The ocean is our next great economic frontier. Could it replace agriculture? Andrea Vance investigates.
For a century, Ocean Beach freezing works was the marrow of Bluff. The town was the largest exporter of frozen lamb meat until the 1970s, when the industry changed dramatically.
New technology, hygiene standards, deregulation and Britain’s entry to the European Economic Community saw the closure of seven large, older plants.
It devastated the town: close to 1500 were employed at the Alliance works. Southland’s population declined from 99,952 in 1991 to 90,876 in 2006 as workers left and spending power dropped.
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For years, the sheds lay abandoned: a neglected symbol of the boom and bust cycles that characterises agriculture.
But recently, the buildings have come to life again. The freezing works that slaughtered up to 3000 sheep a day are now reborn as a farm: growing hundreds of thousands of tiny pāua in vast tanks.
The farm is on track to produce its first major harvest next year. For Nicolas Lewis, of the University of Auckland’s School of Environment, it’s a perfect example of a blossoming new way of doing business – known as the ‘blue economy’.
“It is people doing things differently, taking some of the stress off oceanic resources,” Lewis says.
Over time, there are plans to grow the site into a tourism hub and aquaculture park, with restaurants, a distillery, a chocolate company, boutique accommodation, functions area, and a redeveloped coastal walkway.
It is predicted to create thousands of jobs – welcome relief in a town constantly overshadowed by the threat of the closure of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.
An ‘ocean’ or ‘marine’ economy is nothing new. Empires and the industrial revolution were built on sea-going trade in spices, slaves, whale oil, and precious metals.
Fishing crews are one of the oldest users of the seas. Post World War II, the development of offshore drilling saw the oil industry expand into almost every continental shelf and in every ocean of the world, fuelling the petroleum age.
In the old, business-as-usual model, maritime and marine resources were exploited through industrial commercial fishing or deep-sea fossil fuel extraction.
But the ‘blue economy’ is not just about money. It refers to activities that are both based in, and which are actively good for the ocean. It includes non-market benefits: carbon storage, coastal protection, cultural values and biodiversity.
Aquaculture, seaweed farming, offshore renewable energy, low-carbon marine transport, tourism and biotechnology are other examples.
“We’re saying that the economy doesn’t have to be inherently nasty and extractive and require management by government,” Lewis says. “We can do the economy differently.”
It makes up an estimated 5% of the world’s GDP and affects the livelihoods of 350 million people. If the global blue economy were a country, it would be the seventh largest in the world, and a member of the G7.
The concept was front and centre at the UN Oceans Conference in Lisbon last month, where the UNDP launched a “promise” to help 100 coastal countries “realise the maximum potential” of their blue economies by 2030.
Experts believe New Zealand is perfectly positioned to pioneer this wave. The nation is blessed with a vast ocean estate (at over 4,083,000 square kilometres it’s the world’s seventh-largest maritime area) with significant quantities of natural resources, many still to be explored.
With this in mind, in 2014 the then-National government funded a $71m 10-year science programme called the Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge.
Based out of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), the project brought together 250 ecologists, biophysical scientists, social scientists, economists, and experts in mātauranga Māori [Māori knowledge] to try and better understand human-induced changes affecting oceans, and the implications of those managing resources.
The scientists began their work as society began to call for a sea-change in the face of rising global inequality, climate change and environmental degradation. Halfway through the project, Covid-19 and global geopolitical insecurity added new significance.
Lewis is the blue economy project leaderand believes it could overtake earnings from agriculture.
“If we must think about it in economic terms related to GDP, which is the way we normally think of these things, then absolutely. We can build an aquaculture industry that is as big as dairy farming and potentially less damaging.
“But I find it slightly worrying that we think about it in those terms.”
The challenge comes in completely upending how we think about an economy, he says.
“I would prefer we thought about jobs and livelihoods rather than GDP. That the oceans are available for us to secure our future livelihoods and prosperity. That they are a source of protein and a source of food, fertiliser, clean energy.”
The ‘blue economy’ also has the potential to alter our notions of ownership. Unlike land, few parts of our oceans are permanently or exclusively occupied, or owned. Much of the resource (like the surface or seabed, currents or tides) is temporary, and not fixed in location and a maritime area can have multiple uses, occurring at different times.
By and large, the seas are held ‘in common’. But this comes with its own problems: the ‘tragedy of the commons’ theory holds that resources held in common tend to be overused to the point of inefficiency.
“If we have enough will, we can allocate and utilise resources to deliver our imaginations of a better future, in ways that we can’t really think about on land because of private ownership,” Lewis says. “The oceans remain in our control, which is fantastic.”
The Government has begun to turn its attention to management of the ocean’s bounty. In June, it launched a major report signalling an overhaul of outdated laws that protect the oceans.
In the same week, Oceans and Fisheries Minister David Parker gave a speech to Auckland University in which he outlined plans to grow the aquaculture sector to $3bn in annual revenue, which includes investing in Ōpotiki Harbour and mussel farming in the Bay of Plenty.
Parker also spoke of the need to reform the commercial fishing sector to ensure it is sustainable, productive, and inclusive. The Government has launched an industry transformation plan.
“The amount of wild caught fish in New Zealand is unlikely to significantly increase,” Parker said. “So, we need to focus on increasing the value of the catch.”
He pointed to emerging innovations in fishing methods, traceability, and data analytics.
Lewis agrees the industry needs to change. He says the issue is scale – and taking fish at a community level is sustainable.
“We should go back to square one, if only because the fisheries economy has certain limits to its future,” he says. “We can’t grow it as a commodity economy. New Zealand, and the fishing companies, can make more money off fish into the future because it is increasingly scarce and so you are getting a return on the scarcity rate as prices go up.
“That begs the questions: who takes it, who benefits, and how much fish do we take?”
The Sustainable Seas work is not just conceptual. Researchers have worked on assessing degradation caused by human activities, and the potential for recovery and restorative marine economies.
One stream is investigating how to source capital for blue economy projects, and attempting to develop financial reporting and measures that take into account social, community or environmental benefits as well as financial returns.
A major research theme is Tangaroa: Māori-led or partnered research that is informed by traditional knowledge and practices.
The projects bring direct benefits to iwi and hapū involved. In the Bay of Plenty, researchers worked with mussel (kuku) farmers to seed spat onto lines. To avoid using microplastics entering the water and the kaimoana, they turned to weaving experts to create lines from harakeke, tī kōuka and kiekie (a woody climber).
The mussel lines became so heavy with about 20,000 kuku per line that researchers initially couldn’t spot them sunk below the water.
Scientists are also working with iwi in Ōhiwa Harbour to tackle a plague of pātangaroa (11-armed seastars) which are causing a decline in populations of kuku, pipi and cockles.
Because they can regrow lost limbs, the sea stars may have bioactive properties that could aid healing and skin health and may be a source of marine collagen, an in-demand ingredient for cosmetics and supplements.
The project was established to improve ecosystem health but harvesting and processing the seastars could bring an income stream.
The challenge also aims to grow a fledgling seaweed sector. The global industry is valued at more than $21 billion and production has more than doubled in the last 20 years. More than 30% comes from farming.
Serean Adams of the Cawthron Institute leads the work. The industry could thrive – our seas have more than 950 species and there is increasing demand for seaweed for food, nutraceuticals, supplements, beauty products and livestock feed, she says. But the existing sector is small, fragmented, and held back by regulatory barriers.
Her team worked on exploring the environmental effects of regenerative seaweed aquaculture and helped developed a regulatory framework and industry body.
One venture is using mātauranga Māori and western science to investigate if native algae can prevent and treat sunburn. The aim is to create environmentally-friendly sunscreen, as an alternative to products that are harmful to corals and other marine life.
Another significant area of research is marine tourism. A market economics investigation estimated it contributes the largest slice of the value of marine economic activities – roughly 40% – and 62% of jobs.
Simon Milne, Director of Auckland University of Technology’s New Zealand Tourism Research Institute, believes there is an opportunity to “build back better” after the industry was decimated by Covid-19.
He has worked with local businesses including 2XS, a fishing charter business that is moving into providing maritime and cultural experiences in the Hauraki Gulf. Milne says it represents an example of an extractive marine tourism business looking to shift to “more sustainable visitor offerings”.
Operator Murray Campbell says it is “a dream within grasp”. It is also, he says, a way of doing business that is more satisfying.
“We want our guests to have a complete experience on the Hauraki Gulf,” he says. “And that’s about understanding the pre-European culture of the place, deeply understanding the marine ecosystems below the surface. And, and a really important thing is we want them to taste the seafood before they go home.
“So we’re not going out there to fish for as many fish as they can catch. I wanted to provide a different experience of spending more time on preparing the food, then eating, enjoying and understanding the food.”
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