You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Karl Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, as I was praying for our next guest, I came across a great Bloomberg opinion piece by our columnist Laura Williams. Check out what she wrote earlier this year. She said, We've got a lot to thank the ocean. For three billion people depend on
its ecosystems for food and economic security. It's also helped to mitigate climate change, absorbing ninety three percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases and about thirty percent of the carbon dioxid admitted by burning fossil fuels so far. If we didn't have the ocean, we'd be in a much stickier situation. Well, next guest knows all too well the importance of the ocean. Doctor Deborah Brosnan is a marine scientist in environmental risk expert. She's also the head
of the scientific consulting company Deborah Brosnan and Associates. She's just returned from the Global Citizen Forum. It ran alongside the UN Climate Change Conference COP twenty eight in the UAE. Doctor Brosnan joins US from Washington, DC this afternoon. Good to have you with us this afternoon, doctor Brosnan. What did you find in COP? How did you How were the vibes? I mean, I've heard in scenes news reports about sort of both sides of the spectrum here.
So COP is very interesting. So the first week of COP was extremely hopeful. I came into COP and then day one I felt optimistic. All of a sudden, we had two nations, UAE and Germany pledged one hundred million dollars each towards loss and damage, which is really to help small island, developing states and emerging nations deal with the loss and the damage from climate change that they didn't cause. So there was a huge level of optimism, and week one we saw that develop more and more
and that people were very positive. Week two, which is what we're coming to the close of right now, which is when really a lot of the negotiations started, the mood really began to change and then a COP felt like one hundred thousand people all running around talking but
not necessarily doing. And what we're seeing right now, as you know, we've gone into overtime at COP twenty eight because nations are battling whether to include in the language to phase out fossil fuels, or simply to say it would be a good idea and it could be done in this way. So COP twenty eight has been I think, like many cops, starting strong with a lot of hope and then getting mirred, mired in politics and marred in
nations really battling for different interests. On the other hand, it's fair to say that everybody at COP, everybody knows we're in a climate crisis, and everybody knows that something must be done urgently. The challenge is in the agreements.
Why is it so important to protect the oceans. Is it about the sea life within the ocean, or are we more a cop talking about how it relates to climate change a COP.
We're talking more about how it relates to climate change, because that is the focus of COP. But the reason it's really important to protect the oceans goes even beyond copp and climate. The ocean's cover three quarters of our planet and we literally depend on them for they produce half of the planet's oxygen, and in terms of climate change, they're absorbed over ninety percent of the excess heat. Now the oceans support three billion people more or less indirectly.
The level of which we depend on the oceans is something I think most people don't fully understand. Along the coastline, where you have coral reefs, where you have oyster reefs and sand dunes, those nature based solutions, those nature natural habitats actually buffer us against sea level rise and climate change. So our relationship with the ocean is fundamental to our survival, and the challenge really is that people don't fully understand it.
So our oceans really if they were a country, they drank seventh in the world, so they would be a major presence at cop But yet there the lowest evolved funding of the sustainable development goals. So we really have to up our attention to the ocean and we can.
Yeah, they do seem like an afterthought now that you know. In preparing for this, I kind of felt like, you know, we don't necessarily talk about the ocean a lot in the context of climate change. We talk so much about greenhouse gas emissions, and we talk about a transition away from fossil fuels, but we talk about forests, of course, but oceans we don't talk about it in the same way.
Ocean shot. Now, this is a really cool project that I want to make sure we're covering, use AI cameras, explain what it is and what you've discovered just over the last year.
So ocean Shot was designed to focus on the a little bit more. I spoke about the value of coral reefs in providing habitats, in breaking wave action so that we keep sand on the beach, protect coastal properties, and support fisheries and biodiversity. So ocean Shot was designed to literally design the kind of coral reef structure that we need to have an our oceans for today in the future, the kind of habitats they provide, and then to build and create those structures and put them in the sea.
And we deployed our first ocean Shot in our Antigue and Barbuda last year and we watch we've planted it with nine different species of corals. But over that one year, we put artificial artificial intelligence cameras on those reefs to see what kind of species we've had and what kind of species we're showing up and use the AI technology to identify those species. So within a year we had thirty six species of fish start to come in and literally set up home in our modules along with octopus,
along with lobster and a host of other species. And what it really showed us with the cameras is that once we provide the habitat for species, they do come. Those thirty six species of fish would not have existed without these ocean shot reefs. And the other thing we're learning is that we can restore these these reef habitats these reefs in a way that is scalable and transferable, particularly emerging nations where we find most of these coral reefs.
So it's been a fascinating experiment and we're planning on doing some more.
Yeah, I mean thirty six new species of fish. I'm curious what does progress look like when it comes to ocean restoration. Is there an element of irreversible damage to coral reefs or can we actually make progress and restore reefs to a level that you know there were years ago.
Yeah, I think that that's a really important question as to what do we define as success and progress. I think corals are in trouble this year, in particular, we had water temperatures one hundred and one degrees fahrenheit off Florida, and that's, by the way, the temperature of a hot tub, so corals were immersed in that and we saw a huge amount of coral bleaching immortality. So we're working very
hard to restore resilient corals. But the other part of success is to say, with these habitats that have been either destroyed or degraded and literally collapsed, that success to me is restoring and creating habitats that are viable into the future that will transition to the climate change that we're having, and where we start to see communities, biological communities of fish invertebrates that are important to the reef but also important to us, either for food or recreation
or other Even medicines today start to come back and establish themselves, but also persist because there's no doubt we are going through a huge transition in the earth. There is no way we're going back to the reefs of thirty forty fifty years ago any more that we're going back to the world of thirty forty years ago. We have to build for the future.
We have thirty seconds left and can and with an optimistic note, what makes you optimistic about the future.
Oh, I'm hugely optimistic because I can see that whatever's happening in copp When you look around you, scientists like me are taking action and doing work. I just did an underwater panel with Paddy. They're working on one billion divers, actually doing work in the ocean to change things. The upcoming generation takes for granted that we're going to take action. I'm hugely optimistic that we are going to get through this in a positive way and have a better world.
Well really appreciate you joining us, especially after so much travel over the last few days. Doctor Deborah Brosnan, marine scientist and environmental risk expert, the head of the scientific consulting company Deborah Brosnan and Associates