Welcome to another week of Shaken Not Burned! 

This week, we dive beneath the surface – literally – to explore one of the biggest blind spots in climate action: the ocean floor.

While climate debates often focus on energy, transport, or forests, the seabed remains one of the planet’s largest and least protected carbon stores. And the way we treat it is quietly shaping the future of both nature and the climate.

In our latest episode, Felicia talks to Professor Callum Roberts, marine biologist and lead scientist on the Convex Seascape Survey, to understand how seabed disturbance is accelerating carbon loss, explaining the damages of bottom trawling and why Europe’s current marine protected areas are mostly “paper parks” offering little real protection.

The conversation also looks at how the High Seas Treaty could change the game and why nature’s resilience should be seen as core economic infrastructure rather than an environmental afterthought.

This episode was recorded before the current ongoing COP30 meeting in Belem, where oceans are under discussion. But there is an ongoing risk of ocean issues being sidelined, which is a major concern.

Ultimately, marine protection is a policy gap as well as a massive investment opportunity hiding in plain sight.

As Callum says: “If we don’t protect the places that store carbon for the long term, we’re undermining our own resilience. Safeguarding the sea isn’t just conservation, it’s climate mitigation we can’t afford to ignore.”

Reading materials:

• Take our Climate Misinformation Survey

• The $158 billion gap: the smart economics of ocean protection

• Climate benefits from establishing marine protected areas targeted at blue carbon solutions

• Oceans at COP30: Moving Beyond Pledges to Build an Architecture for Change

• Climate Refugia Could Disappear From Australia's Marine Protected Areas by 2040

• Wind-Driven Control of Shelf-Sea CO2 Sinks

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