Scientific Voyage Maps Deep Ocean Changes Across Cook Islands EEZ

Tiana
Haxton RNZ Pacific journalist/presenter

A month
long expedition underway in the Cook Islands is looking to
further understand how climate change affects the
ocean.

The voyage, which is a joint initiative between
Climate Change Cook Islands and Earth Science New Zealand,
aims to establish the first comprehensive baseline of
conditions across the Cook Islands Exclusive Economic Zone
(EEZ).

Researchers aboard New Zealand’s
state-of-the-art ocean research vessel Kaharoa II are
collecting water samples, measuring ocean temperatures and
currents, mapping the seafloor and testing for
microplastics.

Voyage lead and oceanographer Denise
Fernandez from Earth Science New Zealand said the expedition
is the first step in building a long-term picture of the
state of the Cook Islands ocean.

“Basically, we are
trying to gather information from the ocean to describe the
state of the ocean of the Cook Islands exclusive economic
zone, so we can, in the future, know whether changes have
been happening in this ocean. We can always come back to
this reference period,” Fernandez said.

Scientists are
collecting data from the surface to depths of more than five
thousand meters, with a particular focus on the Northern
Cook Islands where ‘ocean heat content’ has increased
significantly.

Fernandez said this study is vital as
the changes happening below the surface, directly affects
local livelihoods.

“If climate change will have some
impacts in the heat and the salinity and the currents – that
will also cascade on affecting ecosystems in this
area.

“We know that from Cook Islands ecosystems and
supporting the food chains, is very important for many
industries and for people, so we are trying to try to give a
description of this area in this time.”

Predicting
ocean changes

Climate Change Cook Islands director
Wayne King said the expedition is helping develop a
long-term ocean monitoring program.

“We don’t know
ourselves with 100 percent accuracy what is in our ocean. We
generally know, of course there’s fish and there’s whales,
and in some parts of it there’s manganese nodules. But what
we don’t know is what else is there, if
anything.”

“The idea of it is to capture what we call
baseline. That’s all the information from the surface of the
ocean right to the very bottom, and that will that will
allow us to then know what changes will occur to that ocean
over time.”

For King, the information will help the
Cook Islands understand how climate change is affecting
fisheries, coral reefs, ocean chemistry and carbon storage –
which he added, directly impacts the livelihoods of everyday
Cook Islanders.

“That will be valuable to us as a
country to better understand because we are an ocean state.
Very small country land wise, very big country ocean wise.
So we need to understand if there is change in those
oceans.”

Fernandez said the data can be used to
predict changes in the ocean, long before it
happens.

“All of the information that we collect now
to state how much the ocean is changing, how much heat the
ocean can receive, it is helping models that can forecast
what’s going to happen in 10 years.

“For a model to
perform well, it needs a baseline, it needs the real
observation to understand the processes that happen in the
ocean. The more information we gather, the more information
we can provide to those models, the more we can know about
the future.”

She added these predictions will support
not only the Cook Islands resilience efforts, but those of
the whole region.

“Because the ocean doesn’t have hard
boundaries, so what happens in Cook Islands can expand and
move somewhere else. So this is important that we do now,
not only for the benefit of Cook Islands, but also for the
South Pacific community.”

Empowering local
youth

On board as an observer is Tangimetua ‘Tango’
Paerau from youth and environmental NGO Korero O Te
Orau.

While he described the voyage as “outside his
comfort zone”, he believes it is important for Cook
Islanders to be involved in scientific expeditions carried
out in their waters – even if it is research they are
unfamiliar with.

“This sort of stuff is way out of my
comfort zone. But what I took from this experience [is] the
ocean deserves our attention before any problems become
massive,” Paerau said.

“There’s changes happening
beneath the ocean that we don’t know about as people… It’s
not visible, but it always influences our fisheries, coral
reefs, the ecosystems, that so many of us depend
on.”

As a youth leader, he believes young Cook
Islanders need to be included so they can be better prepared
to make decisions as the country’s future leaders.

“It
is important to share that sort of knowledge with our youth
to allow them to understand what’s happening…

the
ocean is changing quite a lot, and for the island nations,
like the Cook Islands, those changes affect us
all.”

For Fernandez, involving Cook Islanders directly
in researching their own ocean is just as important as the
data itself.

“Information is power. Giving information
to the people living in these waters is giving them the
power to make decisions.”

The voyage is scheduled to
conclude on 23
July.

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