Oceans and Human Health: Opportunities and Impacts

Lora E. Fleming is a physician and epidemiologist with expertise in the environment and human health; she is based at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health [www.ecehh.org] (University of Exeter Medical School). She is involved in research, training and policy activities in the new transdisciplinary area of Oceans and Human Health. She participated as a Co Editor in the first edition of Oceans and Human Health: Risks and Remedies from the Seas (2008), in Seas, Society and Wellbeing (2011), and in the European Marine Board Oceans and Human Health White Paper (2014). She co-Directed the NSF NIEHS Oceans and Human Health Center at the University of Miami; and she received the Oceans and Human Awards from the Edouard Delcroix Foundation (2014) and the IOC Bruun Award (2015). Prof Fleming led the H2020 funded Projects: BlueHealth (https://bluehealth2020.eu) to explore the connections between blue environments and human health; and Seas, Oceans and Public Health in Europe (SOPHIE) (https://sophie2020.eu) to create a strategic research agenda for Ocean and Human Health in Europe and beyond; and participated in the UKRI GCRF Blue Communities Project (https://www.ecehh.org/research/blue-communities/). Professor Fleming is currently collaborating to establish Healthcare Ocean (https://www.nhsocean.org), and is involved in issues around international Blue Justice and other aspects of international oceans and human health.

Lota Alcantara Creencia is a fisheries technologist whose research focuses on coastal mariculture technologies, fisheries resources management, and welfare of coastal communities. She is based at the College of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences of the Western Philippines University (Puerto Princesa City, Palawan, Philippines). Most of her research works in the field of Oceans and Human Health have centered on ecosystem services in coastal areas, governance of marine protected areas, and health and well-being of coastal communities through the UKRI GCRF Blue Communities Project (https://www.blue-communities.org/).

William Gerwick has joint appointments at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of California San Diego. His research focuses on the bioactive natural products of marine algae and cyanobacteria, their application in biomedicine, and their biosynthesis using various molecular biology and genomic approaches. He has also been involved in developing new methods for the structure elucidation of complex natural products, and this has recently involved development of artificial intelligence methods applied to NMR spectroscopy. His laboratory is also involved in the chemical synthesis of analogs of natural products his group has discovered and that have promising antiparasitic activity. He participated as a Co-Editor and chapter author in the first edition of Oceans and Human Health: Risks and Remedies from the Seas (2008). He has served as president of the American Society of Pharmacognosy, chaired and co-chaired several major research conferences, and was associate editor of the Journal of Natural Products Chemistry for several years. He recently served as Director of the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at Scripps Oceanography. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society of Pharmacognosy and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). His research group has published over 500 research papers and holds more than 25 patents, and he has trained approximately 100 PhD and postdoctoral scholars in his 40-year career in the natural products sciences.

Hong Ching Goh is an Associate Professor at the Department Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Malaya. Currently, she also serves as the Chair of the Social Advancement and Happiness Research Cluster in the university. Hong Ching is a corporate town planner registered with the Malaysia Board of Town Planners, an alumna of DAAD and Global Young Academy, a past recipient of the MIT-UTM Malaysian Sustainable Cities program Fellowship, and a fellow of the ASEAN Science Leadership Program. Her research spans across a wide spectrum of disciplines for the past 25 years, evolving from urban development control to tourism planning in natural areas and later, macro scale urban planning focusing on resource governance and sustainable cities development with a great extent associated with community well-beings and the socio (economic)-ecological nexus in coastal regions. She also continues to explore the dynamics of working with a wide range of collaborators for impactful research. While her research has a broad application in urbanized settings and where natural resources are found, her passion has always been with Sabah in Borneo Island. Her recent research projects include the UKRI GCRF Blue Communities program and Student Empowerment in Climate Actions (SECA), both take place in the northern coastal regions of Sabah (Malaysia).

Matthew O. Gribble is an environmental epidemiologist whose research focuses on climate change impacts on environmental exposures, and environmental health disparities within the United States and internationally. His primary appointment is in the Department of Epidemiology of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health (Birmingham, AL USA) where he teaches environmental epidemiology methods to graduate students. He also holds adjunct appointments at Emory University (Atlanta, GA USA) and the University of Exeter (Truro, United Kingdom). Much of his research in the Oceans and Human Health space focuses on the risk-benefit balance of salubrious and toxic chemicals in seafood, although he has also contributed to research on other environmental epidemiology topics. He has contributed statistical analysis support to ecotoxicology and wildlife biomonitoring studies concerning chemical exposures and effects in marine animals. He serves on the United States National Harmful Algal Blooms Committee and has provided related expert service to the World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).