mindset at the sea. In relation to MPAs, it is possible for us to use the geophysical data to actually pinpoint probable areas that are likely to be rich in biodiversity terms and then target those for survey. So, we do not necessarily have to survey the entire continental shelf and adjacent waters in order to be able to come up with a suite of ecologically caring sites. There are other ways of doing it.

Dr Tew: I think that we might compare ourselves with the Irish who have just launched a �70 million survey over ten years to provide exactly the kind of information which they need and again the point is, if there is not duty to come up with MPAs in the Bill, this is exactly the kind of issue which will again confound the problem and it is why we only have one marine nature reserve in England after 26 years.

Dr Thompson: I agree with everything that has been said before. One of the areas that we focus on is the SPAs for seabirds and this is an area where we have long been saying that the data is old and there are gaps in it, that it needs to be updated and that there needs to be a systematic survey to update that to get us to the next stage to be able to designate those sites. As well as designating sites so that they protect the biodiversity interest, I think that it cuts across to the issue that was brought up before in relation to the activities that take place at sea. If we do not know where the important sites are, every time an activity takes place, whether it be considered good renewable energy or something bad, it is always going to run into the problem of, is this site important for biodiversity or not? You are reaching that conflict on a site-by-site basis rather than having a better overview of what is happening at sea.

Q382 Dr Harris: You are saying that there are gaps in the knowledge base for this but who is responsible for filling that? You said in your earlier answer that the Government have a role but the Government would say that there are research councils and it is for them to decide how to spend their money to this aim.

Dr Thompson: I think that something on such a strategic level is going to benefit UK industry as well as meeting our national energy/national conservation objectives. It needs some strategic lead at least from the Government. We have had a series of strategic environmental assessments for offshore oil and gas in particular which have been surveying the whole of the UK continental shelf, but they have tended to focus on very specific issues that will, I suppose, bring the benefits for that industry itself, particularly oil and gas, and that started back in 1999 and I think that probably all of us there said that we needed more of the biological/biodiversity information as well. However, funds get prioritised and we feel that maybe there should be more funds put towards the conservation element of where we are actually going to move forward in that.

Q383 Dr Harris: Is it the words "long term" that scare funders because it has to be a commitment to the collection of long-term datasets or is it actual research into specific species that is missing from the system in order to designate these areas or both?

Dr Thompson: I am not entirely sure. Maybe more from a personal point of view, I would say that the marine environment is a new frontier that has been forgotten until now and we are only beginning to really look into it and hopefully, as more activities do take place there, people will understand the issues more and more funds should be put towards it.

Q384 Dr Harris: I am trying to work out what is stopping this happening.

Dr Vincent: Could I turn the question back and say that there is a certain lack of clarity, at least I am not very clear, as to which minister is responsible for marine science in the sense that the portfolio seems to shift backwards and forwards between the Defra Minister and what was the Office of Science and Innovation and it is not clear to us who in fact the relevant marine science minister is. If that could be clarified, then their responsibility could be to address cross-governmental objectives which would actually help direct the future marine science funding into those areas in order to meet those objectives and I think that there is a lack of clarity there.

Professor Boyd: I think that there are probably two different issues being confused here in terms of the science delivery. There is a process of documentation of distribution in abundance of biodiversity to put it very broadly, but there is also the process of understanding why it is there and how it changes. In other words, it is the underlying mechanisms. Those two aspects are often delivered from two different directions. The research councils tend to deal with process, why is it there and how is it changing. The government departments have more traditionally dealt with the documentation process/monitoring process. Of course they are not mutually exclusive, but I do think that we need to join the two up an awful lot better than we have in the past because the reasons why everything is there are very important to being able to predict what the effects of climate change might be for example, or the introduction of turbines or whatever it might be. So, there are those two mechanisms and I think that they are dealt with quite differently within ---

Q385 Chairman: I thought the Interagency Committee for Marine Science and Technology did all that. I thought that it was their job and then to advise the Government accordingly.

Professor Boyd: I think that is ---

Q386 Chairman: It has been a huge success since 1990.

Professor Boyd: It is a job that they are trying to do. I am not directly involved with IACMST except as a member of a subcommittee on marine noise and I think that works very well. So, from my perspective, that works well. In other parts of it, I do not see the joined-up-ness happening.

Q387 Dr Harris: Finally on the issue of conservation, unless anyone has a burning comment to make, if we take mammals, they are generally considered to be the best study of species in the marine environment. As far as you are concerned, are there still gaps that need to be filled before we can designate sites for conservation? There will always be some but are there significant gaps?

Professor Boyd: Some species of marine mammals are very well studied but some are almost not known to us at all. There may in fact be some species out there that we do not know exist yet.

Q388 Dr Harris: The Loch Ness Monster, for example?

Professor Boyd: That would be a reptile, it would not be a mammal!

Q389 Dr Harris: You know that!

Professor Boyd: I think that there is a lot more that needs to be done even for marine mammals and that there are major gaps there, as I have indicated. In my response on the turbine issue, we were unable from first principles to be able to provide a coherent answer to that question and that reflects a lack of basic understanding of how these animals operate on small scales within the marine environment.

Dr Tew: I think that we are searching for a national framework. A national marine policy statement is what is promised in the Bill that provides an overview. The marine environment has to provide us with so much: it has to provide us with renewables and fish and biodiversity. Where is the balance between the Blue Sky research in the deep sea and the applied research in near shore? Who sets the framework for that?

Q390 Chairman: Oceans 2025 has done it.

Dr Tew: Oceans 2025 was an excellent start as a NERC initiative but again it failed to deal with the bigger picture. In response to Dr Turner, industry collects fantastic data but it is not coordinated. We are reactively dealing with each case on a case-by-case basis and that is why it takes time to deal with it. There is no proactive integration.

Dr Thompson: You were asking about conservation and I think we have all admitted that there are gaps in the data. At the same time, I think we would also caution about not protecting anything or putting any management tools in place until we know everything because we are never going to know everything.

Chairman: We mentioned the marine protected areas earlier and I know that Dr Turner has some questions around that.

Q391 Dr Turner: It seems clear to me from your evidence so far that if you were asked to set out a designated marine protected areas as will undoubtedly come assuming that the Bill comes as we expect, you do not have the knowledge base to be able to say where they should be and I also get the feeling that you see a conflict between marine protected areas and use of offshore regions for energy production. I put it to you that in fact there could be a synergy there because you prohibit all sorts of damaging activities, notably fishing. How would you people like to see the network of such areas set out? How would you go about it?

Dr Vincent: I do not think that we need to have comprehensive knowledge in order to deliver that objective. I think that we can do it. I think that we have sufficient information to be able to identify broad scale habitats across the continental shelf and adjacent waters on the basis of this type of the seabed. I think that we can then match that information with available information on human use of the area because human use of the area, for example trawling, will give us an indication of how damaged it is likely to have been. We can then select areas from those kinds of information which will give us a representative sample of protected areas of the different habitat types which have had relatively little disturbance and then we can focus survey over the next ten years to identify sites from that sample. I think that it is perfectly achievable within the next ten years.

Q392 Dr Turner: Do you want to wait ten years?

Dr Vincent: It can be done progressively over the period of ten years. The point about particularly representative types of habitat is that they do not have to be the best examples, they just have to be good undamaged examples and they will maintain characteristic biodiversity. Provided that they are protected and provided that they are not damaged to start with and providing that you have a suite of different types of them relatively close to each other so that they are not too far apart and can support each other, then that will do the job.

Q393 Dr Turner: There are a number of provisions in that answer. Do you actually believe that there are areas of the seabed in our offshore waters that have not been damaged?

Dr Vincent: That is an unknowable thing. What we can identify are areas that we know are being relatively intensively fished and we can probably set those to one side. So, we can look at the remainder and select from those and investigate those.

Professor Boyd: I would like to respond to that. I think that there are quite significant areas which are undamaged. Fishing tends to go to the very traditional areas and some recent surveys, for example, in the sea of the Hebrides have suggested that there are some quite pristine areas there - these surveys have been carried by the Scottish Association for Marine Science - and I would expect that that might happen in other areas. If we were to be able to survey the shelf seas appropriately, I think that we would find pristine areas.

Dr Thompson: I also think that there is an issue there. There are some areas, particularly around the coast, where we could probably go out tomorrow and say, "We think that there are important species or habitats here and they could do with protection", but the burden of proof is to prove scientifically that this site requires to be protected. That is why we keep coming back to the science. You could go out and say, "We will protect a couple of sites and see how it goes", but we are not in the situation of being allowed to take that approach which is why we keep coming back to the science.

Q394 Dr Turner: What sort of area of our offshore waters would you expect to be covered by MPAs because obviously the sea moves, the fish move, mammals move, everything moves? How big would you want an MPA to be? What percentage of our inshore waters do you think should be covered should be covered from there? Should we take Evan's favoured line of precautionary principle and say that, until we know more, we should protect more?

Dr Thompson: I quite like that one! I think that going down the line of percentages can be quite dangerous because we are trying to set the criteria of how much needs to be protected before we know what needs to be protected and where and how much of it we have. I know that there are lots of percentages flying about. I think that what we need to do is to protect enough to meet our conservation objectives and make sure that we maintain functioning ecosystems that deliver those services that we get from it, whether it be food or climate regulation.

Q395 Dr Turner: We legislators are going to have to move before you have all that data and it will take years to get all that data. We are going to have to set out a map and say, "That is it" in about a year's time.

Dr Thompson: I think as legislators we are asking you to put the legislative tools in place that will deliver that and then we should progressively put sites in place. As a conservation NGO, we want it faster and sooner rather than a long time in the future. What we are saying is what we want to see in the Marine Bill and we want to see in the Marine Bill now is an effective system for designating sites that puts a duty on people to designate and can actually manage those sites once they are in place.

Q396 Chairman: May we ask everyone if they agree with that analysis because Dr Turner's point is really crucially important to us.

Professor Boyd: I am not sure that I necessarily disagree with it but I think I can add to it. In the short term, we have to come up with mechanisms and you are absolutely right about that. We actually do know more than we let on a lot of the time ---

Q397 Dr Turner: Do not be coy with us!

Professor Boyd: We can use indicator species. For example, OSPAR(?) is already moving down this track of trying to provide ecological quality objectives using indicator species. There are dangers with that in that you might choose the wrong indicators. After subsequent research, you might find that it is not the best way to go. In general, if we use upper trophic level animals in the marine system and if you are protect them, you are protecting the system that they support and this would go for seabirds or marine mammals and some marine fish as well. I think that some of the mechanisms which we already have in place have the potential to provide the kind of process that you are looking for.

Q398 Dr Turner: It seems to me that, in logic, there has to be a minimum size for an MPA to be of any great value because, if it is too small, the effects of what is going around it are going to possibly swamp its ecosystem. The other point is, if we protect an MPA, what is the degree of protection? Would you be prepared to see, for instance, turbines being put in an MPA because you might well find that several of your most interesting sites ecologically happen to coincide with the richest energy sources? We have all sorts of competing priorities here.

Dr Tew: The conservation community are very alive to potential win-win scenarios. We are also alive to different possible mechanisms where you have highly protected marine reserves which are really left to recover in a completely pristine state and MPAs where they are of a variety of sustainable uses. The concept that MPAs are exclusively just for nature conservation is an old-fashioned one and the conservation community is very alive to the win-wins. I think that we are all agreed on two things. One is that the process must be based on science. You cannot simply draw random lines out at sea on no good evidence because, as Malcolm says, there is much evidence there already and particularly if we can start to integrate. The other thing that we are all agreed on is that we want to proceed with all possible haste because industry suffers from uncertainty just as much as conservationists suffer from uncertainty. So, the balance is driving the process forward and getting these areas as large as is necessary on the best possible sites and I do not think that picking 25, 30 or 40 per cent is a helpful way forward.

Q399 Dr Turner: I come back to my first point that we cannot wait for more science before designating these areas, we have to make a start with the knowledge base that we have.

Dr Tew: At the moment, the marine environment is more or less totally unprotected and there is a crisis going on out at our seas and we need to do something about that as a nation.

Q400 Dr Turner: So, you would argue that we cannot wait.

Dr Tew: Yes.

Q401 Dr Turner: Finally for me, the Marine Management Organisation is going to have a multiplicity of rules. Do you see it as primarily a regulator or provider of science and data? How do you see it? Do you see it as a determinant of marine spatial planning and use?

Dr Tew: The devil is going to be in the detail but, broadly speaking, we are happy that the MMO should deal with all of those functions. We in Natural England see there being a clear difference between what we do and what the MMO might do and we think that there is a need for an independent nature conservational adviser to sit outside the MMO and we think that we should be monitoring the protected areas. However, given that the key is for integration, I think that the MMO should have as many integrative powers as possible.

Q402 Chairman: Is there general agreement with that?

Dr Vincent: I think I would see the foremost value of the MMO being as a planning authority. I think everything falls out from that.

Q403 Chairman: Dr Thompson, you gave an indication that you wanted to see Parliament set down the rules by which marine protection areas would be decided.

Dr Thompson: The legal powers to create and manage marine protection areas, yes.

Q404 Chairman: You expect Parliament to do that and to do that very clearly, and then the sciences applied to that framework in order to decide the actual areas themselves?

Dr Thompson: Yes. There is probably a two-stage approach on the science. One is determining the criteria for the species and habitats and then picking the sites and then developing the management plans.

Q405 Chairman: But you are clear that it should be on the basis of the science that the sites are applied and that Parliament should be the framework within which to work?

Dr Thompson: Science as in the knowledge we have as the starting process, yes.

Dr Tew: This should not be a political decision, this should be a decision based on science which is why we think that Natural England should be the confirming authority as well as the proposing authority.

Chairman: There are no political decisions made in Parliament!

Q406 Dr Iddon: I want to look at this question of coordination of policy and research which we have referred to throughout this discussion so far. I would like to ask all of you, are we clear about our national priorities in this area of marine policy and research and who establishes those national priorities?

Dr Tew: I think that the answer is generally, "No, we are not clear" and a national marine policy statement should indeed set out those priorities for the nation.

Q407 Dr Iddon: Who should make it?

Dr Tew: The Government.

Q408 Dr Iddon: Which part of the Government?

Dr Tew: Defra.

Professor Boyd: I think that there are differences between Scotland and England in this area and certainly, in my experience, I interact very differently as an advisor with the Scottish and English process and policy is being made differently in the two sectors.

Dr Thompson: I think there are also objectives and priorities that we sign up to through Europe and other international conventions and it is making sure that we marry up our research to achieve those objectives at the end stage, but I think we are probably moving more towards that process than we have historically.

Q409 Dr Iddon: We do share our seas of course with the continent and with Ireland and to a degree across the North Sea. Let us look at the European dimension and the European Marine Strategy Directive for example. How do current research programmes support emerging policy in that direction? Do you think we are having our fair share of input into that directive or not?

Dr Thompson: I could not really answer from a research point of view. From the point of view of how we go about achieving those objectives in the end, hopefully if our aspirations for the Marine Bill are realised, the legislation that we are putting in place should deliver the Marine Strategy Directive's aspirations. As an NGO and having the luxury of this, we would like to see more cross-border working and delivery of marine strategies on what we call a biogeographical regional seas' approach, so ignoring our political boundaries and working at the scale of, say, the Irish Sea or the North Sea which are coherent management units on an ecological scale. How far down that route we get in political terms we have yet to see.

Q410 Dr Iddon: Does anybody have any comments on the EU directive?

Dr Tew: No, I just note the report that came out of the Commission last week which was that 90 per cent of EU fish stocks are over fished beyond their maximum sustainable yield. CFP is not even delivering sustainable fishing, never mind sustainable use of the environment.

Q411 Dr Iddon: Do any of you think that there is a need for the proposed European Marine Observation and Data Network, the other aspect of the European directive? It has not registered yet.

Professor Boyd: I think that it depends what it looks like.

Dr Thompson: I think it is, do you want to go down the route of everybody putting their data into one place and having to collect it in the one way versus sharing data and making sure that it is available to all users and I think that, as far as we are concerned, as an end user, as long as the data is collected, processed and made available so that we, as end users, can use it, that is probably the most valuable thing that we want from data.

Q412 Dr Iddon: Wherever we have been, we have picked up criticism on the way that research grants are allocated in this area. For example, we launched this inquiry in Plymouth and the scientists who were present in that room at that time said that it was difficult to understand to which research council one should apply for a grant. How do you think we should organise research in this area? Do you think that it is organised well at the moment or do your scientists have trouble knowing to whom to go for the grants?

Professor Boyd: Maybe I should respond to that question. There is confusion on occasions but I cannot offer a hard and fast solution to it. I think that whatever system you put in place, however we divide the cake, there are going to be things that fall between the cracks and there are a number of issues that do fall between the cracks but I think that is inevitable with what system you have in place.

Dr Vincent: I would like to say a word on the knowledge transfer aspect which we touched on earlier, which is that we are finding this a major problem issue in that we believe that there is a great deal of data out there in academic institutions which we cannot use and the reason why we cannot use it is because it is not in the public domain and the reason why it is not in the public domain is because the scientists wish to retain possession of it in order to generate peer review papers for it. We have two major problems: one is that we cannot get hold of the data because they will not release it; the other is that, for many of us on the operation and policy formulation side, even peer reviewed papers are a difficult way of obtaining knowledge transfer in the sense that we do not have the time in order to do the literature searches and in order to get the answers which already out there. So, there are two major problems. Approaches which make research undertaken with public funds conditional on the environmental data obtained using those funds to be put in the public domain within, say, two years at a completion of a project or something, some reasonable period, would be a huge benefit to us because on many occasions we have approached universities and academic institutions and have simply not been able to obtain the data which they have. In relation to the other aspect of knowledge transfer which is about, what you do when you know that the information is out there in papers, I think that there needs to be some better infrastructure in order to be able to collate information, particularly on key policy issues, and make it more available to the wider user.

Q413 Chairman: Who should do it?

Dr Vincent: I think that probably it could well be within academia but I think that it would need to be publicly funded. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Some kind of centre for the provision of the collation of reviews on key policy questions could be funded by the Government. The Government could determine the key policy questions which they wanted addressed - these are in the short term; we are dealing with existing knowledge here - and then the centres for collating information could then undertake those reviews and place them in the public domain. I think that that kind of structure would be perfectly satisfactory.

Dr Tew: We are end users rather than parts of the research community so, in terms of the grant processes, it is not appropriate for us to comment. We would like to see a thematic approach to how research is organised, so that there is actually some coordinated discipline in terms of the distribution of the resource or the value of the resource or the human impact. That is number one. Number two is, frankly, we would like to see more funding going into marine research. At the moment, I think there is a concern that the Blue Sky, deep ocean climate change acidification agenda which is very big and topical at the moment perhaps threatens the near shore applied research and that is what we are most concerned about. Both are extremely valuable; there should be more money going into both. Spending �40 million a year on marine monitoring compared to �500 million in the terrestrial environment is not appropriate.

Professor Boyd: I would like to come back on data because I am a data supplier rather than a user. I think that there is a very fundamental problem here because it often is not just a matter of, say, putting data up on a website to allow people to come in, download it and use it. Data needs to be interpreted and, however that data is used, there will almost certainly be an interactive process between the producers and suppliers of the data and the users of the data and we need to find a mechanism that allows that to happen much more smoothly than it does at the moment. We have a mechanism in the marine mammal sector to allow that to happen in the UK which comes out of a rather quirky piece of legislation that came up in 1970, the Conservation of Seals Act, and I personally think that that is a model by which we could work in the future in a much wider scale. Nevertheless, there is this fundamental problem that just making data available does not mean that it is useable.

Q414 Dr Iddon: My final question is again concerning coordination. I think we are getting the feeling from our four witnesses this morning that coordination is not good in this area either in policy information or for the research that is necessary. If you had a clean sheet of paper, would you reorganise coordination of policy and research or would you make the existing mechanisms work? The Chairman has mentioned IACMST which is a fairly recent organisation. Can we make those organisations work or do we have it all wrong?

Dr Vincent: It may well be that that committee needs a much greater policy steer or support from ministerial level.

Q415 Dr Iddon: From Defra or NERC?

Dr Vincent: As I said earlier, I think that the relevant marine science minister portfolio needs to be clearly established. I would be quite happy for it to be in Defra but that is not for me to say. That ministerial policy steer could then direct the committee, under its terms of reference, to carry out functions and charge it to do so. At the moment, the committee does a lot of useful work; it has an excellent chair and excellent secretariat, but it behaves a little like a committee.

Q416 Chairman: Steady!

Dr Vincent: What it needs to do is behave a little more like an implementing organisation that is going to carry out a particular remit.

Q417 Dr Iddon: You are asking for clear lines of responsibility.

Dr Vincent: Yes.

Dr Thompson: I think the point to add is that policy often changes a lot faster than the period of time that grant research is given out for. So, there can sometimes be a mismatch of what the grant money is being given out for and what maybe a new policy might be. I think that a greater policy steer would be useful.

Dr Tew: I think that that is exactly the question that Parliament should be debating as the Marine Bill goes through and I think the MMO, properly set up, is the place to do that, the integration and coordination.

Q418 Chris Mole: We have touched across commercial exploitation in some of the questions already and Dr Tew, I think you said that you were looking for a win-win situation wherever possible. Is that a view that everyone shares? It is difficult not to, really!

Dr Thompson: We all want as many win-wins as possible but, as we have also said, there is virtually no protection at all in the marine environment. So, to manage expectations, I think it is probably fair if I said as well that there, at least, have to be a few situations where somebody might have to be negatively impacted. It would be unfair of me to say: "Oh, it will all be fantastic and everybody will win-win"; it will not. However, I think there is also misapprehension that every marine protected area, particularly in the case of renewables, stops wind farms. That is not the case.

Dr Vincent: Can I just add to that to say that what we badly need are really usable sustainable development tools which enable us to evaluate the economic side, the wellbeing side and the environmental side in order to make sensible decisions in relation to the environment. At the moment I do not believe we have those tools; we have a system whereby an initiative comes up, via the marketplace very often, and then it is assessed against an environmental appraisal of some kind. I would rather see the development of a series of tools which would actually foster initiatives which would support sustainable development - in other words, those things which deliver to the economy, deliver to the wellbeing and do not damage the environment. I do not think we have that yet.

Q419 Chris Mole: You want to see these tools in the Marine Bill?

Dr Vincent: No, I think cross-cutting science should help deliver those tools, because I think we are five years away from having them, and I think we are going to struggle until we do have them.

Q420 Chris Mole: Which economic sectors do you think are most likely to cause environmental harm to the oceans and marine life?

Dr Thompson: The last OSPAR Quality Statement Report (I am trying to remember what QSR stands for) in 2000 did acknowledge that fishing was the most damaging activity in the North East Atlantic, but I think that is probably in many ways relating to the fact that it covers most of the marine environment. Until, I suppose, relatively recently there were very few other activities taking place there, but it is probably the most pervasive.

Dr Tew: There is no doubt that fishing has been the most damaging. In terms of offshore renewables, a couple of points: one, offshore renewables are going ahead. There are wind farms out there being built and they are going through the proper process. Number two, the major conservation bodies do have a very keen eye on the integration of a longer-term view of climate change and the need to provide renewables with short-term damage, and the processes that are in place at the moment are to do with adaptive management. So build your offshore wind farms in phases, monitor what is going on and then make informed decisions about how they may or may not be expanded. You might find that the effects on birds, for instance, are a lot less than you feared. Thirdly, there is a big need for innovative research into mitigation; for instance, turbines that collapse at certain times of the year when they see geese coming towards them, because there is a radar on top. There are all sorts of innovative ways to reduce the impact that industry can have on the environment.

Q421 Chris Mole: Are there any circumstances in which interests such as the oil and gas industry can actually aid science and conservation?

Professor Boyd: There are some examples of the oil and gas industry, in particular, taking their responsibilities in that respect very seriously. They have just set up what they call a joint industry programme with 15 partners in it - these are international oil and gas companies - to study the problems of the noise that they generate on marine life. I believe they have allocated something like $30 or $40 million to that over the next three years for research, and that is fundamental, peer-reviewed research that will produce outputs in the scientific literature. So there is evidence that they are taking that very seriously. I suspect that other users of the marine environment are beginning to do that as well.

Dr Thompson: I would add that, coming back to the view of needing a systematic survey and research process offshore, we have certain sympathy with industries that they are having to go out and find the information. They are finding the important congregations of species or important habitats and then we are saying: "Those need to be protected". That is why we are saying we want to frontload that process, and this is where the Marine Bill will, hopefully, come into its own by having marine planning and site protection measures. Once we know where the important sites are it reduces the pressures on industry and helps us make sure that the marine environment is managed properly as well.

Q422 Chris Mole: What about leaving things behind. We did have some scientists suggest to us that when you take an oil rig away you should leave what is below the surface there because, actually, you get some ecological hotspots that have developed new features of the oceans.

Dr Thompson: From my point of view I would caution about that being the thin end of the wedge of using the sea as a dumping ground - suddenly everything is an artificial reef. There are stories of places like Japan where, basically, old buses, trains, tyres - everything - are chucked off a cliff and: "Oh, it's an artificial reef now". So I would caution against that.

Q423 Chris Mole: But if it contributes to biodiversity?

Dr Tew: There are often very natural, properly functioning, properly, naturally, deporporate (?) eco-systems on the base of the seabed and just dumping an oil rig because you get some more - although technically it increases biodiversity it is not a proper approach to managing the seabed. A couple of points I would make about the oil and gas industry ----

Q424 Chris Mole: Can you expand on what your concerns are about that? If it does increase biodiversity.

Dr Thompson: It is a different biodiversity from the one that was there. There is a certain perception that just mud or just sand is not very interesting and what you want is lots of anemones on hard surfaces. All it is is it is a different eco-system providing different services. So we need to be, I suppose, cautious about what biodiversity it is that you are trying to get - just increasing the different ----

Q425 Chris Mole: What exactly is the danger in that? What is the problem?

Dr Vincent: I think it is very hard to answer your question as a generality.

Q426 Chris Mole: We were quite surprised to hear scientists working on a European hotspots project saying this to us.

Dr Vincent: It is foreseeable. For example, if you wanted to have a series of MPAs for reef organisms across a part of the coast that is normally sediment, there would be a gap in terms of their transport, colonisation, so that in fact you would actually welcome the establishment of an artificial reef as a stepping stone in terms of colonisation routes, but you would have to look at the whole series of disposal in the round, as to whether the balance is advantaged. So it is quite difficult to respond to your question as a generality.

Dr Tew: Can I make a couple of positive comments about the oil and gas industry? One is that the quality of the seabed seismic research they do is fantastic, and that is allowing the nation to map the seabed. The second is I think there is great potential in terms of carbon sequestration and carbon storage out under the seabed, and the oil and gas industry has a huge role to play in that, and could be very positive.

Q427 Chris Mole: What about the biotechnology exploitation of marine life? What do you think we are going to see coming out of that in the near future?

Professor Boyd: This is not my specific area of expertise, but what I see of it is that there is huge potential sitting there to develop new chemicals that have a wide variety of applications from food technology right the way through to medicine. I think we are only just beginning to open that box. There are a lot of small, spin-out companies now biospectra-ing (?), essentially, and some of them will not succeed but some certainly will find some very, very interesting molecules that will be very useful to us.

Dr Thompson: However, again, I suppose I would caution: on the one hand, over-exploitation could mean that we are losing these important properties before we have even discovered them, but biotechnology in itself will be a further form of exploitation and we must ensure that we have proper management and control mechanisms in place before we open up the frontiers and go forth, so that we can still continue to meet our conservation objectives and ensure that we halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010 - another objective that we have to meet. So we would say regulation.

Chairman: At that point, I really have to call a halt. Can I just say you have been an absolutely splendid panel this morning. It has been an absolute joy to listen to you; you have given us some very frank answers. It has been absolutely superb. So can I thank Dr Sharon Thompson, Dr Malcolm Vincent, Professor Ian Boyd and Dr Tom Tew.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Dr Alan Rodger, Head of Science Programmes, British Antarctic Survey, Professor Graham Shimmield, Director, Scottish Association for Marine Science, Professor Bob Dickson, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, and Professor Andrew Watson, School of Environmental Sciences, UEA, Royal Society of Chemistry, gave evidence.

Chairman: We welcome our second panel this morning and, again, apologies for starting slightly late. We welcome Dr Alan Rodger, the Head of Science Programmes from the British Antarctic Survey, Professor Graham Shimmield, the Director from the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Professor Bob Dickson, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, and Professor Andrew Watson from the School of Environmental Sciences at UEA and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Welcome to you all. Can I ask you, Dr Rodger, to chair your panel, in case there are any disputes as we go through?

Dr Iddon: Chairman, may I just declare an interest in that I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and one of their Parliamentary advisers.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Can I ask Dr Turner to begin the session?

Q428 Dr Turner: How much do we already know about the changes that have occurred in the oceans as a result of climate change? How firm do you think the predictions are for the future?

Dr Rodger: Why do I not start off in the southern hemispheres, is the first question. I think we know quite a lot about the southern hemisphere oceans but the uncertainties are very significant in a whole host of areas. The uncertainties relate to carbon drawdown, about how much there is, how fast it is, where it is going, the biological roles in there - even the physical processes. I think we are uncertain about the way the ocean interacts with ice shelves and, therefore, has a fundamental effect on sea level, and then I think we have serious big questions, too, in terms of the way in which climate change is affecting the eco-system. That leads on to sustainable use of the southern oceans for biological bioresources. Those would be my three big topics. So we have a long way to go, I think, before we can give you predictions that are as robust as a scientist would wish.

Q429 Dr Turner: However, BAS have made an impressive start, I think it is reasonable to say. Clearly, the world has two poles.

Dr Rodger: Indeed.

Q430 Dr Turner: We do not really seem - at least not from a UK point of view - to have made the same effort with the North Pole. Do you think there is an equivalent corpus of knowledge about the North Pole, because we need both ends of the system?

Professor Dickson: I think that used to be the case. When the world's biggest ocean experiment set out - the World Ocean Circulation Experiment - it set out to cover the world and establish its role in climate and establish a baseline against which future change would be seen. It only went as far north as the Iceland/Scotland Ridge, and then when the Arctic Climate System Study started up a little bit later it, unaccountably, only went to study the Arctic Ocean from the same points of view, but it only went north of France (?). So the answer I would have given you ten years ago would have been "not much" in the north. Since then we have put together something called the Arctic and Subarctic Ocean Flux Study designed to put all that right. We have discovered quite a lot since then. We now have measured almost all of the ocean fluxes that connect the Atlantic and the Arctic. They could not be measured before; we can now, the technology has advanced (with a couple of exceptions). Now we have discovered that the processes were connected latitudinally between the Atlantic and the Arctic, and it was quite a surprise how diverse was the connectibility of the process. The third thing we discovered was how extreme the changes have been as our records lengthen. There are still things that we have to do as we go into the polar year, but I think we see our job now - and we have just done it in ASOF (Arctic and Subarctic Ocean Fluxes) - as to re-sharpen what the cutting edge questions now are. So we have learned a lot. We have learned, even, how to question what the questions were before the IPY to re-pose these. So I think the answer now is we have quite a lot of information that we would not have been able to answer you on before.

Professor Shimmield: I think Bob is absolutely right, and I think he has described well our advances in the physical domain in the way in which the oceans are operating at the higher northern latitudes. Our knowledge of the way in which some of the biology and eco-systems are responding to those changes, and the way in which the biogeochemistry of the ocean is operating, is less well advanced, and it is a major thrust under the International Polar Year to address that. Of course, that brings in the whole dimension of human activity in the Arctic and the rate of change there. Before I move off I would say one other way that we look at the history of the oceans is the palaeo-oceanographic record - the history of the oceans - as recovered from deep-sea sediment cores and the like. In that area the UK is world leader in trying to help develop our comprehensive understanding of certain modern changes in the ocean in this historical and geological context.

Q431 Dr Turner: If you guys are not actually yet prepared with confidence to make a statement encapsulating the relationship between the oceans and climate change, can you identify the sort of knowledge and major questions that need to be settled before you can?

Professor Watson: I would say that the interaction of the climate with the ocean circulation is critical, because it feeds into the issues of the chemistry and how the ocean takes up carbon dioxide. Incidentally, that uptake of carbon dioxide is extremely important because it has slowed the rate of climate change, which we do not understand well - we do not understand how long it will continue, whether it is increasing or whether it is decreasing; we have some evidence that it is decreasing. This interacts with the ocean circulation, in particular, on our own doorstep, the overturning circulation of the Atlantic, which is fed by the currents coming down from the Arctic Ocean over the Iceland/Scotland Ridge. That is a critical area which we have to understand. This involves modelling the ocean circulation, but, also, the biology and the chemistry of the ocean, and that requires big computers, which is the reason why we are not further forward than we might otherwise be.

Dr Rodger: There are some serious difficulties in all sorts of areas; for example, in sea ice. We know the stories of Arctic sea ice disappearing but, also, in the Antarctic, it is a critical issue from the point of view of acting as a lid on that ocean interface, that energy transfer between the ocean and atmosphere. Indeed, what we are seeing now is some beginnings of changes in sea ice in the Antarctic that have not been reported before. Therefore, mesoscale structures as well are changing. So all things are changing on all timescales, and it is really difficult at this juncture to give you accurate predictions, because it is the interaction of scale sizes as well as the biogeochemistry, as well as the atmosphere that, I think, is demanding, and demanding these higher resolution computer models that have just been described.

Q432 Dr Turner: Do you think that the current programmes ordered by NERC and the EU are asking the right questions, from your point of view? Do we need any change of direction - any shift in emphasis - in our research programmes? Especially as the 2025 programme, for instance, leaves out the universities. Do we need to widen that programme?

Professor Shimmield: First, on Oceans 2025, what we have set out there is building on existing work, particularly in the Arctic region, and linking across to the work of the British Antarctic Survey. I should say that is only a first step and, currently, as we are sitting here, a group known as the Polar Sciences Working Group is helping to develop this further within the readjustment of NERC's overall scientific strategy, which will encompass the broad range of funding, both to institutes and to university sectors. So it will address both aspects. That working group is also looking at infrastructure aspects to support the scientific programme and to set priorities, and will report very shortly. In the context of my knowledge base within the Arctic, then the European/UK interaction at all levels is quite strong - it is certainly led by some key institutions - but there is a broad diversity of scientists taking part in those initiatives, and the International Polar Year has been a strong catalyst in grouping people into clusters and setting the priorities accordingly. I think we should be quite proud of the way we are going forward at this moment in time. Resources are still a limitation, though.

Professor Watson: I would say that we do need to be careful. Oceans 2025 only covered, as you say, the NERC institutes. There are places in the universities - my own group is one of them, which is, for instance, doing long-term observations on carbon dioxide in the Atlantic Ocean. It is not funded by NERC, it was never funded by NERC, and it is completely left outside of that structure. There is no mechanism, actually, in the UK for funding those kinds of long-term observations - none that I know of; we have to go to Europe to get funding for that. That can be quite dodgy, too. So I think there are large areas that have been left outside, certainly, of NERC. You would naturally look to the NERC to do some of this co-ordination, and I think that they have, to a certain extent, left out sections of the community. In the area of ocean acidification, I should say that I was asked here by the Royal Society of Chemistry who gave evidence to you on ocean acidification. There is comparatively little work being done within Oceans 2025.

Q433 Dr Turner: I think you have identified an area which has been pointed out to us by several previous witnesses where there is a problem in maintaining long-term monitoring as opposed to specific, immediate research projects. However, without the monitoring we will not have a framework in which to place whatever other knowledge we get. Would you agree that that is something which urgently needs to be addressed?

Professor Watson: Yes, I think so. NERC has done something on this, with its Oceans 2025, but, as you rightly say, it only is a subsection of the community and it is not very well co-ordinated with the rest of the community. We see no real mechanism for them to do that.

Dr Rodger: Perhaps I could say a little bit (I should, perhaps, declare an interest being funded by the Natural Environment Research Council) in the sense that they are changing the way in which they operate, the way in which things are being funded, into different categories, one of which is national capability. This is a regime whereby things like long-term monitoring and survey of the oceans will have much more clearly-defined activity and principles by which they are decided. So I think there is a seed-change, if you like, and that seed-change, if I can go back to your earlier question, is also trying to build the links between the university system and the institutes, which have in the past been less well-integrated. However, I think things are changing quite markedly, and the evidence I would give you is that there is money in Oceans 2025 to work specifically with the universities, and the number of joint grants NERC is awarding between institutes and universities is increasing.

Q434 Dr Turner: So there are hopeful straws in the wind, at the very least. Clearly, ocean sciences have benefited, to a degree, from the political attention to climate change. Are you worried that this might take over completely and distort ocean science so that it only looks at climate change and not anything else?

Professor Dickson: I do not think so. I think the more we observe the northern seas - which used to be a data dessert. There is now slight spluttering about your earlier question, in that we are actually producing this week a 750-page book called The Role of Northern Seas in Climate. So it is not that we are bashful about saying what we have learned ----

Q435 Dr Turner: Can you send us copies?

Professor Dickson: I will certainly send you a copy - with a bill!

Q436 Dr Turner: I do not want the bill!

Professor Dickson: The second question you asked was: are we asking the right questions? I think the second output from that sort of study is to re-hone the questions. Certainly the EC effort, the biggest one on the oceans that we know of is Damocles. It is something like 25 million euros over the next four years or so, of which the EC is producing about 17. All the other institutions that are providing matching funding for this are involved in this, including the UK, Norway and others. So the question they focus on is the central one: what is the state and fate of the Arctic sea ice? All sorts of other "oceans role in climate" issues will come up as they study that. It is important not to be too prescriptive when you define the first question, the central question, that a big programme like this will answer. I think we have got the question right: is the Arctic perennial sea ice going to disappear in late summer, and if so, when? What will it do to the earth's climate? In many ways the peripheral observations that we have to arm that with go back to the 100-year time series that we have at certain places, right back to the observations that we have only just learnt to make. So we have a continuum between the 120-year time series, which are rare but, nonetheless, important, and the ones where a technique has been so wanted, so needed but only just available that we have hardly any time series of it at all. I think if that is the question then we are getting there. Of course, looking at variability is a hard thing to do.

Q437 Chris Mole: You may feel that you have answered this to an extent already, in which case do not repeat yourself. Is the balance of funding between monitoring and basic research right then? We have limited pots of money, but if NERC has any increases where should it direct it?

Dr Rodger: I will answer that, in the first instance. I think we know quite a lot about the surface of the ocean - we do very well from space - but we know remarkably little about under the water, to be perfectly honest. We are at a cusp, I believe, in the sense that there is new technology out there that has been around for a few years. The UK has not yet invested heavily ----

Q438 Chris Mole: Gliders?

Dr Rodger: Gliders, TOAD systems, buoys, more moorings, very clever moorings - ones that do not yet operate in sea ice, unfortunately. In general, there is a lot more technology around there, and whether you call that research or whether you call it long-term monitoring, I will leave as an open question, but it is absolutely essential to get more understanding and more measurements throughout the ocean profile. This is the part of the planet that is least well understood in many ways, and least well measured. That is what I would spend my money on, if you like - if I had money today.

Professor Shimmield: I think the monitoring programmes will get more for your money as well by integrating with other nations, approaching this in an international co-ordination effort. Clearly, there are good examples in the past - we have heard about some of them today - and there are more planned in the future, and I think the activities of the Global Ocean Observing System and how that integrates across into regional activities is something that is important. The UK then has to play a leadership role in determining both the course of those programmes and the investment, and ensuring that all the parts of government that needs the aspects of monitoring (we were hearing about that in the earlier session this morning) really derive maximum benefit, and that is where the co-ordination is required.

Professor Watson: I would say that to a certain extent the difference between research and monitoring is decreasing. What is happening is, to a certain extent, the era of the single investigator - the one man and his post-doc kind of research grant - is less important when we are dealing with global climate change. Increasingly, we are having to do large, co-ordinated programmes. Sometimes they involve long-term monitoring of decades, but they almost always involve periods of monitoring of four or five years. There is a need to make the funding structure better able to promote that kind of ----

Q439 Chris Mole: Are you concerned about the sustainability of monitoring? One man for five years on a research grant can do some very good work, but if you really need to see the trends - is that something that concerns you?

Professor Watson: Yes, it is. I think that NERC, for instance, is always torn between being a research council and running its institutes. When one looks at the countries that do this well, the United States with Noah (?), Japan with JAMSTEC, they have dedicated agencies that do this monitoring, and if we had not got, for instance, Noah's measurements going back over decades (they funded Keiling for many, many years) we would know precious little about the global environment.

Q440 Chris Mole: Should we charge the Met Office or Proudman, or somebody, with having a long-term monitoring role?

Professor Watson: I think it would be a good idea to have an agency that had that role, yes.

Q441 Chris Mole: Do others share that view?

Dr Rodger: I accept there is a need for long-term monitoring, I accept there is a need to do it in an integrated way, but whether you need a separate organisation is one that I am less convinced by. It is about integration. As I have said to some of you before, the earth is an integrated system and exactly which box you draw there are always going to be people on the edges of that box or outside that box.

Q442 Chris Mole: Is it not a problem that things keep just falling off the monitoring list if there is not somebody charged with doing it? We nearly lost Saphos (?) a while ago.

Professor Dickson: The point you made is an interesting one about whether monitoring is mindless monitoring or whether it is research. In many cases, and you used sea gliders in the example, we are waiting for sea gliders that will work under the ice and within the shelf, for example. We are waiting for sea gliders that will go all the way to the ocean floor - they do not at present. So these are very intense research efforts that are going on necessarily in a few places. The ones we use come from Seattle. That is a whole new research topic just now and eventually it will be used for monitoring.

Q443 Chris Mole: I think, Professor Watson, you touched on the numerical climate change modelling. We are talking about gliders and buoys and things; you can buy an awful lot of them for the super-computing power we need to get a step-change. Where is the balance there? Do we need that super-computing power tomorrow or should we spend the money on buoys and gliders?

Professor Watson: Moore's law states that computer power doubles every 18 months, or something like that, but what we actually need is to be able to run a model at any resolving, which is 10 km resolving, for 1,000 years with the full ocean physics and chemistry and biology, and we still need to wait for, probably, 20 years of Moore's law doubling before we will get there. You asked for the balance: it is certainly true that with the current modelling - the Argo programme, for example, has dramatically increased the usefulness of the short-term modelling that we are doing, so that was very well worth spending. There are some other areas where we certainly need to spend more on monitoring, and that will come before the computing. However, the computing is desperately important.

Q444 Chris Mole: We have been world-leading, have we not?

Professor Watson: We have been.

Q445 Chris Mole: Are we about to lose that?

Professor Watson: I do not think so. My impression is that we are still very good. In the oceans in particular there has been something of a hiatus and the new model that the Hadleigh Centre will be using shortly is actually a French model - for which we have to swallow our pride! It is a good model. In general, we are doing very well.

Q446 Chairman: Just before we leave the super-computing, we heard from the previous panel, and we have heard this on a number of our inquiries, about the lack of super-computing capacity in the UK. Do you feel - and this is just a question outside this brief but it clearly affects it - that UK, either through STFC or some other body, needs in fact to actually concentrate on that issue of providing super-computer capacity in order for us not to have simply the large climate change models but models for all sorts of other areas as well? Is this a weakness in British science or are you not able to answer that?

Dr Rodger: All areas of science are benefiting from high degrees of super-computing. It is one of the things that Britain has been, traditionally, excellent at, in high-resolution super-computing. It is one of the things that we can hold up as a flagship. What it offers us is the integration, often, and that is a very powerful activity, that you can bring data and theory together.

Q447 Chairman: I am not arguing against this.

Dr Rodger: I would argue that you could use more super-computing across the board in science.

Q448 Chairman: I just wanted to know whether it is actually holding us back - the lack of super-computing power and availability. But you do not believe that is the case.

Dr Rodger: We need multiple runs, for example, in the environment rather than a single run; we do not have the resources to run as many multiple, high-resolution runs for as long as we would wish at the current time.

Q449 Chairman: Okay. Thank you very much indeed. Professor, Shimmield, you spoke earlier about partnerships and co-ordination, and it has been a feature of this inquiry that there are a very significant number of partnerships - in fact, often, too many to mention. We have got the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, the Marine Environment Change Network and the Office for Climate Change. Do they make a ha'ppeth of difference and do scientists actually get very much involved with them?

Professor Shimmield: You are right to identify a range of partnerships and arrangements. Going to the next level down you will see where some of the differences are; some are more focused on the impact of biodiversity in the coastal systems as a consequence of climate change; some are more directed at climate change consequences on the human populations and coastal zone management. I think what you may be alluding to is the need to have some better integration between these activities. They probably show the breadth and pervasiveness of understanding climate change impact across the marine and terrestrial environment.

Q450 Chairman: How effective are these partnerships? How involved are you?

Professor Shimmield: I think they have been quite effective in producing some of the new status reports that are coming out; we are able to see in a more holistic way some of the inter-annual variability in climate change impacts, particularly on shelf seas around the UK. That is one definite benefit that has come out of some of the partnerships.

Professor Watson: I am from a university and, at the coalface, fairly well down the food chain here, but I would have to say that many of these do not make a lot of difference at the practical level of the day-to-day doing of the research. The best ones are those which do involve, from my perspective at least, the people who are actually doing the research and not simply those that are talking about it and doing reports.

Q451 Chairman: Which ones?

Professor Watson: For example, the IGBP (that is the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) which has a Committee that sits nationally, and there is the GER Committee (Global Environmental Research Committee) that sits under the auspices of the Royal Society. Those Committees are very useful; they organise meetings, for example, that one may go to.

Q452 Chairman: I will move on briefly. Do you think that NERC does a good job in co-ordinating the whole of climate change science including work on the oceans?

Dr Rodger: NERC, well, who is going to ---

Q453 Chairman: Dr Rodger, you are a good advocate for NERC.

Dr Rodger: Thank you very much for that. NERC in the past has taken a different role in the sense that it has often seen itself as a funding agency. Under its new Chief Executive it is definitely trying to be more directed, more focused, and therefore there are particular activities where there is an attempt to do much more co-ordination, much more addressing the critical question. So in the new strategy you will find "climate change" and then under there you will only find six or seven key questions that are to be addressed, so I think again we are at a point of change where we are going to be more integrated and more directed at addressing the key questions that are relevant not only to the UK but internationally, globally.

Q454 Chairman: Any other comments?

Professor Dickson: The funding of the Hadley Centre by Defra is one major strength in the UK and I must say that when we look at, for example, the NERC programmes in the ocean in the north for the IPY, they are done in collaboration with the Hadley Centre effort, as is the remote sensing of ice freeboard in University College London, so the thing I like about it is that there are a number of departments and agencies who are all well aware of each other's abilities and the need to feed back and forth in an iterative way between observations and modelling, so I wouldn't say it is just NERC.

Q455 Dr Spink: Chairman, can I just take us on to the next question. On specific programme funding such as the global ocean observing systems and climate variability programmes, should these be funded direct from NERC, would that improve them, or should they come through specific programme fundings?

Dr Rodger: Again I think we go back to what we said; I do not think it matters as long as it is done.

Q456 Chairman: With respect, Dr Rodger, that is not satisfactory, is it, because unless somebody takes ownership of it ---

Dr Rodger: --- unless somebody takes ownership of the question ---

Q457 Chairman: --- then it could easily slip off the radar here.

Dr Rodger: Going back to your question then, I think Defra has to take a significant responsibility for defining the problem and then encourage NERC and make sure NERC and the other organisations carry out the requirements.

Q458 Dr Spink: So there needs to be better co-ordination then?

Dr Rodger: Yes.

Professor Watson: I would say that I very much welcome NERC's new strategy on which there has been widespread consultation, but historically I would say NERC has not done a great job of co-ordination - as Alan says perhaps they are going to change because of that. The problem is, as I say, that NERC is very focused on its own institutes and it does not necessarily know what is happening in the community as a whole which is quite a lot larger than the institutes. There is a reorganisation of government science and the universities now coming together under a new department.

Q459 Chairman: Do you support that?

Professor Watson: I certainly would. I think that that is a good idea and perhaps an opportunity to get this co-ordination across the piece a little better than it has been done in the past.

Chairman: Okay, on that note I will pass to you, Brian.

Q460 Dr Iddon: These are all questions for you, Professor Watson, because you came to give evidence on carbon dioxide and acidification this morning. What do you think we ought to be doing across the world to improve our knowledge of absorption of carbon dioxide and its effects?

Professor Watson: We need to properly understand how much carbon dioxide is going into the oceans. There is a canonical figure that has been around for literally decades. With new research - some of it just published jointly between the British Antarctic Survey and the University of East Anglia two weeks ago - we now realise that the Southern Ocean, for example, is changing quite rapidly the rate at which it takes up carbon dioxide. We have new research in the North Atlantic suggesting that the North Atlantic also is changing very rapidly. So largely in ignorance we thought that oceans took up carbon dioxide at a uniform rate year on year and we now realise that that is not the case. We need to put in place - this is globally - an observing system that will tell us how rapidly CO₂ is being taken up by the oceans. In some places that is in place. In the North Atlantic it is being done using commercial ships of opportunity and this is funded by the European Union at the moment under Framework VI as a demonstration project and it has worked extremely well. We can see that we can do this using commercial ships of opportunity. It is difficult and it would be very helpful if the shipping companies had some slight incentive to help us because at the moment they will move their ships at a moment's notice, and this can be quite annoying if you have spent six months putting instrumentation in and then the ship goes off to the other side of the world. So there is something there which governments, I think, could do. If they got one per cent off their port duties for example for helping scientists that would be useful. But we do need to put in place a global observing system and that will involve satellites, in situ observations, the co-ordination of the different methodologies, and computing too. The UK has begun to do that. We have projects that are going in that direction. The NERC has a centre which does that for example. However, we have to expand this to the global ocean and quite quickly. In general, there has been little support again from the UK to do this kind of work. It has been done (insofar as it has been done) through Europe which co-ordinates some of the other European countries, but they are only funding a demonstration project so this will stop in a year or so.

Q461 Dr Iddon: There are about 3,000 Argo floats in the sea now. Have we missed a trick? Could we have adapted those to give you the data that you require?

Professor Watson: It would be lovely if one could put a carbon dioxide sensor on the Argo floats and get the carbon dioxide information. Unfortunately, we cannot do that, the technology is not there, when the float goes down the sensor falls to pieces, but you can put oxygen sensors on such floats and that would be extremely useful to knowing how the biological system is working.

Q462 Dr Iddon: Briefly, which instrumental techniques are you relying on?

Professor Watson: We are relying on these commercial ships of opportunity with CO₂ instrumentation levels that were originally developed by Plymouth Marine Laboratory and Defra and are now being used worldwide. We are relying on satellites to get measurements of ocean colour and temperature, et cetera, and we try to integrate that with computing.

Q463 Dr Iddon: Obviously normal partition will occur between the air and sea and carbon dioxide and the other gases, but are there other major features like sea churn, currents, temperatures that affect the levels of uptake in specific areas?

Professor Watson: Absolutely. The temperature affects carbon dioxide uptake very dramatically so if the temperature of the oceans begins to increase the rate of uptake decreases. The overturning circulation, so the rate of mixing basically, of the ocean also affects this, and finally the biology of the oceans is very important in this. We can monitor all of those things, for example biology can be monitored from space and the temperature can be monitored to a certain extent from space. Mixing is a little more difficult but by using high-resolution models and the Argo floats we can get some information on that.

Q464 Dr Iddon: Do we know if there are huge variations between the surface and the bottom of the deepest oceans? What kind of distribution of carbon dioxide occurs?

Professor Watson: There is a distribution that is in general terms understood, but there is more carbon dioxide at the bottom of the oceans for example because biological fluxes take it down - it is called the biology pump - to the bottom, so in general terms that distribution is understood but near the surface it can change rapidly and that of course is the bit that is of interest for uptake over, let us say, shortish timescales of a decade or even 100 years. The deep ocean turns over so slowly that it is less significant.

Q465 Dr Iddon: Briefly, what would be the main effects of increasing acidification if we had another 100 years of uptake at the rate of the past 200 years where more than half the CO₂ emitted has been absorbed?

Professor Watson: Many organisms do not seem to function so well as the acidity of the oceans increases. Those are particularly organisms that calcify, that is to say they produce calcium carbonate, and a huge range of marine organisms do that. They find it more difficult to do it as the CO₂ increases. Those organisms include corals for example, which are already under stress caused by rising temperatures. They include also plankton which are so numerous that they form much of the rocks on which this city is built for example and which are therefore important just because of the sheer fluxes that they produce. We know from experiments in labs for example that these organisms can find it difficult to calcify if you increase the carbon dioxide concentration. What we do not know is whether we can extrapolate those experiments to the real ocean to a relatively slow increase taking 100 years, although they may adapt and may have no trouble but we suspect not, so a lot of the marine biologists are quite concerned about the long-term effects of acidification and little is known.

Q466 Dr Iddon: Apart from stopping producing as much CO₂ by burning fossils fuels, which we are attempting to do worldwide, are there any other ways we can mitigate the effects of acidification?

Professor Watson: Locally, for example around the coral reef if the coral reef is having problems with the acidification, you might add calcium carbonate or magnesium carbonate to the area and that would probably help the organisms. However, for the seas as a whole, for the open ocean, well, people have discussed geo-engineering type scenarios where you grind up vast quantities of calcium carbonate rock and throw it into the ocean, but you would have to grind up about the area of Sussex every year in order to have any real effect. We are putting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that I think most people who look at this think it is just not practical.

Q467 Dr Spink: This is obviously a double-edged sword. Is the international community confident about the level of ocean CO₂ absorption that would be optimum for the health of the planet overall, not that we can, as you have just explained, do much about it other than stop burning fossil fuels? Are we confident about the optimum level?

Professor Watson: If you ask about the optimum level of C0₂ absorption you have to balance two things. If you leave the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then it builds up more quickly and you get quicker climate change. If it goes into the oceans you get these effects of acidification. I do not think there is any consensus about what the optimum level is other than most scientists in this area would strongly support decarbonising industrial economies as quickly as possible.

Q468 Dr Spink: So that is the bottom line?

Professor Watson: That is the bottom line.

Q469 Dr Harris: I know you have touched on this already but I want to ask about the balance between Antarctic and Arctic work in pure terms of poles. Do you all accept that there is a need to improve, comparatively speaking, the amount of work and resource going into the Arctic as opposed to the Antarctic and, if so, how would you do it? What are the mechanisms for increasing the funding and capability in the Arctic?

Dr Rodger: There is a fair amount of resource already going into the Arctic. What you do not see effectively is that resource as a coherent body such as you do have through the British Antarctic Survey going to the other pole. We have already heard about a significant number of EU activities that are going on where the UK is playing a leadership role, so it is not as much a question necessarily of resource but being more integrated to some extent which I think is a much more important activity. I will leave my Arctic colleagues to say some more.

Professor Dickson: The IPY coming up has given us a huge impetus to add more and more co-ordinated work in the Arctic and from the submitted 1,500 or so expressions of interest something called the Integrated Arctic Ocean Observing System, the science plan for which I have got here, was thought up and designed specifically for the IPY. The reason for doing such a thing is because a pan-Arctic effort like this is not only possible but it is larger than any national funding agency would aspire to, so this had to be done before the announcements of opportunity were made by, for example, NSF, the Research Council of Norway, and NERC, so that was done. There is going to be on a scale that we have not had before an integrated Arctic Ocean observing system for the IPY of which the big European effort Damocles will be the European half, so I would say that although we by no means have covered all the bases in the Arctic it is becoming much better co-ordinated, and the IPY has given us the incentive to do that.

Professor Shimmield: I entirely agree with Bob and, as I said in an earlier remark, we are moving strongly forward on the biological and chemical aspects of the Arctic work as well. I think that is also done both in collaboration across the UK university network but also very strongly with the Scandinavian effort and Norwegian effort. I should say that is permeating right through into the education sector as well. There are now joint education programmes for the universities in the Arctic and UK universities and the University of Svalbard, which is an international organisation for training both at undergraduate and postgraduate level, so we are seeing, I would say, in the last five years a dramatic shift in the way in which Arctic research and Arctic marine research is being carried out.

Q470 Dr Harris: Do either of your colleagues working in the frozen north look jealously on the resources and reputation of the BAS? There must be pangs at least?

Professor Shimmield: Yes clearly there are. Some of the infrastructure that is available to deliver the effort in the southern hemisphere is only available at a modest level in the north.

Q471 Dr Harris: So it is not all about co-ordination, there is a resource issue?

Professor Shimmield: For instance, as you have heard in previous discussions, the availability of full icebreaking vessels in the high north to conduct marine research, and that would clearly need to be done, I think, at a European co-ordination level now.

Q472 Dr Harris: You are not looking bashful at all, Professor Rodger?

Dr Rodger: Only that the James Clark Ross, which is one of the best ships that NERC owns, for doing marine research, has 60 days allocated to doing other things other than looking south and some of that is spent in the north, but it is not an icebreaker and it can only deal with one to one and a half metres' thickness of ice.

Q473 Chris Mole: I think everybody knows about the rainforest. Are people really aware of the role of the seas and the oceans in climate change? Do you need to do more to engage with the public to understand acidification? They might know a bit about the thermal haline pump and all of that but should you be doing more?

Dr Rodger: Yes. Let me just say that one of the ways to engage is the education side, but always to inspire youngsters you want something unusual and out of the way and I would have suggested that the deep sea with all its peculiar animals is one way to inspire, so instead of necessary looking at dinosaurs I would really like to see this generation of youngsters focus on the fantastic biodiversity that you get within the ocean and particularly the deep ocean.

Q474 Chris Mole: Anybody else?

Professor Watson: I would have to say that the British Antarctic Survey is one of the best at doing outreach. In general, I would absolutely agree. I think that we do not do enough outreach. Again it is rather a question of funding and time. There are many calls on one's time and it tends to be that is relatively far down the list because there is not enough time. It would be helpful if for example the NERC did more centrally to co-ordinate with the various things that they are funding. That would be helpful from a university point of view where we generally do not have the resources to do that.

Chairman: On that note I am going to bring this session neatly to an end and to thank Dr Alan Rodger, Professor Graham Shimmield, Professor Bob Dickson and Professor Andrew Watson for their time this morning. Thank you very much indeed.