AAAS Session - The Ocean Health Index: Diagnosis for a Crowded Blue Planet

Synopsis
We ask a lot from the world’s ocean. We expect renewable energy, bountiful seafood, thriving coastal communities, and gorgeous places to explore. But reaping these benefits involves tough choices in how we use and protect the ocean. To achieve a sustainable future in the face of climate change and other stressors, we need a tool to proactively evaluate the collective impacts of our actions and policies on the benefits we expect and value from the ocean.
 
In this session, we unveiled a new tool to assess the ocean’s ability to meet our current and future needs -- the Ocean Health Index. In a single number, the Index encapsulates the benefits people receive from the ocean, explicit tradeoffs among those benefits, and cumulative impacts of various activities on the continued delivery of those benefits. In addition to the overall rating, the Index also tracks progress toward 10 discrete policy goals, ranging from seafood provision to livelihoods to biodiversity.
 
Speakers highlighted why the Index was developed, the types of results you can expect to see (results of the first global application of the Index are currently in review), innovative approaches to setting targets, the flexibility of the tool, advances in understanding of oceans as coupled systems, and guidance for using the Index to craft policy and optimize management.

Co-organizers

• Karen McLeod, COMPASS
• Ben Halpern, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
• Steve Katona, Conservation International

Speakers

• Karen McLeod, COMPASS
  
  • The Ocean Health Index: From metaphor to measurement
• Ben Halpern, NCEAS and UCSB
  
  • Mapping the health of the world’s ocean
• Jameal Samhouri, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA
  
  • Sea Sick? Reference points for ocean health
• Catherine Longo, NCEAS
  
  • Do it yourself: Flexible applications of the Ocean Health Index
• Heather Leslie, Brown University
  
  • Applying knowledge of human-ocean connections at the local scale
• Andrew Rosenberg, Conservation International
  
  • Are We Feeling Better? The Ocean Health Index as a Tool for Policy and Management

Discussants

• Daniel Pauly, Sea Around Us Project, University of British Columbia
• Larry Crowder, Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University