About Ocean Survey 20/20

The vision of Ocean Survey 20/20 is to provide New Zealand with the knowledge of its ocean territory to:

• demonstrate our stewardship and exercise our sovereign rights
• conserve, protect, manage and sustainably utilise our ocean resources, and
• facilitate safe navigation and enjoyment of the oceans around New Zealand.

The geographic area covered by the programme is primarily New Zealand's EEZ, continental shelf and the Ross Sea region.

New Zealand's ocean territory

Did you know that:

• New Zealand has the fourth largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 3.8 million square km with a maritime jurisdiction up to 24 times the size of our land area?
• currently, 96 percent of New Zealand's territory is under water and the extent and location of resources and the carrying capacity of the ocean and seabed are not well understood?
• only 13 percent of the sea floor of the EEZ has been mapped in any detail, according to current estimates?

With this level of knowledge there is an increasing risk that valuable biological resources or critical ecosystem services will be degraded or destroyed by development undertaken with inadequate information or that potentially important economic resources will not be discovered.

The Ocean Survey 20/20 projects have been developed to help address this risk in a targeted way so that we can maximise the return on investment while ensuring the sustainable management of marine resources for future generations of New Zealanders.

Benefits of Ocean Survey 20/20

The benefits of Ocean Survey 20/20 programme to New Zealand are:

• information generated by the programme will help contribute to the sustainable management of critical ecosystem services and important economic and biological resources
• a more comprehensive information base on the character of the nation's sea-floor, oceanography, and ocean resources, both physical and biological
• mapping ocean resources will support effective marine management in the same way that mapping New Zealand's land area has delivered extensive benefits for land management
• a robust and expanding knowledge base on the nature and distribution of marine biodiversity and the dynamics of marine ecosystems, from the coast and estuaries to the deep sea
• a much greater ability to predict how these ecosystems will respond to future resource use pressures and management intervention. This will inform assessment of threats (eg to biodiversity), choices over where and how to intervene, the setting of priorities and measurement of progress towards outcomes. It will increase certainty in decision making
• generation of a considerable body of new scientific data on an unprecedented scale providing the ongoing opportunity for research and development in marine sciences.

Governance

The work programme has been developed collaboratively by officials from 18 organisations. This includes all government agencies with an interest in managing marine resources, Crown Research Institutes and representatives from regional councils and universities.

The governance structure of a Chief Executive Group and Officials Advisory and Co-ordination Committee provides an effective co-ordination mechanism for the Ocean Survey 20/20 programme. Agencies have embraced a new collective way of thinking and the benefits of this extensive and unprecedented collaboration go beyond the work programme itself, including productivity gains from co-operative planning and leveraging and greatly increased understanding across agencies of broader marine issues. LINZ is the coordinating agency for the programme.