Category: Notes on Current Events

Vicky Lam and Anna Luna Rossi at UNOC 2025.

Reflections from UNOC 2025: Advancing inclusive ocean sustainability

Vicky Lam and Anna Luna Rossi at UNOC 2025.

Sea Around Us Research Associate, Dr. Vicky Lam, and MSc Student, Anna Luna Rossi, at UNOC 2025.

By Vicky Lam.

Nice, in southern France, is known for its stunning Mediterranean coastline, and it proved to be a fitting host city for the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) 2025, held from June 9 to 13. With over 15,000 participants from around the world, the event brought together governments, scientists, NGOs, Indigenous leaders, and civil society to advance action to conserve and sustainably use the ocean.

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The Sea Around Us MSc student, Anna Luna Rossi (fourth from the left), with her NGO Reserva colleagues.

Youth making waves: Advocating for marine conservation at UNOC3

The Sea Around Us MSc student, Anna Luna Rossi (fourth from the left), with her NGO Reserva colleagues.

The Sea Around Us MSc student, Anna Luna Rossi (fourth from the left), with her NGO Reserva colleagues and actress Auli’i Cravalho at UNOC 2025.

By Anna Luna Rossi.

June 2025 marked the third edition of the United Nations Ocean Conference, hosted in Nice, France, and co-organized by France and Costa Rica. UNOC3 falls within the Ocean Decade initiative to create a framework for communicating and using ocean knowledge to generate real-time actions for safeguarding our marine resources.

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French President, Emmanuel Macron, being interviewed at UNOC 2025. Image by France.TV.

Dr. Daniel Pauly calls out France’s double standards on marine protection

French President, Emmanuel Macron, being interviewed at UNOC 2025. Image by France.TV.

French President Emmanuel Macron, being interviewed at UNOC 2025. Image by France.TV.

 

During an interview with French national television, President Emmanuel Macron was confronted with images from David Attenborough’s Ocean documentary, which shows the gigantic nets of bottom trawlers operating in the Mediterranean dropping hundreds of tonnes of all kinds of fishes on a boat after razing the seafloor and everything in their way.

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Illustration of a robot reading books. Artificial intelligence

On AI and its uses of scientific research

Illustration of a robot reading books. Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence. Image by Mohamed Hassan, Pxhere.

Having spent a big portion of his professional career in the Global South, the Sea Around Us principal investigator, Dr. Daniel Pauly, quickly learned how difficult and onerous it is to access scientific literature in the region, even when working at renowned universities or institutes.

The effort that researchers working in countries outside North America, Europe and Australia have to make to write their dissertations, papers and other scientific contributions would be unimaginable for their peers in the Global North. From outdated library collections to poor bandwidth Internet connections, downloading a PDF of a recent publication for free with the click of a few buttons is unheard of in many places. If payment and delivery are required, then the task may become even more difficult.

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