Ocean Industry Should Focus More on Data Sharing.

Due to improvements in surveillance technology, Ocean industry practices are under scrutiny, and the industry holds accountability for how their activities affect the ocean’s health.

FREMONT, CA: Many ocean industries have existed for centuries far from land, out of sight, and usually out of mind. High-resolution satellite imagery, drones, tracking systems, and a global call for accountability are beginning to lift the veil on industrial ocean practices. While the ocean industries have little control over surveillance technologies, they can directly contribute to the movement towards greater transparency by taking an active role in data sharing. This increases not only operational accountability, but also public trust, profitability, and even operational efficiency and sustainability. Human well-being and the global economy are dependent on the ocean's sustainable utilization. To ensure such utilization, companies engaged in ocean-based economic activities must be transparent in their operations to owners, customers, and society as a whole.

This transparency is demanded mainly from owners and finance as they require direct insight into long-term ocean operations in order to reduce financial risk and comply with both investment policy and their own environmental profiles. Owners will be able to exercise responsible ownership more easily if they have constant access to information. Examples of owners and financial institutions requesting this can be witnessed as Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) has stated unequivocally that it expects the companies in which it has invested to share both sustainability strategies and the impact of their operations on the oceans. Another example is the Poseidon Principles, which several ship financing banks have agreed to follow in order to promote international shipping's decarbonization for creating a framework for incorporating climate considerations into lending decisions.

Furthermore, Customers are pushing from the bottom up for transparency. Customers' operational and market risks are inseparably linked to how they source their goods and services, and thus to their environmental profile and future earnings. The Vanora – C4IR Ocean cargo chartering solution will demonstrate this as a charterer will be able to compare vessel efficiency and CO2 emission estimates from the various vessel and route options, thus directly addressing the environmental impact of the operations. Therefore, data sharing directly allows market forces to intervene and drive change. Parallels with John Maynard Keynes' concept of user cost can be drawn in this light. Initially, Keynes saw this as a situation in which entrepreneurs sacrifice future profits by investing in capital equipment today