Yachts for Science has taken an innovative approach to safeguarding the world's oceans: pairing marine researchers with yacht owners to embark on crucial sea explorations.
The mission, per the organization's website? To improve scientists' and researchers' "access to the oceans … by utilising the thousands of yachts that are traveling the globe as platforms."
The organization is the result of multiple groups' efforts to partner on their shared mission of exploring and protecting the ocean.
"We identified an opportunity to match-make yachts and scientists," Yachts for Science project lead Rosie O'Donnell explained in Superyacht Stories.
O'Donnell continued: "The science community struggles to get vessel time. … The yachting community has a well-resourced (and well-intentioned) community, often looking for an opportunity to support science."
Our oceans are the foremost global ecosystem. As the Marine Stewardship Council explains, they "are essential to life on Earth … regulate its climate, and supply much of its oxygen." Besides the vital role they play in our survival, oceans also provide a source of food and work for billions.
However, according to Yachts for Science, the majority of our oceans remain unexplored. This results in "no scientific baseline" by which to measure the status and condition of this all-important natural resource (not to mention the plants and wildlife within it).
Limited data not only makes it hard to collect information on deterioration or improvement but also to develop appropriate mitigation plans, timelines, and solutions. These are going to be necessary because our oceans are under threat; as the United Nations states: "climate change and human activities are causing the health of oceans to decline at an alarming rate."
MSC underscores that point as well, noting that "stakes are high when we consider how intrinsically linked the health of our oceans is to our environmental, social, and economic wellbeing."
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It follows that increased exploration and education can result in perspective-shifting findings, critical conclusions, and pioneering inventions.
Enter yachts, a surprising savior, for these boats are known to have, per OceanWeb Ltd, "an unavoidable history of causing pollution at sea" from dirty energy usage and waste output.
But Yachts for Science is trying to bring them closer to the goal of exploring and preserving the oceans — making it a shared mission instead of an adversarial one. It's another way a possibly wasteful scenario can transform into innovation and positive progress.
That's why, O'Donnell noted, the organization works hard to bring yacht owners on board, sometimes literally. They "can choose to host a scientist and even assist with this research," instead of just lending a yacht that's not in use. (That hands-on approach is favored about 50% of the time, O'Donnell added.)
Think of Yachts for Science less like Airbnb on the water and more as "the Tinder of the Seas" — a nickname for the organization O'Donnell told Superyacht Stories she's heard before.
The organization has already matched multiple boats and scientists in the past few years, enabling research missions to study North Atlantic humpback whales, polar ecosystems in the Arctic and Antarctic, and more.
"In many ways that is true," O'Donnell said regarding the Tinder designation. "We look for a good match between a vessel owner and a lead scientist, a science project and a cruising destination, and then we let the magic happen."
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