Singing from the same song sheet

Today I attended the introductory seminar of our new artist in residence Andy Crabb. Andy is an accomplished film maker and his project “Òrain na Mara/ Songs of the Scottish Sea” will extend over a period of two years. He will be working with musicians Chris Stout & Catriona McKay to produce four short films and a number of more technical documentaries. The work will involve collaboration with SAMS’ scientists and local schools and is supported by investment from Creative Scotland.

Forty lengths of the pool put me in the right mood for a long day today but I left the seminar with an even bigger internal buzz. Andy showed us some of his earlier work including the films that were the backdrop to the band Suede at some of its biggest concerts. This is an exciting project; not at the periphery of SAMS’ activities but right at the core of what we stand for.

The latest progress report from Marine Scotland (the branch of Government that is responsible for the marine environment) highlights the public opinion surveys that we conducted as part of the EU project KnowSeas that I coordinate. These surveys, conducted by a major professional polling company in seven European countries, have given us unprecedented insights into the knowledge about the sea of working age citizens and their views on who is best able to manage the problems it is facing. We demonstrated that people were poorly informed about the sea and very sceptical about current EU and national institutions.

Sadly, younger people often seemed less informed and motivated than older generations. On the other hand, the older ‘baby boomer’ generation (to which I belong) is far more sceptical of institutions; a pathetic 8% of UK interviewees felt that the EU was competent to manage the marine environment. With 12%, the Government didn’t fare much better! Confidence in scientists was much higher though, well over 50% thought they were competent to manage the marine environment. All of this is ironic of course because, for the most part, scientists would have no wish to be managers and prefer to give their advice to the Government and the EU!

Clearly though, apart from the ‘democratic deficit’ there is a serious knowledge gap and difficulty to form values about the marine environment. After all, only a lucky few of us ever get to see below the surface. Interestingly, when we asked what aspect of the marine environment was most important, UK respondents uniquely highlighted marine landscapes whereas most others pointed to the climate and weather. So people do value the attractiveness of our seas and coasts but have little understanding of the submarine world.

Many of the scientists in SAMS are happy to engage in the work of informing the public through innovative and classical means despite being very hard worked, especially in the current economic climate. The second Festival of the Sea is about to begin and this provides a focal point for these activities and we appreciate the help of our sponsors and local people in this work. Soon we will also be inaugurating the Scottish Ocean Explorer Centre to help bring our science to the wider public but more about that later.

So that takes me back to Andy’s project. Here is an opportunity to help form new values by helping people to connect with ‘the great unseen’. Unlike classic documentary makers who use a carefully crafted narrative to guide the viewers, Andy’s artistic work is entirely based on the medium of images accentuated by music. In a world that is crowded with messaging, sales pitches and, dare I say it, propaganda, this art form opens the mind and stimulates the formation of values by not telling people what to think; no risk of feeling patronised by silence. And, as we saw in the recent Oscar triumph of the silent film “The Artist”, Hollywoodesque dogmas are being overthrown by people hungry for something ‘new’. I look forward to our first contribution to this genre and the reaction it provokes.

Is UK marine research on a slippery slope?

Last week I was part of an international team invited by the Dutch institute Deltares to conduct an audit of part of their science and technology. Deltares is a huge institution with some 900 staff working alongside the public sector facilitating applied science and knowledge transfer. It incorporated the former Delft Hydraulics with its mind blowing array of hydraulic test facilities, up to almost football pitch scale and a new flume that will be 5m wide and ten deep. It was good to see an emphasis on social science and policy advice; almost 90 people working in this sector alone. The Netherlands, like many other European countries, are seeing public sectors squeezed very hard and the economic relevance of funded science is coming under increasing scrutiny.

Not every country has the same attitude to science however. Germany has taken seriously what was once coined as the ‘Obama factor’ – a push for increased investment in science and technology as a motor for economic growth in the medium to long term. Maybe they are doing it even better than the Obama administration which has its own battles with the sometimes uncooperative Congress. Recently, the replacement was announced of the huge German polar research vessel ‘Polarstern’ – an investment of some €250 millions, dwarfing the UK’s recent controversial investment in the new RRS Discovery (we could have bought a fleet of three of them for the cost of the Polarstern!). The question on the table therefore is ‘are we seeing the decline of the UK’s marine research’?

Let’s have a look at some of the evidence: We are accustomed to measuring research in terms of published output. A few years ago, I was invited to chair a panel evaluating the effectiveness of a Swedish research council’s investment in marine science and some Swedish colleagues conducted a fascinating bibliometric study of ten years of publications from 1999-2008. The study looked at key marine science publications, some 38,000 publications from a database of over 10 million. Of these, 23% were from the USA, followed by 8.2% from the UK, 7% Canada, 5.8% Australia, 4.2% France, 4.1% Germany, then Spain, Japan and Italy. So far so good for the UK; we could be seen as punching hugely above our weight. But maybe that is because we have long insisted as measuring science by what is published in key journals rather than how the science is used in our strategic interest, economy and society. Germany does not simply invest in polar science to produce good publications but to increase the knowledge base in a way that can lead to new technologies and knowledge, access to markets, etc … and also for the societal good. And many of these investments are long term. I have witnessed huge investments in sophisticated studies of gas hydrates for example – giving Germany a head start in the field. And is it coincidence that Germany’s rather small slice of the North Sea was full of wind farms long before anybody else had developed them on such a large scale?

I am not trying to argue against high quality publication; quite the contrary, it is a survival game for us all. But the load groan from scientists when they were told that a small measure of impact would be considered in the next Research Evaluation Framework reveals the need for a culture shift that extends all the way to the core of UK science funding and the academic community. We need to look beyond our shores to see how other countries have benefitted from their investment in science, valued it and are – sometimes – prepared to plough more money back into it. Perhaps we can develop a new societal compact with benefits on all sides, an overall expansion of UK marine science and continued production of the key papers.

Comments?

Laurence Mee, 5 March, 2012

Welcome to my crow's nest

Sharing his thoughts: Professor Laurence Mee

Last week, Anuschka (our Head of Communications) suggested that that I should write a blog and in a moment of weakness I agreed. Last time I did this was when I was on a cruise in Western Greenland, working late at night and to tight deadlines. This time, it will be more relaxed, totally random and perhaps irreverent. I have called it 'from the crow's nest' though the tabloid edition might be 'from the murky depths'. It has no secret agenda but you may get some insights about SAMS and the Scottish Marine Institute, marine science or my unstructured mind.

Talking of the crow's nest reminds me of time spent on a research ship in the tropical Pacific. One of my colleagues was a whale observer, Anelio, a highly experienced Chilean scientist who had been a senior political figure, narrowly escaped from the repression of Pinochet and had returned to his passion of marine mammals. Every day for a month, rain or shine, he disappeared up to the crow's nest with his beer bottle thick spectacles, notebook and binoculars. In the evening he waxed lyrical about 'seeing the sperm whale with the bent fluke … again' or large numbers of other species. The problem was that, apart from the odd shark or dolphin, we lower mortals only saw endless blues waves, instruments and sample bottles. So we began to think that he was making it all up.

It was near the end of the cruise that something happened to change our mind. We had been searching for a radio buoy that we launched to track currents and it was getting dark. The Chief Scientist's sense of humour had expired. Our whale observer came up with his floppy hat, thick glasses and cheery smile. "Perhaps I can help" he said – and before the Chief Scientist could swear at him, he had disappeared up the mast, walky talky in hand. Five minutes later, he told the captain to steer 232 degrees for two miles and – bingo – there was the buoy. Reverent (and somewhat guilty) smiles from us all, a beer from the dwindling stock…

How come we never saw the whales? Anelio told us that you had to learn to see beyond the big picture and scan it, as if pixel by pixel, in a systematic way. Then with practice, we saw the odd whale (but never as well as he did or his students).

So why am I telling you this? Well, at SAMS we look at the big picture of the sea but also try to distinguish some of the key details that help understand its function and uniqueness. Contextualising the details in the big picture is crucial to our overall understanding and we can only reach this understanding by working at a number of different scales, temporal and spatial. This requires teamwork and dialogue as well as mutual respect by members of the team. We are still learning to work at different scales and join up all the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle and we are always working hard to secure the funding that enables us to do this work.

By the way, the reason that Anelio saw so many whales was that our study area, the Costa Rica Dome, was an oasis of fertility in a rather unfertile sea. This phenomenon was a consequence of ocean dynamics bringing essential nitrates and phosphates from deeper waters and of atmospheric dynamics bringing a reliable supply of essential iron from the land. Humans play a role too, previously reducing whale numbers and now potentially influencing ocean dynamics through climate change. The big picture is indeed a very complex one. Understanding it can help us to use the marine ecosystem in a more sustainable way and avoid destabilising it in the future.

Laurence