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Editor’s note: The EBM Tools Network got started in 2005-2006 under the leadership of Patrick Crist, then the director of conservation planning and ecosystem management at NatureServe. Over the past 14 years, the Network has grown to over 11,000 coastal and marine conservation and management practitioners worldwide, and is now run by OCTO, which also publishes this newsletter. For this issue of the Skimmer, we catch up with Crist, now principal at the consultancy PlanIt Forward, to see how conservation planning tools have changed over this time.

Skimmer: What changes have you seen in the use of conservation planning tools since the EBM Tools Network got started in 2005-2006? Are more conservation projects and groups using them? If so, why do you think this change has occurred?

Crist: It is really hard to quantify the use of tools – I haven’t seen any polling or studies on this although it would be really informative. Given that most conservation software is free, it is hard to tease apart casual downloads from actual application. For example, when the NatureServe Vista decision support system became free, there were about 2000 downloads worldwide almost immediately and there have typically been a few hundred every year since then. Periodic polling of the registrants, however, suggests single-digit percentages of actual use.

Last month, The Skimmer released a compilation of role-playing/simulation games to educate stakeholders, professionals, students, and the general public about aspects of coastal and marine conservation, management, and adaptation. We’ve just added nine more games to the game compilation. Check out the newbies:

• Ahli Bakua
• EcoOcean
• Fishbanks by MIT Sloan
• FiShcope
• Fishing for the Future
• GPMax
• LittoSIM
• MarePolis
• Water Life: Rivers meet the Sea.

Editor’s note: In last month’s issue, The Skimmer interviewed three practitioners about their experiences developing and using serious games to educate stakeholders, professionals, students, and the general public about aspects of the conservation and management of coastal and marine ecosystems. This month we interviewed Harald Warmelink, a senior research project leader at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, about his work developing the serious game MSP Challenge. Warmelink’s work focuses on the design, use, and evaluation of serious games for policy analysis, decision-making, management, and organization, as well as their gamification.

The Skimmer: Can you tell us a little bit about your game and the target audience?

Warmelink: As we wrote in the article “Communicating Maritime Spatial Planning: The MSP Challenge approach”: “The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform integrates real geodata (both marine and human activities) sourced from a great many proprietary institutions and data-portals (such as IMO, HELCOM, EMODnet, and national data centers) with science-based simulation models for shipping, energy and ecology (Ecopath with Ecosim). The data and models have been linked together in a game engine (Unity) to create an interactive simulation platform. This simulation platform allows anyone – experts as well as non-experts – to creatively operate it for scenario development, and/or for multi-player game sessions. This can have multiple purposes such as scenario exploration, co-design, validation or policy-oriented learning. Although the simulation platform has taken a significant step towards becoming a next generation marine planning support system, it continues to use play mechanics, in the form of player roles, scenarios and challenges.”

Historically, games were a means for young people to learn critical survival skills. In recent decades, however, games have come to be viewed as simply a source of entertainment. A recent movement – “serious gaming” – is now revitalizing the idea that games can do a lot more than just entertain. It is showing that they can be a powerful tool for teaching, engaging stakeholders, conducting research, and evaluating public policy. For instance, serious games can:

• Help players better understand complex topics and the interests of a wide variety of groups, promoting thinking about systems as a whole
• Let players experiment with and see the consequences of different choices over time, promoting longer-term thinking
• Create a high level of engagement with the public, potentially at lower cost than other more traditional engagement activities
• Help policymakers and researchers understand stakeholder decision making and the way stakeholders may respond to a variety of policy choices.

This month The Skimmer has compiled information about role-playing/simulation games designed to educate stakeholders, professionals, students, and the general public about aspects of coastal and marine conservation, management, and adaptation. These serious games allow players to experiment with coastal and marine conservation, management, and adaptation actions (or inaction) to help players, researchers, and policymakers better understand how coastal and marine ecosystems (including resource users and human communities) work. We also interview a range of game developers about their experiences using their games in the field.

Look through our new compilation for a serious game for your coastal and marine conservation, management, and adaptation work.

Read about how these games are being used to engage stakeholders, educate students and the general public, and conduct research.

The Skimmer interviewed three practitioners about their experiences developing and using serious games to educate stakeholders, professionals, students, and the general public about aspects of the conservation and management of coastal and marine ecosystems. Learn about:

• How the Reef Stakes game is being used across Southeast Asia to explain the complexity of multi-stakeholder decision-making processes and highlight threats to coral reef ecosystems
• How the Ocean Limited game is being used in Germany to allow players to take on stakeholder roles and negotiate interests in marine resources
• How the Fishing in the Food Web game is being used in Argentina to introduce players to complex marine ecological concepts and stimulate discussion about how marine ecosystems work.

One striking commonality of these stories is the ability of games to engage a wide variety of audiences – oftentimes even wider audiences than those for which they were developed – in discussion and learning about the conservation and management of marine ecosystems.

• New report describes expected impacts of climate change on global ocean economy
• Ocean acidification could cost US fisheries, tourism, and coastal communities billions
• Ocean deoxygenation increasingly threatens species and ecosystems
• Global wave patterns will change drastically with further global warming
• New research able to link frequency of most damaging hurricanes to climate change
• New study assesses changes in fish distribution due to climate change
• Draft treaty on conservation and sustainable use of high seas marine life available for review
• Wales publishes new national marine plan
• New tool helps coastal cities identify financial, political, ecological risks from climate change
• New underwater robotic gliders measure ocean noise levels
• New tool tracks vessels at high risk for IUU fishing
• Project will enable study of environmental changes on ocean microbes
• Larval fish eating microplastics in their nursery habitats
• Latest studies suggest Arctic Ocean may be ice-free for part of year by 2044
• Oldest and thickest Arctic Ocean sea ice disappearing twice as fast as other sea ice
• Input requested on coastal management challenges, will inform US national research investments

It’s no secret that news about the ocean is pretty disheartening these days. So, as we get started with 2020, we here at The Skimmer want to highlight a new report that looks at ocean potential. The High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy recently released “The Ocean as a Solution for Climate Change: Five Opportunities for Action”, which quantifies contributions that ocean-based mitigation strategies can make in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, while also delivering other ecosystem services. The report considers the potential contributions of:

• Scaling up ocean-based renewable energy (e.g., wind, wave, and tidal power)
• Reducing emissions from freight and passenger shipping
• Increasing protection and restoration of coastal and marine ecosystems (particularly “blue carbon” habitats such as mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrasses), which would provide carbon mitigation as well as other ecosystem service benefits
• Shifting diets towards low-carbon sources of protein from the ocean
• Storing carbon in the seabed.

Aquaculture production is an increasingly important component of global seafood production. Seafood production from aquaculture has expanded nearly six-fold since 1990, while capture fisheries production has remained relatively stagnant. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization’s most recent analysis of global fisheries and aquaculture, seafood production from aquaculture (excluding seaweeds) exceeded production from marine capture fisheries for the first time in 2016.^[i]

Aquaculture’s reputation is mixed, however. It obviously has the potential to feed many people, but it has is associated with a number of observed and potential negative environmental impacts, including:

• Altering and destroying habitat, such as mangrove forests, for aquaculture facilities
• Escapes of farmed species into the wild, enabling species invasions and altering the genetics of wild populations
• Spreading diseases and parasites to wild populations
• Releasing fecal waste, uneaten food, and pesticides into the local environment, decreasing water quality
• Contributing to the overfishing of wild fish populations because of the use of wild fish to feed farmed fish.

This negative view obscures the incredible diversity of aquaculture types and their diverse interactions with marine environments. Aquaculture enterprises vary in:

• What species are cultivated (e.g., seaweeds, mollusks, crustaceans, finfish) and what they feed on (e.g., whether they are photosynthesizers, filter feeders, deposit feeders, herbivores, carnivores)
• How intense production is (e.g., total biomass per cage, the degree to which fertilizer and supplementary feeds are used)
• The type of environment production takes place in (e.g., freshwater streams or lakes, fully enclosed tanks, ponds, intertidal, sheltered bays, open ocean, sea pens, ponds, tanks).

• UN publishes evaluation of global progress towards 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
• Over US$63 billion pledged at Our Ocean conference to improve ocean health and productivity (view pledges in map form)
• New elevation data triples estimate of global population vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal flooding (explore data with Coastal Risk Screening Tool)
• Meta-analysis of MPA coverage highlights gaps in Caribbean, Madagascar, southern Africa, Mediterranean, and Coral Triangle
• Global subsidies to fishing industry more than US$35 billion in 2018 [Read Skimmer coverage of why this matters for marine ecosystems]
• Study finds MPA benefits and drawbacks roughly equal for local communities
• Analysis predicts continued ocean warming will trigger more extreme El Niños
• Sea levels will continue to rise even after global temperatures stabilize
• Offshore wind report offers comprehensive global look at latest technology, market developments, and geospatial analysis
• New report illuminates activities of distant water fishing fleets including IUU fishing and illicit activity
• New guide details how to insure a natural asset [Read Skimmer coverage about insurance coverage for Mesoamerican Reef]
• Tool helps design accurate, statistically meaningful ocean research experiments
• Communications tool to help scientists engage public and decisionmakers now available in Spanish
• Workbook for strategic communication for conservation available
• Nike joins coalition pledged to not ship through Arctic; Exxon partner plans to ship liquid natural gas through Arctic
• Final approval given for first commercial offshore wind installation in US federal waters
• China's ocean waste up 27% in 2018
• Marine planning and management trainings added to Skimmer database

Editor’s note: Thierry Chopin is a professor of marine biology and director of the Seaweed and Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Research Laboratory at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. He is also president of Chopin Coastal Health Solutions Inc. His research focuses on the ecophysiology/biochemistry/cultivation of seaweeds and the development of Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) for environmental sustainability, economic stability, and societal acceptability.

The Skimmer: Can you tell us a little bit about what IMTA is?

Chopin: With IMTA, farmers cultivate species from different trophic levels and with complementary ecosystem functions in proximity. They combine fed species (e.g., finfish that need to be provided with feed) with extractive species (e.g., seaweeds, aquatic plants, shellfish, and other invertebrates that extract their food from the environment) to take advantage of synergistic interactions among them. In these systems, biomitigation operates as part of a circular economy (i.e., nutrients are no longer considered wastes or by-products of one species, but instead are co-products for the other species).