Today, iAtlantic has released a short film documenting its five-year journey and celebrating its hallmark collaborative spirit, international partnerships and shared scientific ambition.
Narrated by iAtlantic Coordinator Professor J Murray Roberts, the film examines the project’s progress around its six key themes: Atlantic oceanography and ecosystem connectivity, mapping Atlantic ecosystems, drivers of ecosystem change, impact of multiple stressors, spatial and temporal management and protection, and capacity building. Utilising a combination of footage taken over the course of the project and reflections from researchers across iAtlantic partnership, the video offers a unique glimpse into scope of iAtlantic’s research and discovery.
“Over the last 5 years, a team of passionate scientists and stakeholders from Iceland in the North to Brazil and South Africa in the South have been collaborating to increase our understanding of this ocean,” Murray explains in the film, available on the iAtlantic YouTube channel. “This is iAtlantic: A blueprint for integrating scientific approaches and international communities to learn about, champion, and protect the Atlantic Ocean.”
Film footage takes viewers from polar expeditions to cold-water coral reefs to the deck of a research vessel, capturing the world as observed, measured and analysed by project scientists over the course of their investigations into the health of deep-sea and open-ocean ecosystems in the Atlantic. Drone and underwater footage offer insightful vantage points, and reveal new discoveries as well as intimate glimpses into the hard work conducted by project researchers.
“Through innovation, collaboration, and ground-breaking research, the iAtlantic project has shown what is possible – and what still needs to done to protect this vital giant ocean on which we all depend,” the film concludes.
