How do we ensure marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) is “fishery sensitive”? Provide your input at a virtual roundtable!
By Sarah Schumann
Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) is a category that includes several biological and chemistry-based approaches that might be capable of enhancing the ocean’s ability to sequester and store excess human-emitted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some believe it could become a vital tool in the effort to combat climate change. Figure by Sarah Battle, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Source: Strategy for NOAA Carbon Dioxide Removal Research
Few fishermen have heard the phrase “marine carbon dioxide removal,” or mCDR. Even fewer have engaged with researchers or permitting agencies to ensure that mCDR planning and research proceed with fishery wellbeing as a core priority. But despite our lack of familiarity with this subject, now is the time to learn what it’s all about, and to work together as an industry to define and advocate for a version of mCDR that is “fishery sensitive” — perhaps even “fishery friendly.”
What is mCDR?
The ocean is very good at removing and storing carbon dioxide beneath its waves. So good, in fact, that it has already absorbed a third of the carbon dioxide emitted as a result of human activities since the Industrial Revolution — an unsolicited favor for which we owe it a tremendous debt of gratitude. But some scientists, policy makers, and members of the climate tech community believe that with targeted human intervention, the ocean can get even better at sequestering our excess carbon dioxide.
Techniques to deliberately enhance oceanic carbon sequestration are called mCDR, and they include approaches as varied as growing kelp and sinking it to the deep oceans, fertilizing surface waters to induce plankton blooms, adding alkaline materials to the water column to convert carbon dioxide into bicarbonates and carbonates, and using electrochemical methods to strip carbon dioxide out of seawater. At present, all mCDR approaches are largely untested, unproven, and surrounded by a mixture of deep doubts and dazzling dreams, depending on where on the spectrum of precaution to techno-optimism one falls. Nonetheless, given the urgency of drawing down massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to avoid the worst effects of the climate change, the research community is coming around to the need to at least study these approaches, if not yet fully deploy them at scale.
What does it meant to for mCDR to be “fishery sensitive?”
That’s what we need to figure out! Since mCDR is currently being proposed and investigated by experts and entrepreneurs outside the fishing and fishery science community, chances are high that whatever they come up with won’t meet our standards for fishery impact avoidance and harm reduction. Nor, without our input, are these efforts likely to prioritize potential co-benefits from certain mCDR techniques to fisheries, which could include stimulation of food web productivity and mitigation of ocean acidification trends that negatively affect shellfish. But with our input, we could see mCDR research move in a more fishery-focused direction — and that is our goal.
The Fishery Friendly Climate Action Campaign is leveraging its convening power to channel the insights and values of the fishing community into a set of core principles underlying a shared definition of “fishery sensitive” mCDR. Then, working with the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) and a group of scientific partners around the U.S., fishermen will co-create a set of guidance documents focused on:
Fishery sensitive mCDR governance: siting, permitting, benefit sharing, thresholds for acceptance, co-location with other uses, co-benefit maximization, spatial deconfliction, adaptive management, etc.
Fishing community engagement: how would the fishing community like to be informed, engaged, and empowered in the decision making process?
Involvement of the fishing community in co-production of knowledge: research co-design and co-analysis, cooperative research, fishermen’s ecological knowledge, etc.
How can fishermen get involved?
We are currently seeking participants for virtual roundtables that will take place in early 2025. Eligibility is open to members of the fishing community from the North Pacific, Pacific, New England, and Mid-Atlantic fishery regions. Stipends are available and there are multiple dates and times to choose from. Click the button below to sign up, or head to our Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal webpage to learn more about our plans!
