From rising temperatures and habitat destruction to plastic pollution and overfishing, our oceans and those who rely on them are in trouble. While the crisis warrants urgent action, solutions often fall short because the law, science, economics, and policy all approach our seas from different perspectives. They often struggle to communicate with each other about, let alone agree on, how our oceans should be treated. And the voices of small-scale fishers and coastal communities are often altogether ignored.

Fishing restrictions meant to curb overfishing end up harming those who depend on it for their daily living, and 'blue economies' meant to build wealth from offshore gas drilling can undermine not just ecology and biodiversity but also local heritage and cultural traditions.

To build fair and sustainable interventions to protect our oceans, a myriad of perspectives must engage in meaningful dialogue about how our seas should be regulated, and over the past five years, the One Ocean Hub provided a platform for this to happen.

Researchers, policymakers, activists, and ocean communities alike became a part of the global, award-winning research and community network focused on placing fair and inclusive decision-making at the heart of ocean governance.

Under the helm of researchers Dr Dylan McGarry and then later Taryn Pereira, the ELRC acted as the Hub's South African stronghold and influenced its transdisciplinary, community-centred research approach.

At the end of June, the One Ocean Hub, in its current form, came to an end. But its network and vision to safeguard the ocean and platform coastal communities holds fast amidst changing tides.

"[In my view], the Hub's biggest achievement was building a strong social network. Not just among academics and social scholar activists, but within civil society, from small-scale fishing networks and traditional healers to government groups," explained Dr McGarry, "We could work together and share what we were learning. But we also built incredible friendships across very different worldviews and disciplines."

The Beginning of a Global Network of Ocean Protectors 

Funded by the UK Research and Innovation agency through its Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), the Hub started when legal scholars from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow invited a diverse group of researchers together to develop a transdisciplinary programme of research to address complex challenges and injustices in ocean governance.

Over 100 researchers were involved across the UK, South Africa, Namibia, Ghana, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands. This group included environmental lawyers, legal anthropologists, artists, fisheries scientists, conservation scientists, and marine sociologists. 

The research spanned several themes, looking at the impacts of blue economies on societies and communities; strengthening the capacity of various actors to take responsibility for protecting oceans and people; making Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) more responsive and inclusive of affected stakeholders; exploring how international law and human rights relate to the ocean and ocean governance; and how art can elevate the views of marginalised groups who are underrepresented in ocean-related policy-making.

The ELRC had a significant role to play in the One Ocean Hub as a bastion of innovative research in South Africa. The centre focuses on transcending and connecting disciplines, centring non-academic communities, and helping to transform society through education and learning. This research approach influenced the Hub through the input of ELRC alumnus Dr McGarry, who helped to craft the Hub's research and ethics design.

The ELRC Community Making Waves

Before joining the One Ocean Hub, Dr McGarry had completed his PhD and then Postdoctoral Studies with the ELRC, during which he founded his research-based applied theatre company, Empatheatre, along with Neil Coppen and Mpume Mthombeni.

He had also worked within the Transgressive Learning Network, a knowledge and education network based at the ELRC aimed at cultivating transformative learning experiences to achieve societal change and ecological justice.

Sharing information and raising awareness is often not enough to change people's behaviour and attitudes towards the ocean and vulnerable communities. Dr McGarry's Empatheatre project aims to achieve transformative learning through theatre, which can more readily cultivate understanding, dialogue, and empathy.

During this time at the ELRC, Dr McGarry worked with socio-legal property scholar from The University of Strathclyde, Saskia Vermeylen, who appreciated these creative approaches to research and societal transformation. Vermeylen was one of the founders of the One Ocean Hub and wanted its research to be based on work in the humanities and social sciences rather than only the hard sciences.

Before his postgraduate studies in environmental education focused on the learning potential embedded in arts and culture, Dr McGarry delved into marine and environmental sciences for his undergraduate and Master’s degrees. This eclectic background made him an ideal candidate to co-create the inter-disciplinary One Ocean Hub, and he was invited to join the project.

Using his rich experience in innovative research and educational methods nurtured through the ELRC, McGarry helped to craft the One Ocean Hub's Code of Practice, codesigned its transdisciplinary research design, and acted as a co-director.

He also worked as the regional co-director for South Africa for three years, a position which Taryn Pereira took up for the final two years of the project, co-ordinating researchers at Rhodes University, Nelson Mandela University, Durban University of Technology and UCT.

Empatheatre became affiliated with the One Ocean Hub, focusing on creating ocean-based storytelling and dialogue drawn from the real-life testimonies of coastal communities.

"I was able to design a project in which my Empatheatre work and transgressive learning research [could] lead global research agendas, which was very exciting," Dr. McGarry explained, "Rather than scientists having hypothesise or deciding what research to do, this trans-disciplinary research was led by communities and by people's real lived concerns around the ocean. Participatory theatre [was a way to] surface the concerns and questions of communities." 

McGarry invited Pereira to join the ELRC-based team, and having spent the previous ten years working for the Environmental Justice NGO, Environmental Monitoring Group, she was keen to be a part of the project.

"I had experienced the disconnect between the university-based research community working on issues of social and environmental justice, and the grassroots community-based activists who were leading struggles against, and alternatives to, environmental injustices in their everyday lives," she explained, "I was interested in the potential role of scholar-activists within transdisciplinary initiatives [like the One Ocean Hub], to build solidarity across and between academia and environmental social movements."

Pereira coordinated the Coastal Justice Network, a group of South African scholar activists within the One Ocean Hub. The Coastal Justice Network was strongly orientated towards supporting small-scale fishers and other ocean defenders in their struggles for environmental and social justice along our coasts and oceans – increasingly referred to as ‘Blue Justice’.

Reflecting on the One Ocean Hub's Success

The One Ocean Hub has supported various interventions in South Africa, such as the 2022 court cases led by small-scale fishers and their partners, which successfully halted seismic surveys by multinational companies exploring oil and gas off the Wild Coast.

It has supported networks of small-scale fishers in defending their rights within policy debates; has influenced laws around drone fishing in South Africa that impacted sharks and other fishers (through work led by fellow Rhodes researchers based at the Department of Icthyology and Fisheries Science); and strengthened the coastal economies and livelihoods of women in small-scale fishing communities in the Eastern Cape.

The Hub has also influenced global policy. Its research and analysis has been used by the United Nation's Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights, and it has been asked to support a UN report on the right to food and fisheries by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. It has also had opportunities to co-develop global capacity tools with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Through support from the Hub and its networks, Empatheatre performed their plays in front of the South African parliament, at the FAO headquarters in Rome, and at the UN headquarters in New York. They also submitted their research-based scripts to the UN as policy briefs.

For the seismic surveys court case, Dr McGarry and his team submitted a colourful and poignant video animation, Indlela Yokuphila, which surfaced community views about the rich cultural value of the ocean. The video also won the Best Digital Humanities and Community Engagement category award at the South African Humanities and Social Sciences Awards 2024.

A collaborative tapestry art project detailing coastal communities’ cultural, historical, and socioeconomic ties to the sea, "Our Ocean is Sacred you Can't mine Heaven, " funded by the Hub, also won the Best Exhibition Catalogue.

But both Dr McGarry and Pereira agree that the networks and relationships nurtured throughout the project's lifespan were its greatest achievements.

"The most important work we were able to do was to grow and sustain relationships between a diverse group of researchers, small-scale fishers and civil society practitioners," explained Pereira, "These relationships, which were all guided by a commitment to resisting environmental injustices and amplifying small-scale fisher voices within ocean governance, required learning and unlearning for all participants including the academics themselves. These relationships and the knowledge they produced enabled us to respond together to a wide range of governance processes."

As for the future of this network, Dr McGarry says that knock-off projects from the One Ocean Hub will likely emerge in the near future, and that many of the groups and projects involved in the Hub are still ongoing.

Although McGarry is leaving the ELRC in his capacity as a One Ocean Hub researcher, he will remain an affiliated research associate and will continue to create socially grounded and relevant theatre through Empatheatre.

The important work of the Coastal Justice Network's to amplify the power and voice of small-scale fishers within ocean governance will also continue. Pereira will remain a part of the ELRC, as a researcher focusing on transdisciplinary research and learning for environmental justice.

The struggle to protect our oceans and coastal communities is ongoing, so although its formal organisation has ended, McGarry and Pereira are certain that the Hub’s momentum, impact, and network are and will remain active and strong in their fight for ocean justice.