B1OH – Beyond One Ocean Health

Covering around 70% of the Earth’s surface, the ocean plays a crucial role for all life on the planet. Not only does the ocean provide a huge variety of living and non-living resources detrimental to healthy flourishing of humans and animals alike, but also it regulates the climate and ensures livable conditions on this planet in the first place. However, from basic functions such as being a source of food and supplies to the societal use of the ocean as a transportation route and recreational area, the ocean as it has been known for centuries is in jeopardy and cannot be considered to be in a healthy state anymore. Because as of now, the massive impact of phenomena such as anthropogenic climate change, pollution, acidification of the sea and damaging the ocean by, e.g., disturbing ecosystems and destroying the (marine) environment, threatens the ocean and all creatures that rely on it tremendously.

Against this background and established discussions about One Health, Environmental Health or Planetary Health, the B1OH-initiative wants to engage with finding solutions for the current predicament and point towards what can be called healthy ocean for all and beyond. Endorsed by the United Nations The ocean decade – The Science We Need for the Ocean We Want initiative and as part of the programme Digital Twins of the Ocean – DITTO, this project brings together researchers, policy makers and practitioners with different, yet complementary disciplinary backgrounds. B1OH wants to contribute to three outcomes of the Ocean Decade specifically: “A healthy and resilient ocean where marine ecosystems are understood, protected, restored and managed. […] A predicted ocean where society understands and can respond to changing ocean conditions. […] An inspiring and engaging ocean where society understands and values the ocean in relation to human wellbeing and sustainable development.” (https://www.oceandecade.org/vision-mission/, highlights i.o.)

The various expertise ranging from including human and animal health (biomedical and public health), infection biology to natural ocean sciences, ocean governance, ocean economics, ocean ethics, ocean system modeling, monitoring, and data sciences and visualization will enable the decade project B1OH’s advancement toward these aspired outcomes. In doing so, the project will provide a holistic view of ocean health that not only goes beyond human health by addressing animal and environmental health and their interactions as well, but also by recognizing various interactions that are at play between the ocean and society.

Current activities:

A seminar series with speakers addressing Beyond One Ocean Health topics is planned and a first publication is in the making, currently taking the form of a first conceptual discussion paper.

Related links:

Digital Twin of the Ocean: https://oceandecade.org/actions/digital-twins-of-the-ocean-ditto/

UN Oceandecade: https://oceandecade.org/; https://oceandecade.org/actions/beyond-one-ocean-health/

Our project partners:

Include scientists from around the world, including Canada, Sweden, France, and Brazil (in alphabetical order):

·         CAU Kiel, Department of Bioethics (Bozzaro, Claudia): https://www.iem.uni-kiel.de/de

·         CAU Kiel, Institute for General Microbiology (Schmitz, Ruth): https://www.mikrobio.uni-kiel.de/de/ag-schmitz-streit/prof-dr-ruth-schmitz-streit

·         CAU Kiel, Department of Bioethics & University of Freiburg, Department of Medical Ethics and History (Koesling, Dominik): https://www.egm.uni-freiburg.de; https://oceanandsociety.org/en/home

·         CAU Kiel, Center for Ocean and Society (Kuhn, Annegret and Voss, Rüdiger): https://oceanandsociety.org/en/home

·         Dalhousie University (Colombo, Stefanie): https://www.dal.ca/faculty/agriculture/animal-science-aquaculture/faculty-staff/our-faculty/stefanie-colombo.html

·         Department of Comparative Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle USA and One Health Brazil/ECOHA Brazil (Pettan-Brewer, Christina): ECOHA: https://onehealthbrasil.com/grupos-tematicos/; One Health Brazil: https://onehealthbrasil.com/; Center for One Health Research – COHR University of Washington School of Public Health: https://deohs.washington.edu/cohr/; University of Washington – School of Medicine – Departments of Comparative Medicine, Population Health and Global Health: https://www.uwmedicine.org/school-of-medicine

·         Department of Economics, UFRPE (Brazil) (Maia-Filho, Luiz F. A.): https://www.ufrpe.br/en/content/presentation

·         Department of Health Management, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada (Fast, Marc): https://www.upei.ca/avc/health-management 

·         Department of Health Management, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada (Saksida, Sonja):               https://www.upei.ca/avc/health-management

·         Department of Health Management, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada (Thakur, Krishna K.): https://www.upei.ca/avc/health-management

·         ECOEMA Institute Ecoema of Studies and Conservation of the Environment, Peruíbe, Brazil, and One Health Brasil/ECOHA Brazil (Valle, Rodrigo): ECOHA Brazil:  https://onehealthbrasil.com/grupos-tematicos/; One Health Brazil: https://onehealthbrasil.com/

·         European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, Truro, Cornwall UK (Fleming, Lora E.): https://www.ecehh.org

·         Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada (Buse, Chris G.): https://www.sfu.ca/fhs.html

·         GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Hentschel Humeida, Ute; Keiser, Sigrid; Visbeck, Martin): https://www.geomar.de/en 

·         Ifremer, ASIM Adaption et Santé des Invertébrés Marins, La Tremblade, France (Arzul, Isabelle): https://asim.ifremer.fr

·         Institute of Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife Diseases, TiHo Hannover (Lehnert, Kristina): https://www.tiho-hannover.de/en/clinics-institutes/institutes/institute-for-terrestrial-and-aquatic-wildlife-research-itaw

·         Red Sea Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia (Peixoto, Raquel S.): https://marinemicrobiomeslab.kaust.edu.sa/

·         Scientific researcher and ECOHA (Moreira, Amy B.): https://onehealthbrasil.com/grupos-tematicos/

·         Silva, Flavio       

·         Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden (Bleckner, Thorsten): https://www.stockholmresilience.org

·         University of Washington Center for One Health Research, Seattle, WA (Rabinowitz, Peter): https://deohs.washington.edu/cohr/