Looking up

Two weeks ago, I crossed the Pyrénees with two colleagues from our ecology lab to attend a marine ecology/biology workshop in Barcelona — my first ecology conference, going through the mountains to learn about the ocean! More importantly, I learned a big lesson there, and it wasn’t a scientific one.

The initial objective for me with this trip was to discover the kind of science done in a big European Horizon project, Biocean5D, a multidisciplinary project exploring marine life and how it changes with space, time and human impact;​ and to see if/where what I am trying to do fitted in on the theory/modelling side of the project (I was there as a pure observer and didn’t give a talk, although in retrospect I could have!). Mission accomplished, as I learned a lot from the many (40+) flash presentations of the first day and now have a good overview of the different parts of the project and what this large group of colleagues is trying to achieve.

In general, I can’t say I am a big fan of big science projects, European or otherwise, and I was therefore not very surprised to discover that this particular project, as most similar ones I know in astrophysics, was quite a hotchpotch of very different types of science gathered around a very general science theme (it also included some economics and social sciences) . The fact that the project is currently halfway, and the workshop dedicated to work in progress and finding common ground between its different branches, made the whole endeavour look a bit messy and not very consistent overall. But that was all part of the game, there were some good talks and some interesting ongoing efforts on display, for instance collective attempts to get a more integrated picture of marine biodiversity and holobiomes using recent progress with metabarcoding of environmental DNA.

However, as far as I am concerned, the most important outcome of this workshop was neither the resurgence of my long-time aversion for excessively big projects and conferences, nor the research I learned about. Instead, it was the simple realization that we all had the good chance of being there, free to listen, share ideas and talk about biodiversity, oceans, pollutants and protection of marine areas, food webs, global warming, invasive species, and societal and economic values and perceptions of marine life (whatever that is !). Because, at the exact same time, my social media and news feeds were flooded by news of executive orders of the Trump administration attempting to torpedo federal environmental research (and much more) in the USA.

This dissonant experience somehow reinvigorated my perception of both the importance of our societal roles as scientists, and the privilege we have to serve for the common good and citizens of open democracies. After many years of familiarity with the daily grind of academic research, and with all the techno- and bureaucratic bullshit we have to navigate through wearing in on top of that, our daily job can easily turn into an increasingly boring routine. As a result, we can become blasé, including of attending conferences (even in nice places) that most colleagues also force themselves to attend to present their own work (often repeatedly in different conferences). In fact, I mostly don’t go to big conferences anymore for this precise reason — I don’t have to, and they usually bore me to death. But this experience reminded me of both their social significance, and of the general societal message that the mosaïc of incremental work presented in such venues also conveys: “we are doing scientific research, a unique, diverse, collective human endeavour aiming at seeking knowledge about the world we live in”.

The main value of these events is not in the content presented itself: rather it is in their very existence, in the process of being there, showcasing, sharing and paying a tribute to human curiosity in its farious forms; plus, in the particular context of this conference, trying our best to serve the common environmental good, despite our own limitations and contradictions (hello, colleague next row who was using chatGPT to draft a funding proposal!).

Something now strikes me as very important in the extraordinay times we are living in, something I should remind myself of constantly if/when I find myself lacking motivation in the politically difficult forthcoming years: research is a chance, a privilege, and a necessity. Let’s fight for the right to keep doing it, and for all the good things it can hopefully still bring to the future of our societies, and to the protection of the environment and biosphere.