The interactive action thriller ‘Full Metal Aquatic’ was performed online on February 1^st and 2^nd 2022 to celebrate the launch of the Future Seas Project and to showcase the upcoming Future Seas special issue in the journal Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries. ‘Full Metal Aquatic’, written by David Finnigan and Jordan Prosser in collaboration with researchers from the Future Seas project and animated by Sacha Bryning, is set in the ocean a decade from now and takes place in two different futures – one we hope to see and one we want to prevent. It is designed to explore what our future could feasibly look like, depending on the actions we take now. Watch the video to find out the whole story! 

What future did YOU prefer?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released the second part of its 6^th Assessment Report – Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, based on the work from IPCC Working Group II.

To coincide with the release of this report, the first global update on climate change since 2014, the Centre for Marine Socioecology (CMS) hosted an in person and online forum on Tuesday 1 March at 12:00 pm AEDT to help inform and support policy makers and those interested in how Australia can reduce its vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

The Working Group II contribution of the IPCC report assesses global and local impacts of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity, societies, cultures and settlements. It further addresses the vulnerabilities, capabilities and limits of the natural world and societies to adapt to climate change, and informs efforts to reduce climate-associated risk. This builds on the published Working Group I contribution on the physical basis of climate change, and not-yet released Working Group III contribution on climate change mitigation.

The panel hosted by CMS included CMS Lead Authors of the IPCC assessment report and climate experts from CSIRO and IMAS, and discussed the new report findings and what they mean for Australia and Antarctica.

The panel was held in Hobart/nipaluna at the University of Tasmania on the 1st of March 2022, and was attended by approximately 200 people (in-person and online).

Topics covered included:

• What is the IPCC and how does it work? (Prof Gretta Pecl)
• Key findings regarding the physical science of climate change (Prof Neil Holbrook)
• Australian seas are a barometer of climate change extremes and their impacts on marine life (Prof Philip Boyd)
• Sensitivity of Antarctic ecosystems and consequent impacts on global systems (Dr Jess Melbourne-Thomas)
• Extreme events and climate causing change in Australian and Tasmanian socio-ecological systems (Prof Gretta Pecl)
• Approaches for achieving climate resilient development in Australia (Dr Andrew Constable)

The event also included a tribute to UTAS IPCC Lead Author Dr Rebecca Harris who sadly passed away at the end of 2021, and a short welcome introduction by UTAS Vice Chancellor Professor Rufus Black.

Please watch the recording here (note, this is an automated webinar recording, professional video production was not available).

Read publication here

Presentation to the ICED Krill Modelling Group by Andrew Constable

Presentation by Prof Gretta Pecl at the AMSA conference 2021 about the Future Seas project.

Andrew Constable and Jess Melbourne-Thomas are co-convenors of the Marine Ecosystem Assessment for the Southern Ocean (MEASO) program under the auspices of the IMBeR program Integrating Climate and Ecosystem Dynamics in the Southern Ocean.  They presented as part of an event on “Antarctic marine ecosystems under pressure: protection needs action locally and globally” organised by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) at the UNFCCC COP26 and supported by the Southern Ocean Observing System.  

This presentation was supported by:

• The Steering Committee and Synthesis teams of the Marine Ecosystem Assessment for the Southern Ocean
• Eav Brennan (for the cartoon of change)
• Lisa Roberts (for the infographic on cultural connections: LRoberts et al. 2021. Enabling Enduring Evidence-Based Policy for the Southern Ocean Through Cultural Arts Practices. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 9. #10.3389/fevo.2021.616089)
• Denisse Fierro Arcos (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia), Tilo Ziehn (CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Aspendale, Victoria, Australia) (for providing data used in the animations of change in the Southern Ocean from the ACCESS ESM1.5)
• ICED, SCAR, SOOS

Further results of MEASO can be found in a Frontiers research topic at https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/10606/marine-ecosystem-assessment-for-the-southern-ocean-meeting-the-challenge-for-conserving-earth-ecosys

(English subtitle available, select in settings)

Dr Kirsty Nash was an invited speaker at the webinar organised by the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs.  Kirsty presented "Creating a vision to guide development of a sustainable ocean future: the Future Seas 2030 initiative".

Prof Gretta Pecl was talking about squids and other cephalopods for primary school kids at UCTV alive for kids

Now you can access data on micronutrient content of fish from FishBase Project thanks to an international fish-nutrient collaboration including CMS member Kirsty Nash and led by Christina Hicks (Lancaster University), Pip Cohen (Worldfish) & Aaron MacNeil (Dalhousie University).

You can find more information about the project here