Maripoldata Blog

The BBNJ treaty as a pioneer in genetic resource governance? Impressions from the Edinburgh High Seas Treaty Symposium

10. November 2023/in General /by Paul Dunshirn

By Paul Dunshirn

Only a few months after the adoption of the new legally binding agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) in June 2023, stakeholders met up for the ‘High Seas Treaty Symposium’ in Edinburgh on October 6th-7th. The Symposium brought together experts from policy, science, and conservation to discuss the first steps towards implementation and to deliberate on yet unresolved issues. This blog focuses on how marine genetic resources and digital sequence information (DSI) were discussed during the Symposium and reflects on the pioneering role that the BBNJ community may play in regulating the complex genetic resource policy field.

BBNJ stakeholders meeting in Edinburgh. Credits: https://jfdmedia.com/BBNJ Symposium 2023

The BBNJ agreement defines marine genetic resources as ‘any material of marine plant, animal, microbial or other origin containing functional units of heredity of actual or potential value’ (Art. 1.8). Being of crucial ecological importance to marine ecosystems, marine genetic resources are also frequently considered as highly valuable to biotech industries 1. One estimate [1] puts the market value of marine biotech at 6.4 billion US dollars by 2025. Importantly, it remains unclear how valuable specifically ‘BBNJ marine genetic resources’ are in comparison to those collected from coastal areas [2]. Against this background, BBNJ negotiators struggled for years to agree on a new governance system to regulate access and use of these resources. Positions were split about which types of benefits arising from biotech and science should be shared multilaterally [3], particularly whether ‘monetary benefits’ should be included, and to what extent such contributions should be based on a transparency or monitoring system [4]. A compromise was finally reached in March 2023, which included monetary benefits, yet without determining the exact modalities long-term (BBNJ agreement, part II). Importantly, negotiators also agreed to include DSI in the treaty alongside marine genetic resources (the latter being understood as genetic samples). There is currently no agreed definition of DSI, but it is generally understood as genetic sequence data (including at least DNA and RNA sequences [5]).

Just a few months after the Treaty’s adoption in June 2023, the Edinburgh High Seas Treaty Symposium allowed stakeholders to discuss implementation steps and unresolved issues. The Symposium’s principal sponsors were the deep sea research project iAtlantic, the NGO Marviva, the inter-governmental Sargasso Sea Commission, the Office français de la biodiversité, and a diverse group of other organisations. Amongst the other topics addressed by the BBNJ Treaty, marine genetic resources were high on the agenda and were the subject of the Symposium’s opening panel.

What still needs to be resolved?

Janine Coye-Felson, a Belizean delegate and facilitator on the marine genetic resources part, opened the marine genetic resource panel by reflecting on the divergence of positions that had to be overcome and identified aspects that require further deliberation. For instance, she pointed out that the Treaty defines obligations for Parties regarding notifications, traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and benefit-sharing while in most cases not prescribing how exactly these measures should be implemented. While some details are likely to be refined in the upcoming Conferences of the Parties (COPs), Janine Coye-Felson pointed out that this ‘bottom-up approach’ might lead to divergences in implementation. Such divergences might occur due to differences in national institutional and financial capacities to implement the measures. Other issues pointed out by Janine Coye-Felson included potential loopholes concerning fish and marine genetic resources, how diverging membership constellations to different genetic resource regimes (under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)) will affect the implementation of BBNJ provisions, and how the specific issue of DSI will be governed across these regimes.

Marine genetic resources panel. Credits: https://jfdmedia.com/BBNJ Symposium 2023

How BBNJ will interact with other access and benefit-sharing regimes

Constituting the first legally binding agreement to regulate DSI, it is highly relevant to consider how the BBNJ framework will interact with other regimes. The participants of the marine genetic resource panel picked up on this issue. Gaute Voigt-Hanssen and Arianna Broggiato (negotiators of the genetic resource part for Norway and EU, respectively) emphasised the need to link the process under BBNJ to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and the CBD decision on DSI, which the CBD state parties adopted in December 2022. Arianna Broggiato pointed out that scientific and private-sector stakeholders must be considered in this context. However, Siva Thambisetty (advisor to the Chair of the G77) noted that Parties to the BBNJ treaty are by no means obliged to wait for decisions on access and benefit-sharing on DSI to be made in other fora. Instead, the Treaty could be a pioneer in the complex field of data governance and genetic resources that may inspire similar solutions in other contexts.

It should be emphasised that, beyond the topic of DSI, many general questions persist over how the BBNJ access and benefit-sharing system will interact with other regimes. In the view of the blog’s author, one relevant question is whether the Treaty will be considered an exception (a ‘specialised international access and benefit sharing instrument’) under the Nagoya Protocol (Art. 4.4), which is the CBD’s central instrument to regulate the collection and use of genetic materials within national jurisdiction. While frameworks like FAO’s Seed Treaty or WHO’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) framework are likely to be considered as such [6], it is unclear whether the BBNJ Treaty will similarly interact with the CBD system. In any case, a lot hinges also on how countries themselves will deal with potential interactions across regimes through their own domestic access and benefit-sharing laws.

The BBNJ Treaty advances ‘trendy’ solutions to complex policy challenges

Considering the longstanding impasse in advancing genetic resource governance during the BBNJ negotiations and under other regimes, it seems evident that negotiators had to find innovative solutions to agree on a final text. During the Symposium’s marine genetic resource panel, Gaute Voigt-Hanssen went ahead and described the Treaty’s approach to access and benefit-sharing as ‘trendy’, due to its focus on benefit-sharing and its comparatively light regulatory focus on access. In particular, he pointed out that the Treaty is positive for researchers because it refrains from obliging users to enter contracts when using resources. Access and benefit-sharing have historically been conceived as necessarily paired issues to achieve equitable and fair partnerships between resource providers and users. The usefulness of combining those two aspects has been questioned in various settings over the past years, particularly in the context of DSI [7,8].

In contrast, Siva Thambisetty argued that ‘access’ is central to various mechanisms of the BBNJ Treaty. She was referring to the ‘standardised BBNJ batch identifier’, which was proposed by the G77 during the latter stages of negotiation to facilitate a form of traceability that does not require heavy bureaucratic measures, yet facilitates benefit-sharing based on empirical evidence of access or use. Siva Thambisetty thus argued that the trendy nature of the Treaty lies not in its lightness on access, but in the extent to which it envisions technical solutions to overcome the longstanding divergence of issue positions on access and benefit-sharing.

The panel’s scientists (Muriel Rabone from the Natural History Museum London, Andre Abreu from the Tara Foundation, and host Marcel Jaspars from Aberdeen University) all agreed that the Treaty’s provisions on data governance are inspired by current good scientific practice and are thus unlikely to create extensive bureaucratic burdens for researchers. Nevertheless, Muriel Rabone emphasised the need to think carefully about how to implement the provisions in practice.

Implementation was picked up again at a workshop connected to the Symposium that was organised by the research project Deepend. This project aims to study the societal value of biodiversity in the deep sea and thus provide crucial information on how to implement and further develop international legal regimes such as the BBNJ agreement. As discussed during the workshop, the project aims to provide a space for exploring how the Treaty’s provisions can work in practice, both in terms of implementing standardised batch identifiers and when it comes to North-South research cooperation.

So what about corporate use of marine genetic resources? Author’s reflections

While the BBNJ genetic resource regime was designed in close coordination with ocean scientists and is thus closely aligned with scientific practice, implementation may turn out to be more difficult when it comes to corporate-type use of marine genetic resources and DSI. When it comes to corporate activities, a distinction can be broadly drawn between the commercialization of products and the claiming of intellectual property rights (IPR). Both types have been discussed during the BBNJ negotiations, but their relationship to the Treaty remains uncertain.

As Siva Thambisetty pointed out during the genetic resource panel, the Treaty does not include a separate article on IPR anymore, as no agreement could be found. However, both she and Gaute Voigt-Hanssen pointed out that the Treaty obliges Parties to report on the utilisation of resources under article 12.8, which includes granted patents and developed products. In this sense, activities such as patenting may retrospectively be considered in calculations on monetary benefit-sharing, if the COP decides so.

However, tracing the use of marine genetic resources in scientific databases, databanks and journals via the BBNJ batch identifier seems much easier to achieve than for corporate activities. Most scientific journals require researchers to upload their sequence data into the INSDC ecosystem, which in turn is stepping up requirements for the reporting of origin information. It is probably not very complicated to integrate the identifier in these efforts. No comparable transparency standards for identifying genetic resource origin exist in commercial or IPR-related domains [9,10]. Some countries oblige patent applicants to disclose origins [11], but this doesn’t apply to many other countries and it remains unclear whether WIPO will agree on new international standards. Genetic sequences mentioned in patents could be linked back to their entries in scientific databases (and thus to their origin information) [12], particularly if their accession numbers are reported correctly, but it is unclear how reliable of a solution this would be.

Overall, it is a highly relevant question how the BBNJ treaty will relate to the private sector. Notably, the panel on industry implications, which included Jane Eva Collins (KPMG) and J.B. Jouffray (Stanford University) seemed to agree that private biotechnology companies are unlikely to be immediately affected by the Treaty. However, including considerations of private sector benefits from genetic resources in the overall access and benefit-sharing scheme under BBNJ is arguably a crucial element of equitable benefit-sharing. While this is foreseen in the Treaty and more specifically in the idea of the batch identifier, it appears that more consideration will be needed on how exactly to implement Parties’ obligations to report on the corporate use of marine genetic resources and DSI. Jane Eva Collins also pointed out that it would be useful to start considering how exactly to mobilise private stakeholders to participate in the implementation of the Treaty.

What happens next?

The BBNJ Treaty will enter into force 120 days after the 60th country has ratified it. The first COP meeting should follow soon after, where, amongst other things, the details of the described access and benefit-sharing system will be further sketched out. Until then, it is important to keep the conversations flowing and for Parties and stakeholders to start working on implementation. Capacity-building and stakeholder cooperation will be crucial to achieve effective implementation on a global level [13]. Mobilisation of stakeholders, including scientists and private actors should be considered an important element in these efforts. As highlighted in this blog, creating effective interlinkages between different genetic resource regimes will also be crucial. The upcoming CBD open-ended working group on DSI, held in Geneva from November 14th to 18th, will be an interesting opportunity to observe whether and how the BBNJ Treaty will affect current developments in the broader genetic resources governance field.

References

Hurst, D., Børresen, T., Almesjö, L., Raedemaecker, F. & Bergseth, S. Marine Biotechnology Strategic Research and Innovation Roadmap – Insights to the future direction of European marine biotechnology. (Marine Biotechnology ERA-NET, 2016).
Oldham, P. et al. Valuing the Deep: Marine Genetic Resources in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction. https://bookdown.org/poldham/valuingthedeep/ (2014).
Vadrot, A. B. M., Langlet, A. & Tessnow-von Wysocki, I. Who owns marine biodiversity? Contesting the world order through the ‘common heritage of humankind’ principle. Environmental Politics 31, 226–250 (2021).
Langlet, A. & Dunshirn, P. Traceability options for marine genetic resource from areas beyond national jurisdiction. https://www.highseasalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/traceability-options-paper-1.pdf (2023).
Houssen, W., Sara, R. & Jaspars, M. Digital sequence information on genetic resources: concept, scope and current use. https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/fef9/2f90/70f037ccc5da885dfb293e88/dsi-ahteg-2020-01-03-en.pdf (2020).
Lawson, C., Rourke, M. & Humphries, F. Information as the latest site of conflict in the ongoing contests about access to and sharing the benefits from exploiting genetic resources. Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property 10, 7–33 (2020).
Scholz, A. H. et al. Multilateral benefit-sharing from digital sequence information will support both science and biodiversity conservation. Nat Commun 13, 1086 (2022).
Aubry, S. The Future of Digital Sequence Information for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Frontiers in Plant Science 10, (2019).
Rohden, F., Huang, S., Dröge, G. & Scholz, A. H. Combined study on digital sequence information in public and private databases and traceability. https://www.cbd.int/abs/DSI-peer/Study-Traceability-databases.pdf (2020).
Blasiak, R., Jouffray, J.-B., Wabnitz, C. C. C. & Österblom, H. Scientists Should Disclose Origin in Marine Gene Patents. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 34, 392–395 (2019).
Humphries, F., Rabone, M. & Jaspars, M. Traceability Approaches for Marine Genetic Resources Under the Proposed Ocean (BBNJ) Treaty. Front. Mar. Sci. 8, 661313 (2021).
Oldham, P. & Thambisetty, S. ONEST: The Middle way for Monetary Benefit Sharing in BBNJ Negotiations. https://zenodo.org/record/7573700 (2023) doi:10.5281/zenodo.7573700.
Gjerde, K. M. et al. Getting beyond yes: fast-tracking implementation of the United Nations agreement for marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. npj Ocean Sustain 1, 1–8 (2022).

Tweeting Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (#BBNJ): the story of a hashtag

23. May 2023/in General /by MARIPOLDATA Team

By Arne Langlet, Paul Dunshirn & Glen Wright

#BBNJ – Twitter Network

Twitter has become a central platform for political [1] and scientific communication [2], offering a unique data source for researching digital communication and discussions between diplomats, stakeholders and scientists. During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital communication may have been particularly important for international negotiation processes such as the recently concluded negotiations for a treaty on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) [3, 4, 5].

Here we introduce a dataset of tweets related to BBNJ discussions, which we collected from the first of January 2018 to March, 9th, 2023. The resulting dataset contains 72727 tweets from 26137 unique users. We included all tweets that mentioned the hashtag #BBNJ. Below we present a preliminary analysis of the data, focusing on themes such as the intensity of online engagement with BBNJ-related discussions over time, network community structures, and content of tweet texts. We consider these themes as pathways for further research.

We want to invite anyone with an interest in using the data to get in touch with us to discuss possibilities for further engagement.

How did the BBNJ discussion on Twitter evolve?

Our data shows that in early 2018, #BBNJ was already used in an average of around 12 tweets per day. The use of #BBNJ sparked for the first time during the first Intergovernmental Conference (IGC1) in September 2018. Particularly during the first three days of the IGC1 (4-6 September 2018), we can see high activity, peaking at 757 tweets in just one day. A total of 13465 BBNJ-tweets were posted during IGC1, averaging around 250 per day. The discussion subsequently went quiet, ahead of the next peak during the IGC2. By then, the hashtag was well established. During the intersessional period between IGCs2 and 3, more tweets were published than in the previous intersessional period.

Tweeting continued during the intersessional period between IGCs3 and 4, which stretched to 30 months owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. This period saw around 17 daily BBNJ-tweets. This continued engagement may indicate that the online dialogues (‘High Seas Dialogues’ and ‘BBNJ Intersessional Work’) helped to maintain some momentum and visibility during the COVID-19 pandemic [3, 4, 5].

The fourth IGC was originally planned to be the final round of negotiations, and the flurry of BBNJ-tweets on the opening day was relatively high. Nonetheless, this IGC ultimately garnered fewer Tweets in comparison to the previous rounds. Tweets on BBNJ dropped markedly after IGC4 – at around 11 per day, – this period was the quietest since we started sampling in 2018. Usage of #BBNJ once again picked up during the UN Ocean Conference, with civil society and ambitious States using the occasion to call for the finalisation of the BBNJ treaty.

The #BBNJ hashtag exploded during IGC 5 and 5.2, when the hashtag was used in more than 1000 tweets. This correlated with increased media and public attention on the negotiations. The days with the most tweets were March 5th, 6th and 7th 2023 with 5325, 3913 and 2056 Tweets respectively. We were unable to plot these dates on the following graph as they were outliers, and thus, outside of the limits of the visualization.

This analysis reveals a couple of trends. Firstly, BBNJ-related Twitter activity primarily occurs during the in-person negotiation sessions and strongly increased when the negotiations were getting closer to the finish line. After usage of #BBNJ was cemented during IGCs 1 and 2, the hashtag began to occur more often in other ocean events (such as the aforementioned UN Ocean Conference, which was not BBNJ specific). The days after BBNJ was concluded showed the strongest Twitter activity as it became part of the general media coverage.

How did the BBNJ network develop?

From the #BBNJ tweets emerged a social network, which we can visualise by analysing the interactions between users (i.e. retweets and mentions). We found that 13739 users interacted with at least one other user, creating 31842 connections. The following video shows how the BBNJ network has grown since the beginning of 2018.

Video editing: Alexander Medgett

Pathways for further research

Community Analysis

The network is quite closely connected in one large component, and we only see a few entirely disconnected user groups. A modularity-based community detection algorithm nonetheless identifies different communities within the main component (distinguished by colour in the video). Looking at network evolution over time reveals that certain core communities formed around IGC1, but that subsequent communities joined the discussions at later stages. Particularly, the purple and black communities formed around a small number of highly influential users that attracted a high number of otherwise disconnected users.

Network properties of #BBNJ discussions

Apart from analysing community structures, the relational nature of our data allows the use of established indicators from social network analysis, such as “centralization”. Centralization refers to the distribution of links between nodes [7]. An increase in centralization means that a small number of users are highly connected compared to the majority of people in the network. Table 1 shows that the centralization of the BBNJ network grew steadily after IGC1, indicating that the network grew closer together and a few users became very well connected. During the IGCs (in red), many new users joined the network and the centralization decreased. This indicates that the distribution of connections became more equal, i.e. the gap between hyper- and weakly-connected users shrank and new users joined the BBNJ community. After IGC3, the dynamics of the network did not significantly change and the network grew ever closer around a few highly central nodes for a long time. However, with IGCs 5 and 5.2, the centralization suddenly decreased strongly as many new nodes joined the network by tweeting about #BBNJ and tagging or retweeting other users.

Period	Centralization
Pre IGCs	0,16
IGC 1	0,11
Intersessional IGC 1-2	0,16
IGC 2	0,21
Intersessional IGC 2-3	0,22
IGC 3	0,20
COVID-19 Intersessional IGC 3-4	0,31
IGC 4	0,32
Intersessional IGC 4 – UN Ocean Conference	0,32
UN Ocean Conference	0,34
Past UN Ocean & pre IGC 5	0,34
IGC 5	0.23
IGC 5.2	0.21

Content analysis: other hashtags used in connection to the BBNJ hashtag

Our dataset also contains the actual #BBNJ tweet texts, allowing for a closer analysis of the content of discussion. For example, we can identify other hashtags that were used jointly with #BBNJ. #highseas co-occurs most frequently, reflecting the use of that term as a more readily intelligible alternative and recent discussion about the possibility of renaming the BBNJ Treaty to the commonly used “High Seas Treaty”.

#	Freq
highseas	7230
ocean	3134
highseastreaty	2059
biodiversity	1914
igc5	1754
oneoceanoneplanet	1130
stronghighseas	1045
abnj	1044
igc4	872
sdg14	691
unclos	649
oceans	580
mpas	511
igc2	462
deepsea	417
protecttheoceans	398
igc3	394
oneoceansummit	381
30×30	300

Contact us for collaboration:

We are excited to announce that our comprehensive Twitter dataset on the #BBNJ (Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction) negotiations is available now. The dataset encompasses more than 72.000 tweets and can offer valuable insights into the global discourse surrounding conservation of marine biodiversity and sustainable use of marine resources. We invite fellow researchers, including early-career researchers and master students to utilize this rich dataset for their scholarly investigations, enabling a deeper understanding of public opinions, key themes, networks and emerging trends during the BBNJ negotiations.

Should you wish to access this dataset and collaborate on groundbreaking research, please do not hesitate to contact us:

maripoldata.erc@univie.ac.at

References:

[1] Jungherr, A. (2014). Twitter in politics: a comprehensive literature review. Available at SSRN 2865150.; Jörgens, H., Kolleck, N., & Saerbeck, B. (2016). Exploring the hidden influence of international treaty secretariats: using social network analysis to analyse the Twitter debate on the ‘Lima Work Programme on Gender’. Journal of European Public Policy, 23(7), 979-998.; Pearce, W., Holmberg, K., Hellsten, I., & Nerlich, B. (2014). Climate Change on Twitter: Topics, Communities and Conversations about the 2013 IPCC Working Group 1 Report. PLOS ONE, 9.

[2] Boteler, B. (2016). Scientists and Twitter: How does this Group of Fact Finding Professionals use Twitter? Journal of Visual and Media Anthropology, 1(2), 5-18.; López-Goñi, I., & Sánchez-Angulo, M. (2018). Social networks as a tool for science communication and public engagement: focus on Twitter. FEMS Microbiology letters, 365(2), fnx246.; Su, L. Y.-F., Scheufele, D. A., Bell, L., Brossard, D., & Xenos, M. A. (2017). sci. Science Communication, 39(5), 569-597.

[3] Vadrot, A. B. M., Langlet, A., Tessnow-von Wysocki, I., Tolochko, P., Brogat, E., & Ruiz-Rodríguez, S. C. (2021). Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19: A New Role for Digital Diplomacy? Global Environmental Politics, 21(3), 169-186.

[4] Vadrot, A. B. M., & Ruiz Rodríguez, S. C. (2022). Digital Multilateralism in Practice: Extending Critical Policy Ethnography to Digital Negotiation Sites. International Studies Quarterly 66(3). Article sqac051, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqac051

[5] Langlet, A., Wanneau, K., Dunshirn, P., Ruiz Rodríguez, S. C., Tessnow-von Wysocki, I. & Vadrot, A.B.M. (2022). A matter of time: the impacts of Covid-19 on marine biodiversity negotiations. Négociations, 37, 39-65. https://doi.org/10.3917/neg.037.0039

[7] Borgatti, Stephen P. (2005). “Centrality and Network Flow”. Social Networks. 27: 55–71.
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A laboratory ethnographer in the deep-sea lab BEEP of IFREMER

26. April 2023/in General /by Krystel Wanneau

Since 2018, the MARIPOLDATA research team has followed the BBNJ negotiations and provided extensive insights of the diplomatic practices, science-policy interactions and conflicts shaping the development of a new high seas biodiversity treaty (Tessnow-von Wysocki & Vadrot, 2020; Vadrot, 2020; Vadrot et al. 2022). In parallel, we studied the emerging scientific field of marine biodiversity to understand the state of what scientists knew and delve into the global inequalities of the scientific field, which were reappearing at the negotiation sites (Tolochko & Vadrot 2021a, 2021b). To close the gap between the scientific field and the negotiations though, MARIPOLDATA has taken a closer look at the national level to study marine biodiversity monitoring policies and practices from the perspective of deep-sea laboratories. With the aim to compare these perspectives, the laboratory life of laboratories adds a new key site to understand the structure of the politics of marine biodiversity research entangled between science and policy.

This MARIPOLDATA blog series shares insights from three laboratory ethnographies undertaken between October and December 2022 by three researchers of the ERC MARIPOLDATA team. These ethnographies will take our readers to the United States at Scripps Oceanography [1] at the University of California San Diego, France at the IFREMER [2] of Brest and Brazil at the Oceanographic Institute [3] of São Paulo. Our intention in sharing three singular experiences of laboratory ethnography is to provide a first outlook of how national knowledge infrastructures produce marine biodiversity knowledge.

A dive into the French ocean institutions to explore the “last frontier of the planet”

The French laboratory ethnography was conducted at the Biology and Deep-sea Ecosystems^[1] (BEEP) unit, the deep-sea laboratory of IFREMER^[2] (French research institute for exploitation of the sea). Overlooking the beautiful bay of Brest, the lab premises also plunged me into the headquarters of IFREMER, a campus within the Technopôle Brest Iroise located side-by-side with the European Institute for Marine Studies (IUEM) of the University of Western Brittany (UBO). The well-established IFREMER is a pioneer of ocean science and was created in 1984 from the merger of the worlds of marine fisheries and ocean exploration. Under the joint authority of the French Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation, the French Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition, and the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food, its mission is to protect and restore the ocean, sustainably use marine resources and create and share ocean data. Engaging into these French ocean institutions, I was embarking on an ethnographic journey located in what felt to be a central site from where marine biodiversity data originated.

View from the BEEP coffee room over the bay of Brest (Photo credits: Krystel Wanneau)

Because IFREMER also manages an extensive infrastructure with the French Oceanographic Fleet, participates to the management of the national campaigns at sea and dedicates a considerable effort to ground-breaking technology, this dive was not only into the French ocean institutions, it rather felt to be the ideal playground for these scientists to explore the last frontier of the planet. From October 3rd to October 21st, I spent three weeks in Brest to embark on a laboratory ethnography. I attended an international scientific workshop for a week organized by BEEP and then stayed two weeks at BEEP to study how the laboratory staff thought, collected and managed marine biodiversity data using these technologies.

From the stories of marine images at the MIW to the laboratory life at BEEP

During the first week, I attended the 4th Marine Imaging Workshop^[3] organized by BEEP at the Océanopolis, Brest’s aquarium. This international workshop conveyed the ocean imaging community to push the boundaries of marine imaging, be it to advance (underwater) image acquisition or showcase new digital automatised imaging workflow to observe marine life. I encountered the excitement of reaching the last frontier while listening to the guest stars, marine biologist Dr. Eddie Widder^[4], a pioneer in bioluminescence who discovered the giant squid and Oxford Professor of Astrophysics Chris Lintott who shares a similar vertigo of infinite space in exploring the galaxies and invented a citizen science digital platform – the Zooniverse^[5] – that lets anyone with a computer classify galaxies or keep track of endangered species. The immersion into this imaging world exemplified the new approaches and new tools for investigating deep-sea ecosystems and was a premise for what awaited me in BEEP lab.

The story of deep-sea bioluminescence by Eddie Widder captured during the 4th MIW (Photo credits: Krystel Wanneau)

Over this week, I met several members of BEEP who presented the results of their last research^[6], or were simply driven by curiosity to see what their colleagues from other IFREMER labs, or from other institutions represented, such as Ocean Networks Canada^[7], Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution^[8], Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel^[9] (GEOMAR), Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute^[10], did. There were many reasons to be curious to discover this underwater imaging community. One that standed out as reinforcing ties between participants was innovating to see more into the invisible deep-sea. The organizers of the workshop held a photo contest and the winner was indeed a deep-sea creature photo. During this first week immersion, I collected stories about underwater marine images, technical prowess with the upcoming promises of artificial intelligence and limitations of monitoring practices.

Winner of the Marine Imaging Workshop photo contest (Photo credits: Krystel Wanneau)

Sharing the imaging workshop experience with BEEP staff and being there among them opened up my fieldwork at IFREMER before diving into the day-to-day laboratory life. The next two weeks, I was immersed in the daily activities of BEEP’s technicians, researchers, engineers, and attended their meetings, coffee breaks, visited their instrument and laboratory rooms and participated in their research activities.

The lab ethnographer immersions (photo credits: Krystel Wanneau)

Contrary to the image of immersing oneself into water, the lab ethnography is not a single immersion into a social world where you then swim, so to say, to explore the environment. The immersion repeats itself each day, and yet creates unprecedented configurations to observe the laboratory life and access to singular individual and collective routines. Despite the repetitive interaction with the same 30 individuals over the two weeks, I didn’t perceive the ethnographic immersion to be a single dive into one lab, but multiple dives to open the black box of BEEP and study the relations inside and outside the lab. Each dive created specific conditions of the immersion, some days wandering on my own in the hallways of the building to study the spatial biography of BEEP and at days trying on the IFREMER overalls suit to prepare myself to go to Roscoff, an emblematic ecosystem area in Brittany where is located an historical marine station dedicated to research and monitoring^[11].

After the immersion into the lab, the translation task

I explained above that the immersion into the laboratory life was a detailed and in-depth observation of the laboratory interactions. Yet, our task didn’t stop at the description of interactions, because to understand for MARIPOLDATA is the laboratory perspective over the deep-sea, we needed to observe their research practices and put a meaning over their projects, instruments, triage and storage of samples and organisms studied. After the immersion into the lab comes the translation task to make sense of the expertise of BEEP over nematode, cold-water coral, foraminifera and other marine species for the novice. Our task was to translate our observations of the laboratory practices into a perspective to see into oceans the deep-sea like BEEP. For instance, what meaning do we put on this video of cold-water corals? It was a dive of the RUV (Robot Underwater Vehicle) Victor 6000 operated by IFREMER during the 2022 cruise ChEReef^[12] in the bay of Biscay to collect data for the project ARDECO^[13] coordinated by BEEP to improve the conservation of cold-water corals. On my last day in Brest, I visited the samples brought back and stored at the Océanopolis^[14] aquarium for both research and educational purposes. The translation task puts a meaning over the expertise that each laboratory provides and the services they offer to society.

During my stay, I discovered the deep-sea expertise of IFREMER in practice. The laboratory BEEP contributes to the department of deep-sea physical resources and ecosystems of IFREMER with a multidisciplinary study of the biology and ecology of deep-sea ecosystems. They conduct in situ exploring and sampling of the biodiversity of these ecosystems, ex situ studies of the interactions in the deep sea and focus on molecular mechanisms to study the responses and adaptation of organisms. For two weeks, my daily vocabulary changed radically to include nematodes, cold seeps, deep-sea canyons, hydrothermal vents, polymetallic nodules, deep-sea corals, foraminifera, new organisms I had never heard about. Past the feeling of amazement, I discovered what they were doing to study those organisms and the variation of practices to produce knowledge of the deep-sea. For instance, I followed the Blue Revolution^[15] project and observed sampling practices at Roscoff (image 7), storage practices in the Centob lab (image 8), imaging practices to prepare the sample before using the scanning electron microscope (SEM) to photograph tiny organisms (images 9). Observing these research practices informed about the scientific mission of BEEP’s researchers.

Sampling at the Roscoff marine station (Photo credits: Krystel Wanneau)

Storage of samples at the Centob lab (Photo credits: Krystel Wanneau)

A polychaete sample captured by the scanning electron microscope (SEM) (Photo credits: Krystel Wanneau)

Back to the land, in Österreich

Over the three weeks in Brest, I embarked in a laboratory ethnography of BEEP to study its practices and I learned through these practices about the perspective of a deep-sea lab. Being entangled between the purpose of

the mandate of IFREMER to provide expertise on marine life to support public policy-making and the scientific mission of researchers to discover and study marine life, the BEEP laboratory is a key site to understand to politics of marine biodiversity data in France.

I thank the ERC MARIPOLDATA project principal investigator Alice Vadrot for the opportunity to conduct a laboratory ethnography and the staff from BEEP who opened the doors of its laboratory life. In particular, I thank Daniela Zeppilli and Pierre-Marie Sarradin without whom this fieldwork wouldn’t have become real.

^[1] https://www.umr-beep.fr/en

^[2] https://en.ifremer.fr/

^[3] https://miw2022.sciencesconf.org/

^[4] https://www.ted.com/speakers/edith_widder

^[5] https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/lintott/citizen-science

^[6] https://mobile.twitter.com/BlueRevProject/status/1577201635423817729

^[7] https://www.oceannetworks.ca/

^[8] https://www.whoi.edu/

^[9] https://www.geomar.de/

^[10] https://www.mbari.org/

^[11] https://www.sb-roscoff.fr/

^[12] https://campagnes.flotteoceanographique.fr/campagnes/18000571/