Statsraad Lehmkuhl’s Return to Shore: Deriving Insights from the Data

There was a palpable sense of excitement in Bergen, Norway, this week as the city and researchers worldwide celebrated the return of the “Statsraad Lehmkuhl” ship. The boat has sailed the world’s ocean for 20 months, visiting 37 ports across the globe. Its arrival back to shore marks the end of an epic journey. 

As part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science, Statsraad Lehmkuhl completed its “One Ocean Expedition” to spread awareness and knowledge about the ocean’s role in a sustainable future. This 108-year-old sailing ship was fitted with modern devices to collect data on human impacts on the environment, measuring microplastics, noise, temperature, and acidity, to name a few. 

One of the best things about this initiative is how many people and organizations are behind it. Students, researchers, politicians, and top names from the public and private sectors collaborated on the vessel. During the homecoming ceremony, I heard some of their testimonies from people who spent 3 days or 7 days or 17 days and nights living on the ship, sleeping in hammocks, becoming part of a community beholden to the vastness and richness of the ocean and its rhythm. At the opening ceremony, King Harald of Norway, UN Special Envoy Peter Thomson, and Marine Biologist Sylvia Earle, all remarkable in their passion and engagement in ocean health, graced the stage and set the tone for our ocean as the most fundamental life system we have.

One of the conferences I attended was organized by the Norwegian Government and was focused on bringing the learnings from the High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy back to Norway. Formed in 2018 from the initiative of Norway under Erna Solberg’s government, it is a group of 17 world leaders brought together to develop and promote solutions for sustainable and holistic ocean management. At HUB Ocean, we have tightly aligned our goals with the learnings and recommendations of the Panel, so the program resonated a lot with us. 

Co-existence naturally emerged as a key theme because the ocean is a shared resource and a complex system, interconnected with all aspects of life on Earth. A co-existence approach means balancing diverse needs and finding solutions that maximize benefits to all stakeholders and minimize the negative impacts. We need to learn how to optimize and compromise as competition over space and resources in the ocean continues to grow. For this we need both knowledge and speed.

To meet the challenge of a rapidly degrading ocean and planet, we will need to combine data on a much larger scale, ideally making all the world’s ocean data available with ease. That is also why I am particularly interested in the data coming out of the Statsraad Lehmkuhl’s voyages. Asking around at the lunch reception held on the deck in the glorious sun, it was clear to me that general knowledge about what comes next – about where the data goes from here and how it can drive knowledge and impact was rather low.  Would this data be used in climate models, for example?  Would it be used in quantifying bio-diversity status and risks of human industrial activities on them?  

The vital task ahead now is to make that data widely accessible, with very little friction, allowing it to work hard for all of us. Much of the world has agreed on principles for open sharing of data, which call for organizations to make their data: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) so that we can get to the insights and solutions that matter.

This is the challenging but exciting task for the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (IMR), one of Europe’s leading marine research and advisory institutes.  We rely on this skilled organization to bring forth the data, and this organization must also rely on partners who can combine their rich and authoritative data with other important data, including data from every ocean-impacting industry and company.  

And equally important, I can attest that this organization understands that engaging with partners, like HUB Ocean, is vital to truly allowing data to have impact. HUB Ocean and IMR have a range of areas where we collaborate to improve ocean health and wealth.

I left Bergen with great enthusiasm around the Statsraad Lehmkuhl initiative and feeling optimistic about HUB Ocean’s mission and ability to deliver meaningful change, in partnership with so many passionate and talented people.  The ocean community is blossoming – and thank goodness for that, as this ocean needs our healing power.

Onwards and upwards!