forming species such as that this Coraline algae shown on the bottom left, or modeling more complex responses. For example, diatoms are predicted to benefit from increased CO2. However, this study based in off of Antarctica found that with natural enrichment, diatoms were indeed enhanced. However, the composition and size of the phytoplankton, the diatoms shifted. And this resulted in changes in nutrient use efficiency and reduced export efficiency. So there's sometimes some unintended outcomes or not unintended, but rather unexpected outcomes. So other studies focused on complex meta-analyses to look at some of these outcomes to determine whether the type of response to CO2, whether it's consumption, growth, metabolic rate, movement, or survival, and whether it's to CO2 warming and low oxygen, whether that's predictable across responses and across a broad array of species. And so we are learning much, but we also have much to learn. So we talk a lot about non-stationary responses and non-stationary relationships indicate that the effects of environmental conditions such as temperature and OA on organismal patterns and processes can vary over time and intensity and or direction. They suggest sometimes that there is some sort of physiological threshold or tipping point that has been reached. This makes predictions and projections really tricky, but it is really important to understand these for mitigating OA or in understanding how OA signals are communicated to higher trophic levels. While best practices documents provide guidance on how to disentangle components for the carbonate system, it's also important to quantify OA in a multiple stressor context. As OA may exacerbate or induce additional stressors, including HABS, which I'll talk about in a minute. Multiple stressors can interact and be different in their dominance over time and over different life history stages, as is shown in this work by Berger, who mapped out present and future stressors for a dungeonous crab, which occupy a benthic or pelagic habitat at different life stages. And even if concurrent stressors do not have interactive effects at a given life stage, multiple stressor effects could emerge across development. Such carryover effects have not been studied much in the context of OA and could be a fruitful avenue of research. And finally, while regional biogeochemical models embedded in Earth's system models are ideal for forecasting, projection, and attribution of drivers to assess for mitigation and adaptation pathways, this will require access to high performance computing and potentially coordinated nested approaches across many institutions. All right, so to phytoplankton, phytoplankton community composition is also changing in response to multiple stressors. Harmful algal blooms occur when species rapidly grow and accumulate, and these species can be noxious, resulting in hypoxia when the blooms subsequently decay, or they can produce toxins that directly or indirectly through bioaccumulation can affect human health. There's much attention on the role of OA in promoting HAB blooms and hypoxia. HAB blooms, sorry, HAB blooms and toxicity, and this is in terms of CO2 fertilization effects, changing the availability of dissolved nutrients, and changing the behavior of grazers. This is especially true for the case of pseudonitia, which can form large blooms off of our coast of North America and the West Coast, such as what happened in response to a persistent marine heat wave in 2015. Some species, but not all, of pseudonitia produce demoic acid, which is a neurotoxin that can bioaccumulate and shellfish and making them unsafe to eat. In 2015, toxin levels were incredibly high, and they made their way through the food web to impact the number of fisheries and marine mammals. This led to long delays in the dungeness crab fisheries and a complete shutdown of the razor clam harvest, and resulting in financial and cultural devastation throughout the West Coast fishing and tribal communities. Newspapers described that surge in food bank usage in their local communities, suggesting a lack of revenue was leading to food insecurity. Now, coherent management relies heavily on monitoring with some course predictive capacity based on circulation based modeling, but little ecosystem modeling. And there's still huge uncertainty in the science. So this case study and general uncertainties have resulted in a suite of research priorities that have been set through a couple of recent synthesis by the HAB community across four broad themes. Bloom ecology and toxin production is one, a second one is toxic pathways and effects. A third is food webs, understanding the effects of HABs on food webs and ecosystems. And this includes novel interactions such as what is currently happening and being investigated off the coast of Oregon and as a potential cause for recent muscle die offs. Finally, we, one priority is understanding the public health and socioeconomic impacts. Now, while management current management mitigates most of the acute health issues as climate continues it will be important to understand the cumulative effects of low levels toxins through time. So, and also an additional priority or perhaps even an umbrella would be to integrate this social understanding into HABs within a multi stressor framework. So continued development of both high tech tools such as imaging systems and environmental DNA and training the next generation to use them will be incredibly critical. So, in terms of science support there are no easy solutions to the issues of context dependency and non stationary ecosystems. So, I would encourage us to think about our strategies for addressing these and whether we invest in a means to conduct more experiments, develop flexible and modular yet mechanistic model frameworks and or bolster our observational capacity. And I would encourage us to think about how we do that in a way that promotes access, equity and inclusion. I would also encourage us to think about what infrastructure and history exists and support activities that add capacity to the science and to the community that address ecological complexity and promote inter calibration activities with similar programs in other regions. So one example that I'm showing you here is the Newport line, whose observations of ocean conditions and lower traffic level patterns have provided a platform for collaborative science instrument testing and fisheries management and indicator development for the last 26 plus years. I would suggest that we strengthen partnerships between networks. For example, NSF long term ecological research sites can exchange mechanistic insights for the observations and technology associated with the marine biodiversity observation network. The have and global ocean acidification observation networks and oh I this could illuminate things such as how the composition, the magnitude and location and fate of blooms changes with changing circulation, chemistry and temperature that contribute to have and fisheries research, but also basic science on the carbon cycle and climate feedback. So one path for interagency cooperation is through the national ocean partnership program, which is highlighted as a means to accomplish broad transdisciplinary goals in the ocean climate action plan. And last to end, I'd like to state that the understanding the effect of multiple climate stressors on marine ecosystems will require a long term transdisciplinary vision that may require reframing our traditional structures of teaching research and collaboration. We'll need to build a climate ready workforce to address have a issues going into the future. And one great example of this is the next gen program from NETA, which provides student scholarship support, meaningful paid internships fellowships and job opportunity match ups, including in the federal sector. We'll need to train and practice transdisciplinary research. And one example I'm showing you here is from OS use NSF research traineeship in risk and uncertainty. And here students teamed upon problems under to including to understand the multiple stressor effects on Pacific cod. They brought together machine learning, geo visual methods, bio energetic modeling and vulnerability assessments, all together in a collaborative framework. And then finally, I'd like to encourage us all to as as we're going forward over the next decade to form meaningful and sustainable community collaborations. And one such pathway is something such as collaborative fisheries research, such as the pilot harmful angle bloom observatory shown below. And here commercial fishermen partnered with scientists off the Oregon coast to contribute to observations and modeling to promote and to create a have early warning system. And with that, I'll go ahead and close and say thank you. And I guess we'll start to collect questions. Okay, well, thank you. Thank you very much. Got some questions already and I'll be some more coming along. Thank you. The first one I have is, is from tuba and it's endorsed by several others it says you give, I think it's probably for Alexis you gave examples of technology to measure and assess away habs. Is there technology being developed to mitigate. Yes, and so technology what is technology, I think is a little bit of things so mitigating away and habs I think for away the first thing is carbon emissions so obviously reducing carbon emissions habs have multiple, I think things that cause them so there's definitely some cultural policies that are being looked at that also are contributing to ocean acidification and habs from technology standpoint. I think it's very early. There's some low tech, like multi trophic culture and things like that has that has been studied. And then things that you're going to hear about that I say are still very experimental on the marine carbon dioxide removal, some of which are focused more on removing atmospheric carbon. Some aren't focused on reducing ocean acidification. Some are more focused on reducing ocean acidification, but I will caution that they're very in the early phases. And I think we do not get understand those. I personally think that the number one thing to emphasize is carbon emission reduction, and then local lands management and agricultural and local sources of carbon. So I don't know if that would be technology, so much as policy and but I do think that the technology role is helping with those decisions right and those trade offs of understanding what's the attribution of local sources of carbon or other things to the coastal system and where can local policy interventions make a difference to the technology for the mitigation is understanding the attribution to inform when a pot local policy intervention will make a difference versus when it's a global process. Maria, you probably can weigh in on that as well. I'm less familiar with the mitigation side of things. It's more of the adaptation. And it's I'm in particularly with with halves part of that has to do with understanding early. Whether a bloom is in development and where it might actually end up in a couple of weeks. And so that's where some of the circulation modeling comes in. However, what doesn't happen concurrently and there's a little less organization on in terms of the states is actually looking in the shellfish. I mean, having sufficient monitoring in the shellfish to see if they're actually consuming those those hats. And that's that's kind of where they want to go because they don't want to shut down and shutting down means the loss of revenue. It means the loss of cultural activities. And quite often they're not accumulating at that at that time, even if it's it's hot right above them. So I think thinking about multi-scaled observational systems that are somewhat nimble would be helpful. I'm not entirely sure how the policy and the management framework that goes from perhaps a tribe or a municipality to the state to a region to say NOAA, how that might maintain being nimble. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's more adaptation that is really has been the focus, like even on the OASide, the adaptation in the oyster hatchery has been on monitoring and then making adjustments to the tanks or the intake water. That's not mitigation of the problem, whereas reducing the influx of carbon into the system that would be a mitigation process, which I think there have been some efforts in Washington state. To look at that and look at attributes of the agricultural runoff versus atmospheric signal versus upwelling signal of OAS to understand how, but there's other people who can answer that better than me. Hey, I think Allison has a question. I wasn't expecting to read it. Thanks, ladies. My question is a little bit related to tubas, but do you believe that NSF is investing enough in terms of funding for innovative tools and defining new methodologies for assessing OAS and HABS? I think that there can be more. I think that there's some great examples of investments in concrete, like individual pieces of technology. What I'm really interested in is how do we match the different existing pieces of technology in new ways to answer questions, because I think that that's not necessarily something that I'm seeing a lot of people working, or at least it's not may talked about as much maybe because it's not funded and it's not something people get excited about to apply to. Okay, how can you utilize existing platforms or new platforms to answer some of these really tricky questions? So the multimodal, the bringing in satellite and low tech and high tech and all these things. And really incentivizing people to do the hard work of integrating across platforms and creating methodologies for that because these questions are coming really fast and we don't have time necessarily to design new technologies. But there's a lot of good technology out there that possibly could be adapted. And then that will help us better understand where the gaps really do need something new, like a new sensor or a whole new system. Maria, what do you think? Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I think while high tech sensors are always going to be useful and useful in terms of cutting edge science, I think sometimes we need that some funding to go to the kind of cross calibration communities in where you're taking the $2 million sensor and you're comparing it to the $10,000 sensor that the community is going to have in their hands. Because sometimes it's a matter of not necessarily the precision of the instruments but being able to see the processes where the process is happening. And also to empower and make those relationships with those local communities who will be your eyes, your eyes on the water. I mean, with cooperative fisheries research, for example, we have to make concessions about the quality of a given single measurement, but we're getting 300 instead of none during things being shut down. We're also having to kind of think a little more creatively about how we frame scientific questions because we may not be able to, I mean, we can't create a perfect sample grid. They're going to go where the fish are. And so, but at the same time, we can use that, for example, to help inform, to validate satellites that will fill in those gaps or to validate instruments or novel instruments. So I think having those kind of partnerships with, as you're doing those high tech, low tech intercalibration, it's going to, I think it'll be fruitful. I completely agree. And I think it's not really being done at large scales. I think it's being done in small scales on people's volunteer time. Or by groups like mine that are kind of nonprofits kind of trying to do these things with the pieces of funding that we get, but doing it at a large scale with a group of experts that have the expertise to do those, those assessments and to say, okay, it looks like, you know, if you get 100 samples of this quality, you're nearing the ability to make a judgment on this. And to be able to write those sort of decision trees of, okay, you could use this type of data to answer this type of question. If you have this type of calibration process, I think that would be very useful. Okay, Jason, you have a question. Yeah, thank you both for the talk. This is Jason link. You partly touched on the answer to the first question, but a lot of the Habs community away community focus on observations and measurements and fancy sensors and all this stuff that I couldn't even begin to name that you showed. So thank you. What I'm wondering is what about predictions what about forecasts and you alluded to mechanistic understanding and that's great. But are we there yet or if not, what do we need to get to Habs forecast and not just in Lake Erie or western Florida around the country. Thank you. Right. And, and I think in the near term I think like the short term for forecasts are where I think some of the rapid machine learning methods, even though we may lose some of that topology some of those like physical mechanisms and we can look at, you know, where we can actually investigate the shapes of the data. We may lose some of that, but we get we get an answer. And then I think what needs to happen is that there needs to be some sort of retrospective analysis to look at how those rapid models and those rapid machine learning models, how they may spatially or morally actually reproduce faithfully some of the biophysical interactions that we may be expecting. And they may also, depending on the type of model they may actually produce new hypotheses and illuminate new interactions that we that may have been obscured in the in the past. So, so I'm not sure if that if that answers are we there yet I think certainly in the West Coast, I don't think we're there in terms of something mechanistic. But I mean, and in part because we may be able to tell when a, you know, as when pseudonymia is dividing or when it even maybe when it's toxic. But we won't be able to necessarily couple, couple that with when the razor clam are feeding or and because that might be up to local, you know, something very, very local and constrained and so I think there's still always going to be a need for observations. But I think there are ways that we can be much more savvy with our model inter comparisons than we maybe happen. Yeah, on the way front I'm definitely not the right person that answer that I think like Sam said lucky who's one of the people that Maria had on her would be the right person to answer that I do think that having heard Sam, give a lot of talks and is that the only places where I think we're approaching that modeling and predictive capacity is where there's a lot of data. I think that gives you in a little bit of information about the importance of the monitoring. We're only able to produce any sort of reliable predictions in the places where we have the best, honestly data in the world, which is in the Pacific Northwest. And I think we have to recognize that now are there other ways to collect that data that might be cheaper, maybe, right. And so we don't necessarily have to do it the same way that it's been done here. But that's just the reality of I think being able to produce those types of models but I think Sam said lucky is the best person to answer that question. Okay, Peter, you have a question I think could you unmute and ask a question. Gladly. Thank you all that was fantastic. So, I'm going to sort of stumble through this so bear with me if it's not very clear but so often our approach to understanding or meeting kind of community needs is is for NSF to reach out to academics and try and make informed decisions but but sometimes I feel like we in the Academy often, you know, fail to inverse invert that model. And what I'm getting at is, do you have suggestions for us and for the NSF on, or for all of us on how communities might best represent their local needs you know in some cases, they at some communities may be more financially replete than others but they have a particular different set of concerns that others and there's a lot of granularity that I think we lose. And I'm not, I'm not sure how to how to collate and present that information I'm curious if you two have any ideas. Thank you. So, in terms of information transfer, at least with the fishing community on our local Sea Grant and Oregon Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, they've set up a science and Fisher, well it used to be called a science and fisherman exchange or safe and so it was kind of a closed door situation where the scientists and fishermen would have a have a dialogue. And that's a space I think where people felt safe enough to articulate their needs without necessarily having a shared vocabulary, because that I think is a that's that's a stumbling point and in terms of what we would call like spatial variability what that means and all yeah and so And I think that's that's really useful. It does require someone embedded in the community and who maybe is that part of a boundary organization or something that that can talk about talks and can get the people in the room who need to be in the room and because the flip side is is that it's part of our job right to go to conferences and go and listen and dialogue. It's part of it's not part of a fisherman's money making right it's it's detracting them from from their work. And so, getting them is really, really a service and so part of this. I mean, and part of the things we've discussed is like, how do we compensate people for their participation for their time and for their honest feedback and so I mean that that might be one. I completely agree on the boundary organization I was just gonna say finding the boundary organizations which is like kind of a buzzword but like basically the people who are already in those spaces who already have the trust it can take 1020 years to build that level of trust and the grant we already have that amazing institution in all of our states so I think that's an obvious one and investing in them, but working with them to identify some of those needs, because I think they're in the best position to answer some of those questions. Because it's really hard and yeah I think a lot of people are getting hit there as there's more emphasis on co design and equity, a lot of these communities are getting more more requests for their time, which is like the opposite of what I think is useful to then figuring out how to do that in a good way and then again I think the boundary organizations are key, but also they need staff time because they're also getting overwhelmed. And so, you know, if it's the kind of thing where the academies and NSF want more of that engagement then figuring out if there's a strategy for that for a national strategy for boundary organizations to get this type of feedback, you know, working with Sea Grant seeing how they're thinking about this from a national level, working in the interagency working groups to figure out how they're considering that there's more and more agencies are putting co design requirements in their funding proposals. So, you know, oftentimes that includes partnering with the Sea Grant office in order to deliver on it, for example. I think Kersi has a question and maybe if you pass the mic over. Thanks. So, turn my camera on for the people that are on the call. So, as part of the infrastructure act that was passed that trillionaire act that was passed back in 2021. It's an amendment to that out of continental shop lands act where they empowered boom and best see that oversight over carbon sequestration in the ocean. And what's transpired from that is a number of terrestrial carbon sequestration companies pursuing and exploring the concept of deep sea carbon sequestration. And so, I recognize that the research on impacts is not there yet in terms of like having a well having that well fleshed out. But if you could speak to the concerns around that, and how we balance that with the concerns for addressing climate change, especially with respect to what I've recognized from engaging with some of these groups is that there's still a misperception about interconnection of the ocean. And so there's a kind of view that, oh, we dump it in the deep sea and it's kind of gone goodbye. Thanks. You may have spelled it out there, right? We don't understand. And that's the problem. I think from the ocean foundations perspective, we are very vocal that we think it's irresponsible to move forward without understanding the risks. And we think that there need to be precautions in place to particularly protect communities that might be taken advantage of as far as experimentation of methods in their backyards, but also recognizing that the ocean is connected. And so any effects are effects for everybody. We don't understand it. And there's a lack of understanding where a lot of these decisions are being made in policy spaces that are not ocean science spaces and financial spaces that are not ocean science spaces. And so I think there's a need for the ocean science community to be vocal about what we don't understand. And about what we know and what we don't know, because no one else is going to be vocal about it if we're not vocal about it. And so, yeah, what are the implications for, you know, sinking biomass in the deep sea? Well, what does it mean to not know? What are the risks associated with not knowing?  Who needs to make that statement? These conversations are happening. Again, you're going to hear from a few people I think next, though I think it's important to note kind of where they're coming from in terms of industry or advocating for certain solutions. Not, you know, there's a lot of science driven work that's happening. That's very good. I think there's also a lot of financially driven work that's happening right now. And I think that there's a need for more rigorous statements from the scientific community, in my opinion, and I think in the ocean foundations opinion is we just don't know. That's a great transition to the next speakers. And so I wanted to thank both of you for your contributions. Very interesting. Research priorities for. OCE Marine CDR. And we have two speakers. My agenda shows Julie first or David second, but whatever whoever wants to go first, go for it. Hi everyone, this is Dave Coak here. I think Julie and I talked about it and decided that I would go first. So I'll get my screen share set up. Thanks, David. Okay. No problem. I actually preface coach coach here prerogative with the thought about this next session because I think what Alexis said was really important. You know, these conversations around marine carbon dioxide removal are happening. Companies are being formed. And so my personal thinking is that we need to be at the table. The science needs to be at the table when these conversations are being had. Because it is important, like Lex has said, that the development of any kind of mitigation technologies happen with the understanding of the science right there from the get go. Right. And so I feel strongly that that that, you know, just, we, we can't just, we can't detach ourselves from that. So that's one of the reasons why I'm excited about this next panel, because I think I'm hoping you all will give us ideas as to how we engage in a productive way with this work. So with that, I'll hand it over to you, David, and then back to back to you. Great. Well, thank you very much. I just want to check really quickly to see that my slides are projecting. Can somebody give me a thumbs up if that's the case. Yeah, we see. Okay, great. Thank you very much for this opportunity, everyone. My name is Dave. I'm the chief scientist of ocean visions. And if you don't know ocean visions is a US based field building organization, we work to scale durable and equitable climate solutions and we've done a lot of work around accelerating ocean based carbon dioxide removal. We work as a networked organization, which means that we're a relatively small nonprofit, but we work with a whole host of institutions that have, excuse me, formal partnerships with ocean visions, they're shown on this graphic. And together we work to develop this agenda around identifying testing evaluating and ultimately scaling viable, equitable, durable climate solutions. So this is a really science based effort. And I actually want to speak to the comment about, I want to speak to the comment from the, from the last speaker, ocean visions organized a an open letter from the scientific community that now has over 400 signatories. These are PhDs in earth, ocean and climate science from around the world that is calling for responsible research for marine CDR technologies. And so if you're concerned about the environmental impacts of MCDR, you should want the science done. And if you think it's a good idea, you should want the science done. And if you're agnostic, you should want the science done because it's the science that will provide the evidence based perspectives that can really help cool the temperature on the conversation around MCDR and help us drive towards the most viable solutions the most quickly. So we're really at this place around CDR because of our relatively slow rated decarbonization and so I want to take a step back here, just for those of you who don't know, and, and give you just a very bit of brief history which is that in 2019 or 2019, the IPCC released a special report on one and a half degree of warming and this is what really set the stage and set the scientific basis for understanding and motivating the need for gigaton scale carbon dioxide removal. There's a very powerful statement in this that in order to limit warming to one and a half degrees with limited or no overshoot, we need something like 100 to 1000 gigatons of carbon dioxide removal this century. That partly depends on our rate of decarbonization and how well we can abate the hard to abate sectors. It also, yeah, so every year that we continue to not decrease our emissions means that we're going to push ourselves further and further up this ladder. So the question amongst the scientific community, the question is not do we need carbon dioxide removal, it is where does that carbon dioxide removal come from. And if you want to think about carbon dioxide removal as a means to rebalance the global carbon cycle you have to understand the various reservoirs of the global carbon cycle so this diagram is showing the various parts of the global of the global carbon cycle. The size of the dot here is proportional to the size of the reservoir and then the yellow is showing the amount of anthropogenic carbon that has been emitted and where that carbon has ended up. And what I want to drive home to you on this plot here is that the deep ocean is by far and away the largest reservoir of carbon on the planet. It's so large that if you took all of the anthropogenic carbon that's ended up in our atmosphere and somehow magically put it in the ocean, it would increase ocean deep ocean dissolved in organic carbon levels by less than 1%. And so when we think about the global carbon cycle, it's really impossible to escape the idea that we could reach gigaton scale carbon dioxide removal without the oceans playing some substantial role. Now there's a whole host of technologies that can contribute to providing ocean based carbon dioxide removal. They're put together on this infographic or the schematic here and they basically span biological and chemical pathways and fundamentally all of them are about either speeding up photosynthesis in the ocean so that the oceans can capture more carbon via photosynthesis and then sequester that carbon in the deep ocean. Or they are chemical approaches that enhance the alkalinity of the ocean in order to allow the oceans to store more carbon in the form of dissolved in organic carbon or more specifically bicarbonate. There's lots of minor details and nuances here but for the principles of this talk I think that's what's most relevant. Ocean Visions has been doing a lot of work for the last three or four years to try to accelerate the research and development and notice I'm not saying the word deployment but the research and development of marine CDR technologies. We've built this suite of online living digital road maps. You can find them on our website ocean visions.org. And they are broken down by specific technologies for ocean based carbon dioxide removal as well as some of the cross cutting social and governance challenges and opportunities that are needed to create the enabling environment for responsible research and development. Each of those maps are broken down into three domains the state of the technology that which goes into the scalability that what we know about the state of the technology currently the environmental risks the environmental co benefits the social risks and the social co benefits. Once we know the state of the technology it helps inform the development gaps and needs which are the second domain this is what we don't know and then the first order priorities which are attractable actions that can be taken to address those knowledge gaps and therefore improve the state of the technology. So, like I said, these have existed on our website for some time now. And one of the things that we have been working on very recently is bringing these into a cohesive narrative framework. And so this is a white paper that we've just produced. It is in press and should be coming out very shortly, like in the next week or two. And the basic idea here behind this white paper is to ask the question, what needs to be done between now and 2030 in order to do all of the science and engineering that's necessary to figure out whether or not these are viable climate solutions and so by viable. We are these effective at drawing down carbon dioxide removal or drawing down carbon dioxide with acceptable environmental and social impacts and I think we shouldn't kid ourselves that if we're going to have gigaton scale carbon removal that we would be able to do that in a way that has no environmental impacts or no social impact. So this is really a question about characterizing those and and society coming together and trying to determine what are acceptable and of course all of that needs to be done on a comparative risk assessment for other mitigation technologies as well as the substantial risks of doing nothing. Okay, so this white paper basically has three pillars they're all interconnected. There's science and engineering. There's policy and then their scalability and for the purposes of this briefing for the committee and thinking about NSF's gender for the next 10 years. I really want to focus on this science and engineering pillar and the science and engineering pillar has a number of needs. I think the number one area that must be supported by governments around the world the US as well as others are a series of controlled field trials for the various MCR technologies that allow you to make data driven statements about efficacy and impacts. There's a number of precursors that need to happen in order to support those controlled field trials. I think we need collaborative design processes to bring people together to agree on how those field trials should be designed and executed. And we also need the spaces in order to do them. So one concept that's been advanced are pre permitted test beds. These are sites in the ocean that have one central regulatory authority and so everybody applies and comes in under a sub permit. And it basically allows you to accelerate the pace of responsible research. There are still outstanding laboratory and mesocosm science questions. I think a really good model here was NSF OAP or ocean acidification program. I think that there could be. There's just very, very strong analogies and so seeing a very similar program set up for addressing laboratory and mesocosm science questions is really key. There are a number of needs around monitoring, reporting and verification related technologies. We need advanced capabilities and sensors. We need even higher resolution models and the associated advances in compute that allow those models to become feasible. And then we need advances in data assimilation capabilities that allow us to integrate models and data to produce the most accurate forecasts and estimates. And finally, I think we need a really coordinated social science research program. I think NSF should get involved in this OCE should be involved in this and they one possibility would be to collaborate with a directorate for social behavior on economic sciences. I think as much as possible, the social science research should be coordinated with field trials so that we're assessing, we're assessing key social science hypotheses in the context of R&D that is actually happening. And it should be coordinated with other governments around the world because social context can differ and different communities and cultures will have very different risk perceptions. So with that, I'd just like to say thank you very much for the opportunity to speak and I'm really looking forward to hearing Julie speak and I'd be happy to answer any other questions that I can. Thanks. Okay, I think we'll hold the questions until the second speaker goes and so Julie, you're on. Julie, are you ready for your presentation? Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to share my screen. Let me see. I think I'm really close. We see it. Is it working? Yep, it is. Okay, super. Thanks. Thanks everyone. Some of you all know me from my past life as an academic. I left that five years ago to help lead a startup in the climate risk space and now I'm on the investing side. And too, but I just wanted to say appreciation for your comments about John Allen. As you know, I was one of his few students that he trained. I did my PhD with you. And I'm so sorry to have missed the tribute. I, my flight got delayed and I was flying back from Iceland at the time of the tribute that sending sending my thoughts to you all in the community on such a big laugh. On my flight, I did get to see the arm under installation flew right off the tip of Greenland and really happy to see that terrific work spotlighted propeller is a venture capital funds that was set up in order to accelerate ocean climate solutions. We have a founding core partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic. So we look at technologies within Woods Hole and ocean science more generally to help solve the climate crisis that we find ourselves in. The, the other activities in our fund relate to investing out in the market were very, very early. So pre seed and seed stage. And we really want to catalyze the acceleration of climate solutions. And one of the motivations for setting up the fund was actually the recognition of the transformations happening in the new blue economy. So these are along the different dimensions you see over on the right. Brick's been read who is who's known to many of us has articulated so clearly. What is entailed in the new blue economy and there's a range of different estimates on the scale of the new blue economy, but it's on the order of several hundred billion dollar market value in the transformations that need to happen in the in the very, very near term. Those, those areas show up in our themes for our investments. You can see in the turquoise highlighted under ocean carbon, ocean organics and ocean industrials are the areas that overlap with the new blue economy. There are other areas that fall somewhat outside of the new blue economy. And that includes ocean CDR and the associated monitoring reporting and verification that would underpin ocean CDR as well as the blue carbon areas seen above and the turquoise. The, as David mentioned, the, the recent IPCC report really emphasizes the role that negative emissions will play and meeting the net net zero goals. And those different approaches. When you look across what what it will take to do those negative emissions represent waste management on a really massive scale. So by some estimates, you can see low and high estimates there by 2030, these just in and of themselves are hundreds of billions of dollars market growing to potentially over a trillion dollars by 2050. So this is why, you know, growing markets, large markets are accelerating interest, not just from the investing side, but, but from startups as well. So some of the areas that David mentioned are listed in a slightly different way here in this diagram that shows on the y axis the technological readiness for deployment at scale for ocean based CDR. And on the x axis is the advancement potential for the new research development and demonstration. So you can see that the, a lot of those approaches that David mentioned are captured here and then they were, they require as an as a prior national science report mentioned a significant investment in order to research them and understand their potential to scale and to to progress along the TRL and a research and development framework. I didn't want to leave this topic before pointing out that the current cost of carbon dioxide removal is quite high. And this is a report from CDR dot FYI, which shows some of the companies and approaches that are now being offered through advanced market commitments. There's a fund called frontier fund that fund that's over a billion dollars from some mainly tech companies who have come together and said that by making advanced market commitments they can help accelerate the technology, lower the cost and lead to greater scalability of some of these approaches and marine CDR is representing a growing part of the portfolio you see it here is that in the purple and the dark green the macro algae and some of the enhanced weathering approaches like project Vesta. But as you can see these the, the price of these is is per ton is still extremely high and these subsidies from frontier fund, for instance, are really designed to grow these capabilities and make them more affordable. So just a few closing thoughts on research needs and marine CDR. As I mentioned, I mean, there's a huge opportunity to on the technology side, really produce sufficient the gains and carbon removal, so leading to lower power more scalable technologies, advancing the TRL and the RD and D aspects of existing technologies is a really important area. Also innovation. I mean, as we see these waves of innovation on CDR and particularly ocean CDR, there's more and more hybrid approaches that really work with the natural systems that are coming in to the in the country defy easy categorization but are some of the more promising approaches that are emerging on the science side. It's come up before during today the importance of widespread carbonate chemistry monitoring. It was also mentioned in relation to monitoring the importance of understanding that can measuring the changes in the stability of ocean carbon sinks. For instance, that might be changed through shifts and amok or the the weakening of a mock ecosystem impacts and also research to inform and or advanced and or advanced regulatory frameworks for how to approach the, the use of these technologies. We had really a beautiful phrase climate scale observatory and I want to echo that here and really emphasize the importance of novel adaptive multi use platforms with low cost sensors and that can build on the capabilities and really hopefully expand capabilities like BCG Argo and CO2 direct flux measurements that were shown so nicely through on the LLI platform. Also, I think it's really important to improve near term high resolution decadal modeling, particularly with the advent of new generative aid eye tools like the transformer architectures and diffusion models for uncertainty that were mentioned during the the AI session earlier. I wanted to just draw attention to a few things that was part of a Clive our AC transition study group. I came out with the report in August and the whole approach of our study was really looking at strategic use cases driven by climate extremes and impacts and to really examine the ways that the measurements and locations of measurements can really tie into societal needs and the importance of identifying climate extremes and there's a lot of strategies in there for funding agencies who are looking at that are seen in our face. A couple of themes I want to draw out. One is on workforce preparation we're seeing a really strong need for people trained in data science it's these are our positions that are are growing over time. We're seeing climate tech and just general climate science and the importance of diversity here was also brought out by by Luan. In terms of orchestration and coordination. I'm going to talk about program centers and initiatives and one of the things that I was part of a national commu sciences study group on sustaining ocean observations. I'm going to go on to the concept of a collective impact organization that can act as a backbone and create the interstitial connectivity to a range of different activities that could span industry startups national labs and be very nimble and agile and yet create transcendent outcomes that go beyond the capabilities of any one of those entities. So an example that's come up through NSF and a collaboration with NOAA are these industry consortia and this new one amounts between NSF and NOAA on climate risk. As it relates to the insurance sector is the latest one there's also been one on wildfire risk in the climate space so I wanted to draw your attention to that. I think this is almost my last slide. There was just announced a dear colleague letter from NSF on interest in CO2 removal and solar radiation management strategies. And this emphasizes that the the it's essentially a drawing attention to these topics. And there isn't a dedicated funding line or a particular call for proposals that's associated with it. And yet it covers a lot of different groups within NSF. And so I think there's an opportunity here to reach also over to the tip directorate or some sort of focused research organization or potential programs that really center CDR research development and demonstration. And also climate scale modeling and observing that could really get at some of the fundamental questions we have about tipping points in the earth system. Thanks for your attention. I'd be really happy to answer questions and engage in a discussion. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you to both you David and Julie. I think you all hit hit this just the right level for us. I see some questions coming in on Slido and I see multiple questions that are really, you know, variations of the same question. So I'll call on on one of those who asked the question. It's sort of maybe that belongs into this family. Cursey, do you want to go ahead and ask your question. And I saw that a number of people also kind of ask similar questions. I'll try to incorporate their questions into my overall question, which is really related to recognizing that the industry related to carbon dioxide removal as far ahead of the science. And I know, David, you were talking about this timeline of the amount of research we need to do. And I think it was 2030 by 2030 or something to that effect if I'm remembering that correctly. And it occurred to me that right now. There are organizations that are applying for permits and getting them to do pilot projects for marine carbon sequestration. So how do we as a science community kind of balance the need to both do work for an industry that's moving faster than we have answers for in terms of impacts. And more importantly, how do we avoid being in this position in the future for other potential. So what are the potential impacts that humans might cause from innovative desires to utilize the ocean and various capacities. I'll maybe start. Yeah, why don't you start. Yeah, so your second question is very difficult to answer but let's start with the first because that's tractable and that's actually happening on the ground. I want to add that I think part of the answer is in more engagement with private industry from the science community but go ahead. Well, I think you foreshadowed my response which is that I think you're right to characterize a lot of activity in the mcdr industry that very nascent but growing mcdr industry. And I think the academic academic community is quite frankly at a crossroads where you can collectively as a body decide that you want to lean in to engagement with mcdr the private sector or you can decide that you don't want to that you want to lean out. And my recommendation is to lean in because it's only by leaning in that you can help steer the ship and help make sure that those pilot projects are being done to the best available science. I want to stress that many of the pilot projects that are being done and led by these companies are founded on technologies and often have members of their founding team that are among some of the best scientists and engineers that we have in this country. And so I'm thinking about examples like Ed Carbon that was founded on technology developed by Dr Matt Eisenman as an example. And there's many other examples like that. And so I think a challenge for the whole community right now is to think about and get comfortable with the idea of new models of partnership and collaboration that are going to cross traditional sectors so that means that academics industry and national labs. And even some nonprofits are all going to be working together and I think the question to ask is not necessarily who's leading these pilot projects, but how are they being done. Are they transparent. Are they equitable. Are they inclusive. Have they engaged local communities. Are they collecting data in a manner that facilitates outside scrutiny and transparency and if the answers to those questions are yes, then I think those are really strong indicators to lean in. Thank you, David. Julie, do you have thoughts on this. No, I have nothing more to add. Yeah, David, you did do a really good job. I guess I will just add a little bit of a story that I might have shared with some of you but certainly not all of you, a much smaller example of how this can play out. And it's sort of the experience that we've had with the wave energy industry here in Oregon where about 15 years ago, all of a sudden wave energy wanted to come to Oregon they realize we have big waves, big waves have big energy. And I think what we did choose to do with the help of organizations like Sea Grant was to lean in and and essentially one of the things that happened is that the development of the industry did slow down. And it did, because now we were, we had sort of gotten into this mode of, you know, community engagement and making sure that we take environmental impacts into account one step at a time testing first in the lab then maybe in the bay. And right now we're building it the first grid connected wave energy testing facility for the United States and so off the coast of Oregon. Again, with the idea that this is a pre permitted place, but it also comes with very strict environmental monitoring requirements so the moment something starts going in the wrong direction, we can yank this thing and you know stop that trial. And so David I'm hearing you say some of these words now the example that I gave is, you know, the potential environmental impacts are tiny compared to what we're talking about here in terms of marine CDR. But nonetheless it feels like that's the kind of approach David that you're talking about and we do have an example of that being successful in pacing the industry development so that we can do things responsibly. I'm going to respond to that very quickly with one point which is that my comments were about an accelerated research and development agenda, which includes starting with small scale field trials and I think we often have this. mindset where we think these small scale field trials won't matter at all for climate benefits but that they're likely to have the same kinds of environmental impacts as giga pun scale deployment operations. And I think we that's not true we have to be, we have to really consider that the size of the field trial is likely to dictate both any carbon sequestration benefit as well as any environmental impacts and so if we do this in a really stage gated way, we can learn and the size of these field trials can increase and we can mitigate environmental risks associated with those field trials but I think it's, it's not right to assume that very small scale field trials that may or may not commence in the next few years would have lasting irreversible substantial impacts to marine ecosystems. There's no historical precedent for that. Yeah, very good. Thank you, David. Now the one thing that you did say though is that you said you were imagining it accelerated program. So I guess maybe another way to think about the question that the question that Casey asked, thank you, is to think about, you know, if the industry is moving so fast maybe another way to approach it is to have our research accelerate. Is that sort of where you were going with that David or no. Yeah, exactly that's what I was talking about laying out that agenda, and how NSF can be really supportive of this again I think the biggest thing that NSF can be doing is really carefully well designed field trials that are designed to give information at relevant spatial and temporal scales about the efficacy and impacts of any one of these technologies. There's a whole host of ancillary other science needs that I laid out you know MRV related needs, fundamental laboratory and mesocosm science needs and social science research, but that's the single biggest ticket item and I just want to put some in here. We, we did a budgeting exercise where we designed what a field trial would look like if you did research for sinking seaweed, and you know large scale field trials are likely to run into the 10s to hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't know if it's on the duration and the size and the scope but I just, I really want to put that out there so that you know you're all when you're all thinking about NSF priorities for the next decade you have it really clear in your mind how expensive the science is going to be and that's why I think it's really critical to government step in. There is a question on Slido from one of our online participants I think, and I'll read it. CDR research makes sense. It makes sense to move. Oh, it's not one of our so I'll hand the microphone to the person who asked this question. Yeah, I saw a talk last week at scientific talk about marine CDR and the research research was widely, widely supported by the scientific audience, but the person started their talk by saying that large scale deployment of technology, large scale of CDR makes no sense. If, if we don't cut admissions first, or at least drastically reduce them. And I wonder what you think about that because it would, you know by 2030 there's not going to be a huge cut in emissions is based on everything we've seen and and yet perhaps the companies themselves are starting to move toward large scale. So, marine CDR by 2030 was that. Can you comment on that. Julie you want to take the first step I've been talking a lot. Emissions reductions is always the best solution. And it won't be enough. So, you know, the research program that David's organization has laid out ocean visions for what it will will take to understand how these technologies work to de risk them what relative to the climate risks that we face. And to do that stage skating and that's a multi year process. And quite frankly, it's in some ways open ended like we don't know when we're going to get there with any particular technology but that shouldn't hold us back from going forward with it just like, you know, based on the global stock take we are headed for a 2.6 degree C world and that's based on the latest global stock take. And yet we shouldn't stop and emissions reductions we should actually, you know, amplify what we're doing and we just need to go a lot faster. And so, I think, I mean, the urgency is clear is clear to everyone and I think that there is an ability to move forward on on multiple multiple friends but but it absolutely is incredible. And it's vital that the emissions reductions happen there will still be some sectors that will be really difficult to eliminate all emissions from and that's why you see those plots of the net zero and the expectation that some of the countries aren't going to meet their emissions targets. So for all of those reasons, the negative emissions need to need to occur. So I think that the main piece of that the ocean CDR is is the one that we're talking about today there are also terrestrial and air sides of the CDR component that you will maybe familiar with as well. So I want to expand on the question that Jim just asked because there is a question that I've heard asked. You know, there is one thought that countries that don't actually want to reduce their emissions, because it is so difficult will instead move into this mode of operation of funding climate intervention technologies to almost take the spotlight off of the fact that they're reducing their emissions, and maybe that work on climate interventions will involve yet more increased emissions. So the sort of negative feedback loop is that something you've heard about I was kind of a little taken aback by that question and not sure how to answer it. I mean that is one of the concerns that people have raised that there is sort of a moral hazard with employing something like solar radiation management because it decreases the incentives to decarbonize and to scale up durable carbon removal. I would say, look, if the, my understanding of this committees, the purpose is to develop a research agenda for NSF for the next 10 years and if that's correct, I would say that the questions around MCDR are some of the most fundamental and substantial that I think NSF ocean science division could wrap its head around and and so I think that those questions are philosophical and important, but I think they're really separate from places where NSF can make a really meaningful contribution to generating new knowledge that answers questions about whether or not these technologies are going to be viable climate solutions and that's still an outstanding question. It's possible that the answer to that is no, I want to be, I want to be super clear there but I think we all collectively have a responsibility to look, and I think NSF is really well positioned to be one of the leaders in helping us look collectively a society. Very well done David you brought us right back to our statement of task people long in a national Academy committee well done well done. So more questions are pouring in I see Jay Z that you put in a question would you like to ask that. If I got you on microphone. Yeah, I have multiple questions in but I'll just keep it to sort of one central question which has to do with, you know, for better or worse, we have to rely on earth system models to, in some ways, project the impacts of one ocean acidification in general but CDR, especially for, we're using say ocean, our alkalinity enhancement are we in it at a state where the models where there is this sort of collaboration with the modeling community. One, and are the models still not good enough to accurately project the impacts of ocean CDR. Julie you're the modeling expert. Yeah, this is an active area of research. You know there's multiple groups working very quickly to improve biogeochemistry and applying it to these kind of use cases than the not proposal or proposal call are but he have been government and Noah and another itself have been funding lines that have supported the coordinated research between the modeling academics and some startups to really tackle how these work together and how they enter play and the ability to assess the efficacy of these technologies when they might be trialed and added in very small pilot projects. And it's, I look, it's a, it's a, it's a to do this on the scale that is required it's an absolute grand challenge it's the sort of grand challenge that in the past NSF has just risen to the occasion. I was with some people the other day philanthropic funding and as they sort of thought about the what all of this entails I mean they started talking about Manhattan Project scale funding to really accomplish what needs to be done here I mean it's a breath taking ambition on the modeling on the observing side on the technology development side. And there's just so much at stake that I don't see how we can, we can fail at it I mean there'll be certain technologies that will fail. And then we move forward with new ones I mean we, we, we, we just have to go after this and figure out what will work, how when and where and the models are really key to all of it. Thank you Julie we have another question online on Slido that sort of pertains to what you just said about how we move forward. Mona, do you want to ask your question. Sure. Hi Julie. Hi David. Thanks so much for your, for your remarks. I wanted to ask you a question related to governance. So the open ocean is relatively free from regulation and so could you reflect on the kind of governance frameworks that will be required to facilitate research on MCDR. I'm also thinking in the context of deep sea mining for example, you know how do we, how do we think about frameworks in which science and technology advances on issues like this. Julie do you want to start or you want me to start.  So I would contest the statement that the high seas are relatively free of governance, you know the UN clause the UN convention on the law of the sea the London convention and London protocol the recently signed BBNJ Treaty of biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions. I do think and it's well to be recognized within the scholarly community that studies these things that none of these governance regimes are fit for purpose for marine carbon dioxide removal, research and development, much less deployment and so one of the outstanding needs of the law of the sea is governance clarity and regulatory clarity both within national waters and in international waters. There are a number of efforts underway to try to provide that regulatory clarity within US waters I'll highlight to one is the recently announced fast track action committee through the office of science or through, excuse me, was announced through the science and technology policy. It has representatives from 12 federal agencies who are sitting there to consider the science technology permitting and governance needs for MCDR research in US waters. There's another effort that was released by Columbia University to propose a model federal law that would streamline the permitting process for doing responsible research in US waters. In the international scale though moving beyond the US. It is a lot there's a lot of confusion and lack of clarity about how people may or may not move forward with research and development projects and especially when those research and development projects may include potential interests. And so that's actually like an area of contention and consideration and deliberation that was just re energized in the last week or two with some announcements that came out of the international maritime organization and some analysis of those comments and the reality is that you can talk with multiple people right now and get multiple interpretations so there's a big need for clarity there. Thank you very much David. And thank you very much Julie we are unfortunately out of time I feel like this conversation could go on for much longer. Clearly this is an area where I am sensing some discomfort in the room in a way that I didn't earlier in the day. So these are topics that we just need to keep talking about so I really appreciate the input David and Julie. I'm going to move on and the next topic which is critical minerals, potential, potential topic for us to include in our report. And we have two speakers one is Beth or cut and Amy. I'm not sure who's supposed to who wants to speak first, but whoever is going to go first is welcome to start. Great. Thanks for the intergem I'll go first let's see. I succeeded this year. Yeah he looks good. Okay. Great. So it's still in presentation mode. I'm going to go for a minute and I lost it. Let's go ahead and start. I'll just hit the start there you got it now. Okay. Yeah, thanks again for the invitation to speak. It's my pleasure to chat about critical minerals for this NSF OCD meeting. I have some background on the topic that we're discussing, most specifically, entangling a few different terms intersecting phrases that are sometimes used to so their synonyms, but they're really not. And those phrases are marine minerals and deep sea minerals marine mineral resources and critical minerals, specifically in this sphere critical minerals relevant to the marine zone. So first, I'd like to introduce the topic of deep sea minerals. So the three deep sea minerals that are most often discussed are cobalt rich ferro manganese crusts, polymetallic nodules and polymetallic sulfides. Also known as ferro manganese crusts, ferro manganese nodules and hydrothermal sulfide minerals. The only three that have been defined by the International Seabed Authority, which is the body that's tasked with regulating seabed mining in areas outside of domestic waters. And so there are only three that have exploration contracts issued in those waters. To date, there has been no mining of any of these three mineral types, any one ocean. They occur in completely different ocean environments, crusts are predominantly found on sea mounts and hard rock surfaces. The nodules are predominantly found on on a vessel planes. I'll note that there's also sea mount nodules but there's very significantly an extent and composition compared to this little thing nodules to the best of this talk. We're going to talk about a vessel plane nodules nodules just a morphological term. And then hydrothermal minerals form anywhere you have extensional settings. The points on the bottom are showing the elements, the minerals that that these minerals are of interest for, get into that in a little bit. And then I've folded the elements that are on the current critical minerals list. And the minerals that are being dispatched from these crusts are being discussed as potential sources for mainly cobalt and cobalt copper, and then potentially rare earth elements, maybe some other minerals as byproducts. Polymotoc nodules are being discussed as potential sources for nickel copper cobalt manganese with potential byproducts for elements in lithium. Polymotoc sulphurants are considered potential resources for copper, zinc, sulfur, gold, and lead. So there's a couple of other types of deep sea minerals that are a little bit less frequently discussed. I do want to acknowledge them, but I think they're less relevant to the critical marine minerals lens. So I think we can get into this later and I'm happy to chat about them, including in the Q&A, but those are phosphate minerals, which is phosphates or sedimentary rock with a high concentration of phosphate minerals. There's a number of different settings in which marine phosphates, phosphates occur. Most relevant are those occurring on continental shafts and slopes, and then there's also rare earth element in neotrium rich mines. So these occur in deep water abyssal plains with low sedimentation rates. They often, they can co-occur with nodules. The rare earth elements in these are appetite-hosted, and they occur fairly deep into the sediment column. So let's write them before, so four, but five or one meters into the sediment column. So these maps, again, for crust nodules and hydrothermal minerals, which I'm not describing by the geologic terms that refer to them, rather than the economic geology or commodity terms, because crust nodules are both predominantly exposed to ferramanganese, whereas cobalt rich refers to cobalt being an element of interest in them. They're not made of cobalt, they're something with polymetallic. All of these minerals are polymetallic, but polymetallic refers to the fact that that's the potential commodity profile. So these maps, specifically those for crust nodules, show the areas that crust nodules are predicted to occur based on oceanographic and geologic criteria. So we, they don't show locations containing mineral deposits. Same thing with hydrothermal minerals, we've highlighted extensional settings, so mid-ocean ridges, arcs and back arcs. So these, again, we could overlay these maps with regions where we've sampled particular examples of all of these mineral types. But again, that helps refine the predictions, but it does not show us a mineral resource, right? One sample, the handful of samples does not indicate a mineral resource. So what is this distinction that I'm making between marine minerals as geologic and oceanographic occurrences, which are widespread for ferramanese. We've referred to them as some superglutus in the global ocean, versus marine minerals as potential commodities, right? Because there is a distinction here. So marine mineral resources are those that occur in such form that economic extraction is currently or potentially feasible. And since no mining of deep ocean minerals specifically has occurred to date, that's actually a bit, a little bit tricky to consider where these cutoffs may be. Thank you. The really crucial point here is that there is in fact a cutoff. There is a distinction. And when we happen to see some sea modules or some ferramanese crust on an ROV dive, it's not valid. We can't immediately refer to that as a resource or a potential resource without more information about the minerals, extent and composition. And so that's the few steps of background before we get to the topic that we're actually here for today, which is critical minerals. So critical minerals, I've got the definition here up here at the top. There's a non-fuel mineral or mineral material central to the economic or national security US and has a supply chain vulnerable to disruption. So few points specifically. This definition is from the Energy Act of 2020. It is a US specific definition. And besides that fact, the other thing that I need to point out is that this list can change through time, right? So it's based on supply risk, disruption potential, trade exposure, economic vulnerability. All of these factors are factors about they're not intrinsic to the minerals themselves. They have to do with the minerals as commodities and within the supply chain. And so I think that's a really crucial thing to keep in mind. Again, because deep ocean minerals are not currently in the supply chain. And so I think this is a really interesting contrast with the maps that we've been looking at earlier, because the maps we've been looking at before are the really broad regions in the oceans where we predict marine minerals to occur. And now we're looking at locations where marine minerals are known to occur and have quantitative resource data to go with that. So, within the Clarencle-Burton zone, which is broadly outlined here, there are a number of separate regions where resource has in fact been demonstrated potential commodities to be extracted from modules in the CCC with nickel, manganese, cobalt and copper. So nickel, manganese and cobalt are critical minerals. So we can say that those are potential deep ocean critical minerals in the near term. So for polymetallic sulfide locations, potential commodities of interest include coppers and silver gold, maybe lead. Zinc is a critical mineral. So those are potentially near term critical minerals of relevance to the sphere. Another topic that I'd like to briefly throw in there, I think this group is mainly interested in deep ocean minerals, but coastal minerals are an entirely different category. Coastal minerals are currently extracted most significantly, tin from offshore Indonesia. So that is a current critical mineral, potentially of interest to the sphere that I think we don't typically talk about because it's not a deep ocean mineral. And that's what we usually put together. But I think one of the really important things to keep in mind is that if you want to move beyond, so tin, which is entering the supply chain and in the coast and the handful of other locations where we do have deep ocean minerals that have been delineated. The uncertainty is not just about environmental setting and potential consequences of extraction, but the uncertainty extends to the minerals themselves, whether the minerals constitute a resource, whether or not in a specific location. If they have the potential to enter the supply chain in the timeframe over which that may occur. So it's kind of a big level of uncertainty. Given that, how do you decide where to prioritize the on those handful of regions. I'd suggest this is a really great opportunity for partnerships. Because as far as I'm aware, economic geology is not something that's been emphasized in OCD for quite a while, even in the terrestrial sphere, I'd suggest that it's a discipline that's been deemphasized in the US for quite a while. Excuse me, to expand beyond the couple of locations that are well measured and constrained, we need partnerships are really crucial. So if you don't want to end up with heavy investments in regions that fall under the broad umbrella, and those those really broad maps where may contain critical minerals, but when we do that work, we find that they might actually have no relevance from the perspective. Briefly, I think also challenges and priorities relate to assets to do the work with the exception of critical minerals. So most of the areas of interest that we're talking about are of this old apps that require ships and assets to do that work. So, in the US, it's pretty exclusively, you know, as global class vessels, this old up winch wire for mineral quantification for coin or dredging drilling is it is a requirement. I think, yeah, another opportunity and a broad challenge for OCD, you know, there's a number of studies that are working on potential impacts in a given location. And I think it's harder to address and a more community scale question is, is how far did those impacts extend and affect broader marine processes and what thresholds for these may be. So, over time. Sorry, though. Can everybody in the room hear me okay.  Yeah, looks good. All right. Thank you Amy for that introduction. Thank you to the committee for inviting me to speak today. We'll recognize that, you know, there's a lot of traumatic events going on in the world that might be distracting your attention so thank you for spending the time thinking about this topic. I will try to be an engaging final speaker for this day very long day for the committee. Thank you for the Q&A. I'm pretty bad that doesn't know me, but work at I'm the vice president for research at the go laboratory but I'm really here on behalf of the Cobra. NSF funded a cell net, which is really trying to think about research gaps in the space. And so if you don't know about Cobra, there's our places to find us online. So from my perspective on some science priorities related to the critical minerals right maybe give us a good background about how we use these terms. So I'll try to follow that. I like to start with an image like this to really frame how I am thinking about what might be happening in the deep sea related to interest and potentially exploiting marine minerals. In all of the environment types that Amy talked about and minerals that are found there. You can have complex animal and microbial communities living in those places. In some cases very unique animals that are dependent on the chemistry or those environments. OCE has a long history of supporting research in those places and understanding those cool ecosystems. There's a lot of research into understanding kind of those chemical processes and things and so what I'm thinking about what Cobra is thinking about is, you know, how might this new human industry impact what is happening in these environments and we'll see in this diagram that there's a part over there on the right. So I'm using a scientific drilling vessel and connecting that to some C4 carbon sequestration. So sidebar if anyone wants to talk about that I'd be happy to. That's not what I'm going to focus on here. So, as scientists we often talk about what happens in the deep sea and like very academic terms of like carbon fixation and chemo synthesis. And I have been training myself to also think about these things more from a societal context and this often gets put into kind of more of a capitalist framework of what does the ecosystem do for you. And you know, referring to things that happen in the environment kind of in that framework right so a service is that these ecosystems provide food they do climate regulation. Nutrients that support everything else. There was a bar for genetic resources on and on. And there's some great resources available from the deep ocean stewardship initiative if anybody would like to learn more about these types of services that happen in the environments that might be targeted for marine mineral exploitation. And when we think about those services and we think about what might be potential impacts of exploitation. And so here's one schematic of one of those types of impacts where you can imagine that to collect marine minerals, you would use some kind of collection device that will create sediment plume disturbances. We'll also have disturbances higher in the water column from the return plume from the after the ship has processed the materials. I think it's important to recognize and some of these really nice schematics that a key element is missing in them and that there are no animals shown here. But we clearly know that there are animals on the sea floor that will be impacted by these. activities. And I was part of a paper led by diva and mom that came out last year that did an extensive literature review to try to understand what do we know about environmental baselines in these types of habitats. And some of the key topics you would need to study to have a baseline. The intensity of the color is a reflection of that there's more and more information available. And so, maybe not surprisingly considering the investment of OCE and other programs right we have comparatively more information from the hydrothermal vent environments than we do from some of these other habitats that might be considered for mineral exploitation. And in particular for instance if you look at that bottom line life histories things like how do animals reproduce in the deep sea. We have very little information about that in some of these ecosystems. Furthermore, if you look at things like what are potential impacts how do these ecosystems respond to those impacts, being things like noise. The, the creating sediment plume disturbances metal toxicity. We have really little information and so I think that's a key thing for OCE to be considering is, you know, these are big knowledge gaps that would need to be resolved to underpin understanding if we can start this industry responsibly. I'm a microbial biogeochemist. And so, I am often thinking about this in a microbial context, and I would say that the role of microbes in these deep sea ecosystems hasn't gotten as much attention as animal things maybe for obvious reasons animals are a little bit easier to think about the microbes. But again, if we think about what microbes do in these deep sea ecosystems right they they provide services that are really essential for the ecosystem sub function things like primary production, the transformation of organic material nutrient mineral recycling. And so to give you some examples if you don't think about what microbes do right like the conversion of carbon dioxide into organic carbon fueled by chemo synthetic processes are chemo lithotropic reactions right that's a very important service right they are providing new food to this ecosystem. Okay, microbes are an incredible reservoir of genetic information that could potentially be used for things like antibiotic discovery and cancer compounds. You name it. The point I want to emphasize here is, again, we have, we have big knowledge gaps in terms of what are the values, what are the ranges of these services, what is the variability of these services. We understand how we might value them in comparison to the value we might get from exploitation of critical minerals or marine minerals. So just as one example. This is from a study that came out a few years back led by some teams based in Germany, where they had gone to an environment that had previously been experimentally dredged, and it was a place that had nodules. And went back and asked a bunch of different questions I'm just focusing on one of them. How is primary productivity in the form of creation of new organic carbon from carbon fixation. How is that rate affected if you compare pristine sediment, sediment that was dredged 26 years ago, and sediment that was just dredged on the expedition. And so to draw your attention to that graph on the right, the orange bars are the rates in the that have been impacted decades ago, right so often we think of microbial processes as being kind of very resilient. And that they can recover on much faster time scales than animals might be able to like we colonize for example, and this study shows that like you even decades later have a loss of microbial ecosystem service. So that's something that we'll want to keep in mind for evaluating what's happening in these ecosystems. So I would say some critical knowledge gaps related to this topic of marine minerals that OCE might want to think about. First one echoing Amy right we need to actually understand the marine mineral content of what is on the sea floor. These, these global maps might tell us where there's potential, but they don't actually tell us what the resource is what the content is. You know what is the mineral forms, all those things right so that's still an area that requires research. But we also then need to understand the biodiversity and ecosystem services that are in these habitats and how they can be impacted by exploitation, and not just on the sea floor but also in the water column. Likewise, we have very, very little data on resilience of ecosystem services in the deep sea to these kinds of perturbations right again I emphasize that we almost we know almost nothing about how animals reproduce in the deep sea. So it's really hard to understand how impacts might translate to organisms that you don't even know how they reproduce. But we need that kind of research we need studies on impacts and resilience. We also need, if we're this industry is going to develop right we need to figure out cost effective strategies to provide early warning related to preventing harm. So, monitoring strategies, observation strategies, shipboard analysis, all those kinds of things are going to be need to, you know, accelerate. And then we also need to think about this in the context of cumulative impacts with other stressors in the deep sea, for instance like climate change. If we're going to accelerate on ocean CDR strategies that are sinking all kinds of things the deep sea like how does that impact areas where there's other stressors going on. And I would say that a critical need that we have to address these knowledge gaps and again a place where OC could help is in relation that we need a lot more deep sea scientists to be helping with this kind of research and we need to also think about how scientists are trained to communicate their scientific findings to the stakeholders right. This was also brought up in the other sessions about CDR and deoxygenation, you know all those things. We know we're really good at talking to each other as scientists but we may be less good at explaining what we're finding and what matters. I would just like to emphasize that one of the other findings of that paper, the Amon and El paper is that you know this is like decadal scale research that is required for each of these research types to really get at these baselines the natural variability. What are the methods we should be using. So, you know I think this is appropriate for considering for this decadal survey of ocean sciences like this could be a decadal type program. There's obviously a way more I could say about this if you want to read more about these knowledge gaps or about what's going on related to deep sea mining potential. I've learned that I talked about, we've had several webinars on this topic over in the past year. So I'd invite you to see those they're recorded they're up on YouTube. In case you want to some more detail about all these things. And then just again to emphasize that part I made when I was talking about the needs right. What Cobra is doing as well as other cell nets that are in the ocean space like the deep ocean observing strategy as another example right of these kind of international network of networks are I think are really essential for trying to help identify research strategies to like accelerate filling those knowledge gaps to bring the training to for a scientist and students on how to translate to policymakers, and also to try to increase that education for the next generation. You know, in terms of thinking about OCE strategies I think it's also a broader NSF wide strategy of like are there other programs in NSF that we can look to as examples so that we're not just individual project focus, but thinking about things more collectively. And just as an example of that just a few weeks ago, the Cobra and the other, one of the other NSF cell nets for in the ocean space I do collaboratively held this workshop, specifically about like okay scientists you have all this knowledge or you're developing all this knowledge, how would you translate this for policymakers who are right now trying to come up with thresholds and guidelines for these very important topics that we have very little data on and and helping with that data translation to policymakers. And taking that a step further like actually like trying to show scientists, like you can actually go to these policy meetings and share your information and have direct impact to make sure that science is informing these new industries that are forming and the regulation of them. I know I'm going a little over time, hopefully, I'm okay here, just a couple things I want to emphasize. So I think I said this already, like we need to accelerate the development of shipboard and in situ methods for assessing ecosystem service changes in real time. So that if an industry is operating, they see they're causing harm, they can stop before it becomes serious. Right now we don't have a lot of technology to do that. We were going to need more ocean observing technology and approaches right and translating what we're learning from oh I to these types of environments, because they're going to require monitoring. And I love this graphic because it shows all the ways you can measure stuff in the surface ocean and like the deep sea is like just a little part of that right so like we've really got to push the deep sea aspect of our ocean observing technologies. As Amy said right, we're going to need deep sea assets for this kind of research, ships, ROVs, AUVs, HOVs, moorings, profilers, coring systems right like we, we need to make sure that we have these and if not like increase these capacities. If it's only like one expedition a year studying this we're never going to close that decadal gap. And I'm going to end with this, just highlighting two things from a recent advisor, the European Academy Science Advisory Council right so like the individual science advisory councils of all these different European countries in a higher level at the European Academy level. They recently came out with a report just a few months ago about this topic. And one of the things they highlight, and this is something that Amy also brought up right like the types of minerals we're considering for this new industry. It's questionable how much we can eat them from the deep sea in terms of their supply risk is one of the things they emphasize here but what I wanted to point out is one of these statements that was in this summary. One of the things is that the lack of consensus on what constitutes serious harm, and the current lack of quantitative thresholds is going to limit the ability of international waters and international seabed authority that you can translate this any country that's considering it in their waters. It's going to limit the ability to effectively protect the marine environment, until we understand these ecological consequences. And so that's really what I want to emphasize here is, again, we have an industry that's maybe going out the door and we don't have yet the baselines. We need to fill those critical knowledge gaps and I really hope OCE is interested in doing that. With that, I am done. Amy and Beth, thank you very much. And we have plenty of time for questions. We'll ask a two bush. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you very much. So tell me, can you tell me a little bit more about the kind of seagoing capabilities you would need in order to do this research that you're thinking about as prior research areas in particular.  Can you tell me a little bit more of what is required on your end. I'll go first Amy I'm curious your perspective. Right so that the research that's currently happening that I'm aware of, you know, it requires commitments to like do multiple cruises to the same place repeatedly. You know, if not within a year like several years right again understand those impacts. You want to, you know, you want to set some baseline data you want to understand the variability, you want to understand impacts you want to understand recovery from impacts right so that's a commitment to have assets in a place where there's kind of an agreement we're going to try to do this work in this place. And you're to do these studies well requires like having moorings having sediment traps having things in the water column to look at sediment blooms having ROVs that can go in the water right as impacts are happening to see like where things are moving, or other, you know, like cameras on landers. I mean, where this is all proposed to happen is in in the deep sea far away from land and so thinking about right like so many of the oh I demonstrations that have happened right based on like the regional cable to rate right there's power. Like that's going to be a huge thing we've got to solve for doing this out far away from land is like how are you going to power all the equipment to do monitoring in an effective way. So I don't know that answers your question but at least it gives you a sense of the scale that I think we're going to need. Yeah, I'll add to what Beth said. I think part of it depends on what OCE decides is within their mandate. So, you know, that's talked about monitoring is a really critical component of understanding, you know, impacts if this goes forward. You know, we need a minimum we need, you know, ships that can stay at sea for for a month at a time to do this work, because you're often in the weeks transit from shore so shorter trips and that don't don't really make sense. ROVs and AVs that can work to 6000 meters so it's a basic requirement. I mentioned drilling before and you mentioned it too so if you want to quantify crust or header for momentum so you do need, you know, lander type or ROV type drills and I'm not sure whether OCE would would consider that to know what but yeah there's pretty serious aspects depending on what you want to do. Thank you ladies, this is Allison. While I fully appreciate the need to do more scientific research on some of the examples you gave Beth the impacts how animals reproduce in the deep sea, etc, etc. Do we really need to know more to know that mineral extraction would be bad for these animals or for these ecosystems and I'd like to get your thoughts on that. Yeah, thanks for that question. It's an interesting one. So one of the case studies we have is the work that's been happening in the Clarion Clipperton zone, which Amy highlighted in her talk as a place where there's a lot of attention for nodules right. And there you that there's kind of an agreement that there's these set aside areas where no harm should happen nothing should change, and that even within a contracted area for potential exploitation that a contractor would have to have impact zones and preservation zones. To show that to kind of think about that, you know, maybe we're impacting the animals right where we're doing our work but if they're similar animals somewhere nearby, and they're not impacted maybe it's okay, you know, maybe the larva could spread or whatever they need. And what I have seen in the data so far is that often the assignments of those preservation zones and the impact zones have actually different communities in them. And so we maybe don't know are we are we preserving what we need to preserve. You know, do we have enough spatial variability here so in some ways I think, yes, we still need to understand if we're going to cause impacts like, I don't know if we're going to be able to understand everybody every organisms reproductive strategy. We at least need to know, are they in the, are they in places where they're going to be impacted or not if they're more widespread that's one thing if they're very rare. That's a different thing. And, and then I'll answer this another way to. I know that for instance, other federal agencies are also interested in this topic in terms of should we be accelerating technology development, for instance, in this space, and kind of doing some of those economic assessments of, given what we already know at a low level about ecosystems and what they provide and the potential monetary value of those services and then we compare that to the potential monetary value of exploiting minerals. Is there a justifiable economic case for doing that. And, you know, I think that's also something that we're going to need to do, you know, scientists collaborating with economic economists to think about those things and to help calibrate those kinds of estimates. I had a follow up question to that related question is, given the, what you said about the need for technology and observations on impact and so on it would. What is the responsibility of the mining companies in the open ocean away from the ocean, ocean control zones of individual countries are, are they responsible for doing an environmental impacts and assessing that. Does that depend on where those companies are based which country. Those countries are based. Right so the mining code is still being developed for work in international waters in the area. But yes, in principle, every contractor would have to do an environmental impact assessment and present a plan for how they're going to monitor environmental impacts. That's a very hot topic right now at the International Seabed Authority of what are the requirements for those types of assessments. What would be the required monitoring strategy. Is it a one size fits all or is it kind of resource location approach dependent right. So, there's not a firm answer to your question, other than, yes, in general is the contractors responsibility to do that monitoring assessment. The worry of people like myself is that if we develop the regulations before we actually know that the regulations will work to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment. We're setting ourselves up for a precedent of giving permission to do something before we know if it actually will prevent harm. Thank you, Beth. This is too but Jim just handed me the microphone for my second question. Amy, you spoke about the need for more partnerships towards the end of your remarks. Can you tell us a little bit more about what kinds of partnerships you were. Referring to is this with other agencies like USGS or is this with industry. Tell us more. Yeah, I mean, potentially both right so I think the one of the points that I was trying to make is that if we're talking about critical minerals. We're talking about a topic that is based on minerals entering the supply chain, which to date is terrestrial minerals and coastal minerals so deep sea minerals are currently not in that sphere right like this is a potential future where deep sea minerals enter that sphere. I think on all sorts of topics we need partnerships with people who understand the current landscape of critical mineral systems right so when we're talking about farm or environmental impacts of deep ocean mineral extraction. I think one of the things that people have been trying to do for a while and it's not in any way trivial to do is to compare those impacts to impacts of terrestrial mineral extraction. Can we compare those. And so that's a major ongoing challenge. I think when we're talking about, you know, designing in environmental baseline study or some experimental work to consider what impacts of extraction in a given region might be. When I talk there's a handful of regions where we have quantified resources in the deep sea for anything outside of those regions. I think you need a partnership to determine if the region is relevant for the work. So I think this is a far, far reaching need. I see that Shannon has a question. Hi, I guess the one is for Amy as well just curious about the scientific co benefits if you will. What are what other research lines could benefit from exploration of looking at critical minerals. Yeah, I think that's a really great topic. I think if you switch from the critical minerals lens briefly to marine minerals lens and all of a sudden there's many different aspects of OCE of another topics that are relevant you know for many of these projects that create really slowly from seawater. So they have significant uses as paleo oceanographic records, which is really important thing to understand right now I think, you know, in terms of hydrothermal systems. It's an ongoing question how trace elements from better thermal systems impact the wider oceans and how better thermal systems impact ocean ecosystems, once they become inactive what that intersection is my team does a lot of work on farming these minerals and how they vary in composition in different areas, which is generally as well, almost entirely as a result of changing oceanic parameters and in basin scale regions. So I think there's a wealth of information to to be gained about the ocean system from from studying marine minerals. I think that I have a question for you about the slow rate of recovery. I was curious to know if that's just because of the slow metabolic rates in deep sea, or if there's something else there, and how we should think about that in terms of impacts over long periods of time. Yeah, thanks for that question I'm not sure who asked it I can't really see the room. This is a jeep. Oh hi jeep. So the study I was referencing right is in a nodule area, those areas tend to co locate with places that are really low sedimentation rates. And so, in this case right it was experimental removal of the top layer of sediment, which would also happen with industrial sale collection of nodules right it would basically perturb the upper, let's say 10 centimeters of sediment. That's like millions of years of sediment decretion in these low, you know, 10s of thousands to millions of years, and those are relatively organic for materials and so it essentially what you're doing is you're removing the most organic rich material, and exposing the older sediment at the sea floor. And so it's going to take, you know, geologic time scales to get the sediment back to where it had been. And so you're basically just left with a much more organic poor and lower biomass microbial community that can never recover to those rates of activity is essentially how I view those types of I will say right that one thing keep in mind right that was an experimental study that doesn't actually replicate what mining will look like. And in every study that has been done. Since that study right of like actual test mining right the results end up being different because you're scaling the the impacts to like closer to what they will be. And it doesn't mean that what you did an experimental study actually scales to the industrial level scale in terms of how sediment is redistributed. You might have places. Now you've moved all the more organic rich and put it somewhere else. You might reactivate heterotrophy you might have more reminalization. So it's going to be a heterogeneous response within ecosystem is something I also think we need to keep in mind. I'm out of time for this session and I want to thank both Beth and Amy very interesting talks and appreciate you your participation. Thank you.