University staff based at NOCS, Dr Maria Baker and Professor Paul Tyler, have recently returned from teaching on a highly successful capacity development course in Namibia, a result of the offshore phosphate mining debate.
The extraction of phosphates from the marine environment has yet to commence anywhere but is of increasing international interest as a strategic reserve of agricultural fertilizer. In Namibia, a moratorium on phosphate mining has been in place since September 2013 and the governmental evaluation of the recent Environmental Impact Assessment is about to commence.
Despite the wealth of fisheries scientists in Namibia, there are almost no deep-sea benthic ecologists (the benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water). This poses a problem in light of the proposed mining which would impact the seabed biota, having a knock-on effect on the current fisheries in the region. Dr Baker collaborated with Mr Rudi Cloete and Mrs Bronwen Currie of the Namibian Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources to hold a workshop in order to address this limited capacity in Namibia in terms of benthic and pelagic ecosystem effects of mining.
The workshop was organised by the INDEEP project funded by Fondation Total and the UN International Seabed Authority. 28 participants from Namibia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritania and Angola attended the workshop in Swakopmund at the National Marine Information and Research Centre of the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources headquarters. It is hoped that some of the Namibia workshop participants may teach in future INDEEP capacity development efforts.
The full article will be published in Deep-Sea Life (Issue 7) at the end of May.