Note from the Executive Secretary
Dr David Freestone
Executive Secretary
The BBNJ agreement formally opens for signature today, September 20th 2023. The threshold for this agreement to enter into force is 60 ratifications. It is imperative that countries ratify the agreement swiftly in order for the provisions of the agreement to enter into force as soon as possible - especially in relation to the marine protected areas and other area based management tools provisions, which will be vital as the world seeks to protect 30% of natural spaces by 2030.

The UN fish stocks agreement required 30 ratifications and took 6 years to enter into force, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea required 60 ratifications and took 12 years to come in to force. With global focus on multilateral cooperation, we sincerely hope that the BBNJ agreement can enter in to force much sooner. The countries that do not ratify the agreement will not be formally bound by it, but further down the line they may find themselves de facto bound by it under customary international law.

I congratulate the delegates who have worked so hard to finalise this agreement, and urge countries to ratify it as soon as possible. I also celebrate our upcoming series of GEF meetings and the High Seas Symposium which will take place shortly in Edinburgh in the context of this landmark treaty.
Sargasso Sea Commission to host GEF project meetings, act as panelists at the High Seas Symposium in Edinburgh
On October 4th and 5th, the Sargasso Sea Commission will be hosting its first Steering Committee and its first Stakeholder Engagement Meeting for its GEF-UNDP-IOC-SSC project. The steering committee will focus on project progress and updates to the budget, while the stakeholder engagement meeting will focus on inputs from beneficiaries of the Sargasso Sea ecosystem.

The two-day series of technical meetings is held in coordination with the High Seas Symposium (Oct 6-7), hosted by the University of Edinburgh, which will evaluate the potential challenges and opportunities for the implementation of the BBNJ Agreement. The Sargasso Sea Commission is delighted to be one of the sponsors of this event, and representatives from the Sargasso Sea Commission and Mar Viva will be speaking at Session 5 of the event - 'Lessons learned from other initiatives in area beyond national jurisdiction.'

Image credit: Dynamic Earth
Sargasso Sea Commission attends IUCN ABMTs workshop
On the 27th and 28th of June, Fae Sapsford from the Sargasso Sea Commission Secretariat travelled to Gland, Switzerland, to attend the IUCN high seas area based management tools (ABMTs) workshop. This workshop aims to inform the UN BBNJ negotiations and related processes.

The workshop included presentations from high seas scientists and legal and policy experts, as well as breakout groups to get feedback from the meeting.

In coordination with the IUCN ABMTs workshop, on the 29th of June the second SARGADOM Advisory Board meeting took place. During that meeting the Sargasso Sea Commission and Mar Viva were able to share the first technical and scientific inputs to the socio-ecosystem diagnostic analysis that will inform conservation processes for the two focal sites. For the Sargasso Sea, these data inputs came from project implementing partners Duke MGEL, Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, and Imperial College London. The University of Brest also presented preliminary work on the development of a knowledge management platform as part of the project.

Image credit: IUCN
Sargasso Sea Commission attends 22nd LME workshop
The 22nd Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) workshop took place at IOC UNESCO in Paris, France, from July 11-13. The purpose of the meeting was to provide a forum for Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded marine and coastal projects to share experiences and lessons learned in regard to ecosystem-based management. Large marine ecosystems were conceived as a transboundary approach to ecosystem management that focused on protecting a system's ecological characteristics, rather than being based on human-defined geography. LMEs encompass some of the world's most productive areas of the ocean, where 90% of fish are caught.

The Sargasso Sea is the first high seas Large Marine Ecosystem to be supported by a GEF grant. The project team has adapted the traditional Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis used for coastal LMEs to an innovative Socio-Ecosystem Diagnostic Analysis (SEDA) specially for use in high seas ecosystems.

Image credit - IOC UNESCO
Creature Feature
Your window into the golden floating rainforest and who's in it!
Tiger shark
Tiger sharks are named for their distinctive striped skin, which fades as the shark matures. They can grow to large sizes, commonly reaching 10-13 feet, with some females even reaching 16 feet.

Tiger sharks are known for eating a wide variety of prey - including fish, sea birds, sea snakes, dolphins, sea turtles, rays and other sharks - and even terrestrial prey where they can reach them like cats, dogs, and rats. Tiger sharks are also known as garbage eaters - license plates, oil cans and tires have been found in their stomachs.

Atlantic tiger shark populations have been shown to migrate, spending their winters in the Caribbean, and summers in the mid-Atlantic, including the Sargasso Sea and Bermuda. The Bermuda Tiger Shark Project has allowed researchers to tag sharks and track their migration and has revealed that most sharks that visit Bermuda are adult males.

Image: Choy Aming
Sargasso On-the-Go

The SSC has released an article in the IW LEARN newsletter focusing on the nuances of Sargassum - and clarifying that the Sargasso Sea population is separate from that making up the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt.

Delegates from 180 nations set out a pathway towards a binding global agreement on tackling plastic pollution as soon as 2025.

From the Sargasso Sea to the Costa Rica thermal dome, scientists are identifying key diversity hotspots to safeguard under a new UN treaty.
Thank you for supporting our mission to protect the Sargasso Sea. We truly appreciate all of the donations and support that we have received over the years -- without which the Sargasso Sea Commission would not exist.