The Moana Project Braids Tradition and Science for a More Sustainable Ocean (original) (raw)

Aotearoa New Zealand has been inhabited since the first settlers arrived in voyaging canoes between 1250 and 1300 CE. Wayfinding based on Traditional Knowledge of navigation guided them, and the prevailing winds and currents propelled them.

These settlers, the Māori people, found food in abundance around the coast and built kaitiakitanga (guardianship and protection) practices rooted in the deep identification of the Māori with the ocean. They established traditional management of marine resources using rāhui (bans) and tapu (restrictions). These bans and restrictions control when fish and shellfish species may be harvested, for example, to avoid overfishing and damaging or polluting fishing areas with human waste.

Aotearoa New Zealand leans on the ocean as a major source of wealth and well-being while also honoring traditional and cultural practices.

Today, Aotearoa New Zealand leans on the ocean as a major source of wealth and well-being while also honoring traditional and cultural practices. Members of the Māori community own about half of the country’s seafood sector, which includes the fishing and aquaculture industries and brings in NZ$5.2 billion each year. However, the ocean is changing, and its resources are threatened by warming waters and other environmental shifts driven by global climate change.

Although Mātauranga Māori (Māori traditional knowledge) is constantly evolving to adapt to new environmental conditions, a braided rivers approach helps us to find solutions to the complex problems posed by the changing ocean. Similar to the Mi’kmaq concept of “two-eyed seeing,” which involves interweaving traditional and scientific knowledge systems, braided rivers communicate and intersect on their journey to the sea.

The Moana Project, named for the Māori word for “ocean” and launched in 2018, is a pioneering endeavor in ocean stewardship that combines Traditional Knowledge, cutting-edge technology, and collaborative partnerships with Aotearoa New Zealand’s fishing and aquaculture industries to bolster the blue economy, enhance societal well-being, and safeguard ocean health. These goals are achieved by providing tools and information that help improve water safety and forecasts of extreme events, monitor marine reserves and ocean climate change at a national level, inform preservation efforts, and make fishing more efficient and sustainable, among many other benefits.

The Moana Project brings together understanding of and from biology, Traditional Knowledge, ocean observations, and numerical modeling, as represented by images (left to right) of a pāua shell and seaweed, traditional Māori sailing vessels called waka, the Mangōpare ocean temperature sensor developed in the project, and modeled ocean temperatures in the Bay of Plenty. Credit: all, Moana Project

The project represents an inclusive, multicultural approach to ocean science and management that is necessary to ensuring a sustainable future for Aotearoa New Zealand communities—one that could provide a template for other countries or regions to follow. In fact, the results from the project have already inspired similar systems in such places as Antarctica, Australia, and Ghana.

Monitoring the Ocean

Thermal stress is one of the greatest threats to Aotearoa New Zealand’s aquaculture and fisheries. Extreme climate events, especially marine heat waves, have become more frequent in recent years, with devastating impacts on ocean ecosystems. For example, the deepwater Hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae) fishery, which generates roughly NZ$205 million in exports annually, suffered a NZ$13 million loss in 2017 alone, likely due in part to elevated ocean temperatures.

Unfortunately, our capacity to observe and predict ocean conditions has been historically limited, which in turn limits our ability to anticipate and prepare for negative effects of environmental change. Furthermore, sizes and distributions of key source populations of taonga (treasure) species—those of particular economic and cultural importance, such as pāua (abalone) and kuku (native greenshell mussels)—at a national level have been unknown, hampering our understanding of the overall health of these populations.

Integrating various knowledge sources and priorities in ocean monitoring is critical for enhancing marine ecosystem management.

Integrating various knowledge sources and priorities in ocean monitoring is critical for enhancing marine ecosystem management. Such integration must account for the valuable insights of coastal Indigenous communities that stem from generations of using and managing marine ecosystems through their local and traditional environmental knowledge.

In the Moana Project, our approach for successful collaboration between scientists and communities involves two-way knowledge sharing, joint development of funding proposals and project plans, agreements about ecosystem monitoring, and ongoing data sharing following the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) and CARE (collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, ethics) principles. The project was conceived with the Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, which represents an iwi (tribe) whose traditional homeland is on Aotearoa New Zealand’s North Island along a stretch of the Bay of Plenty coast, and with iwi aquaculture and fishing interests at heart.

Early in the project, scientists developed an innovative temperature sensor system that iwi project partners named Mangōpare (hammerhead shark; Figure 1). The system is deployed in collaboration with the commercial fishing industry, local communities, crew aboard educational and research vessels, amateur scientists, and others. More than 250 vessels participate in collecting near-real-time observations while performing their normal at-sea activities.

Fig. 1. The Moana Project captures cost-effective, high-quality ocean temperature measurements through a “nation of oceanographers” approach, that is, by partnering with commercial fishers and amateur scientists from coastal regions around Aotearoa New Zealand. The central map shows average 2020–2023 coverage of the ocean around the country by temperature sensors in the Argo (blue) and Mangōpare (orange) networks (darker shades represent higher numbers of temperature profiles collected), highlighting how Mangōpare sensors can complement Argo measurements. The surrounding photos show sensor deployments and some of the individuals involved. Credit: left bottom, Peter McComb; left middle, Willie Maclardy; right middle, Tom McCowan; all others, Moana Project

The sensor technology provides cost-effective, near-real-time ocean temperature monitoring at a national scale in coastal regions, filling a recognized gap and complementing existing global observing systems. The resulting subsurface temperature observations offer profound insights into oceanic conditions and provide early warnings of extreme events.

The system’s huge success played a key role in the establishment of an international group focused on promoting fishing vessels as ocean observing platforms: the Fishing Vessel Ocean Observing Network. This initiative was recently endorsed by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development under the CoastPredict program, and is now included in the Global Ocean Observing System as an emerging network.

Predicting the Future

When oceanographic observations are assimilated into ocean models, they enhance the accuracy of coastal and shelf sea simulations and improve forecasts of future conditions (Figure 2). These models can provide insight into causes of extreme heating events, reveal local dynamics influencing important traditional aquaculture sites, and explore connectivity among different populations of marine species.

Fig. 2. The life cycle of ocean observations collected in partnership with the fishers. The observations collected are eventually fed into models that help provide forecasts of ocean conditions, which contain valuable information for fishers and other users.

Short-range ocean temperature forecasts provide a useful tool for preparing for and responding to emergencies, such as rapid, heat wave–induced declines in fisheries and ocean temperature effects on extreme weather. However, industry and government stakeholders in Aotearoa New Zealand have highlighted an additional urgent need to understand upcoming mid- to long-term (i.e., the middle to the end of the century) changes in the marine environment. Such changes may have long-lasting effects on population sizes and distributions—and possibly the survival—of many species, including taonga species.

Understanding the potential impacts of warming water and other environmental changes is usually limited by a lack of knowledge of animal physiological responses to increasing temperatures. In the Moana Project, new knowledge of physiologies and distributions of multiple species gleaned from studies conducted outside the project is integrated with ocean forecasting of the impacts of future climate scenarios on Aotearoa New Zealand’s coastal waters. This holistic approach enables informed decisionmaking and the development of effective adaptation strategies.

The Origins of Seafood Species

Connectivity among different populations (i.e., groups that live in different areas) of a given species is critical to maintaining the health and robust numbers of that species’ populations. Identifying source populations that—through breeding or migration—provide many new recruits to fishery or aquaculture populations is particularly important in conserving those valuable societal resources, which face the possibility of depletion because of ongoing extraction.

The Moana Project has focused on understanding and quantifying population connectivity at regional and national spatial scales for key seafood species, including kuku, pāua, and kōura (rock lobsters). To this end, we use different approaches: Mātauranga Māori, modeling of larvae trajectories, analyses of genetic variation, and shell microchemistry. Below, we highlight two examples of this work related to mussels.

In the Bay of Plenty, Whakatōhea and neighboring iwi provided information about important sites at which mussels are present and have been harvested for many generations. With permission from local iwi, project scientists collected mussels along approximately 110 kilometers of coastline. In addition, newly settled mussels on the Whakatōhea offshore mussel farm were collected to see whether it was possible to determine where they originated.

The Moana Project team is invited into the Omarumutu Marae in Ōpōtiki for the final Hui (meeting) with the Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board (top). Members of the project team and the Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board pose for a group photo together outside the Marae (bottom). Credit: Whakatōhea Maori Trust Board

Genetic analysis of these samples revealed small but important genetic differentiation on a regional scale, suggesting that recruitment to the farm is mostly local. Confirming this finding, a modeling study identified a recirculation current in the eastern part of the bay that retains local larvae. Shell microchemistry analysis of newly settled mussels collected from shallow offshore settlement sites further supported the importance of local populations as sources for new recruits to the mussel farm.

This transdisciplinary work has shown that most recruitment to coastal sites long used for traditional gathering of wild mussels in the Bay of Plenty is local. These findings highlight how Mātauranga Māori and western science can be intertwined to improve coastal management (e.g., through protection of existing key sites) and spatial planning (e.g., through identification of new mussel farm sites in the coastal areas of the local iwi).

In another example, large numbers of wild spat (small mussels roughly 5–10 millimeters long) wash up naturally along Ninety Mile Beach along the west coast of the Northland Peninsula in the extreme north of Aotearoa New Zealand. Eighty percent of Aotearoa New Zealand’s greenshell mussel aquaculture relies on spat collected in this region. Understanding where these mussels come from and the oceanic mechanisms that carry them to this beach is critical for the growth of the country’s mussel aquaculture industry.

We worked with multiple iwi in the far north of Aotearoa New Zealand to collect mussels from sites that iwi identified as culturally important.

We worked with multiple iwi in the far north to collect mussels from sites that iwi identified as culturally important. Genetic analysis revealed no significant genetic differentiation among mussels collected from this region, confirming long-held Māori knowledge that the mussel spat that wash up at Ninety Mile Beach are locally derived. However, we found pronounced differentiation between these northern mussels and those from farther south. Physical oceanographic modeling corroborated this finding, helping to reveal that this genetic distinction derives from the absence of suitable mussel habitat along Ripiro Beach, Aotearoa New Zealand’s longest sandy beach. The 107-kilometer beach acts as a divider that keeps the northern and southern populations from intermingling.

This work provides important information that will help iwi better understand mussel population dynamics. Iwi may also use these results to support their calls to the government for better protection of the critically important mussel beds in shallow offshore and intertidal regions of the rohe moana (traditional marine areas) in the region.

Completing the Coproduction Cycle

The above two examples demonstrate the key role of Indigenous Peoples in identifying important sites for sample collection and in providing leadership and networking among iwi to ensure that research efforts develop with input from all interested parties and science collaborators as early as possible in the process. The results provide iwi with the best available scientific knowledge, enabling them to better protect existing resources and make more informed decisions about where to locate potential new aquaculture initiatives (e.g., farms and spat-catching operations). Such decisions ultimately involve major economic investments by iwi and provide employment opportunities for local people in the region.

To complete the cycle of coproduced research in the Moana Project, scientific results must not only be shared with the communities and stakeholders involved but also be transformed into useful products and services developed with their input. Information from the project has, for example, been integrated into the Whakatōhea Moana Plan, which outlines Whakatōhea values, goals, and aspirations for its coastal and marine territory.

Project members have also responded to the challenge that extreme temperature events represent to the aquaculture and fishing industries by creating a publicly available marine heat wave forecast tool to provide early warnings up to 10 days in advance of an extreme event. Looking back at ocean temperatures in previous years, another approach used by the project, can shed light on how marine heat wave events affected—and may affect in the future—catch and productivity fluctuations registered by our fishing industry partners.

By providing information and tools tailored to specific community and industry users, the Moana Project empowers them to develop and apply information-based management practices. And by uniting modern science with time-honored wisdom, the Moana Project is paving the way—and providing a model—for responsible ocean stewardship and the prosperity of marine environments nationwide and beyond.

Author Information

João Marcos Azevedo Correia de Souza (jmazevedo1975@gmail.com), Meteorological Service of New Zealand, Raglan; now at Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, Lecce, Italy; Julie Jakoboski, Meteorological Service of New Zealand, Raglan; Jonathan Gardner, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand; Maui Hudson, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand; and Malene Felsing, Department of Conservation, Hamilton, New Zealand

Citation: de Souza, J. M. A. C., J. Jakoboski, J. Gardner, M. Hudson, and M. Felsing (2024), The Moana Project braids tradition and science for a more sustainable ocean, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240233. Published on 31 May 2024.

Text © 2024. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

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