The following policy drivers have been identified as being of national and pan-European importance, based on documents in the public domain.
Sustainable Marine Resource Management
The key aspects of this driver deal with the importance of sustainable management of all our marine resources, including fisheries, energy (oil and gas, renewables such as tidal, wave and wind power), shipping, invasive and introduced species, leisure activities, dredging, mining, and pollution, marine conservation zones and marine protected areas.
Health of the Human Population
The marine environment is of increasing importance in human health because of the adoption of marine models in basic biomedical research (e.g. sea squirt, amphioxus), drug discovery, development of diagnostic tools, and the potential of viral transmission from animal species to humans (e.g.cholera, avian flu, seal adenovirus epizootics).
Biodiversity
The importance of healthy seas for human well-being is widely recognised because of the important role of the oceans in climate control and regulation, as well as providing a vital source of human nutrition through capture fisheries and aquaculture. Biodiversity is also of key relevance in the development of the biotechnology sector as biological understanding is transferred into industrial application, product development and new technology.
Food security
This driver includes sustainable protein production from marine sources, exploitation of new species (algae, invertebrates, fish), the replacement of fish oil and protein in aquaculture feeds with locally sourced plant and algal products, improved aquaculture production with reduced environmental impacts, and the traceability of marine food stuffs from sea to plate.
Climate change
Understanding impacts of, adaptations to and mitigation against effects of climate change (ocean warming, ocean acidification, circulation changes and nutrient availability) is a key component of a number of National and European marine strategies. This requires better understanding of organismal and population biology and the identification and study of key indicator species and communities. As the marine environment is also a major carbon sink, for example through photosynthesis by phytoplankton, it is important to further research ocean ecosystem function and dynamics to understand their importance in reducing carbon emissions.
