Over the past four years, sailing has been both my inspiration and also a way to connect with the ocean and is what has driven me to study marine biology and oceanography. The sport provides a hands-on experience with our marine environment, and provides its participants with the opportunity to actively participate in following weather and tidal patterns as well as spotting marine life and ocean health. Sailors have helped drive the interest in understanding our oceans and historic records of ocean crossings have helped us understand our oceans today.

Until very recently, the oceans have been considered as an untouchable environment, plentiful and undamaged by actions of human populations. Unfortunately, now we are beginning to realise the damage we are inflicting onto the marine environment. The oceans help regulate temperature, form weather systems, acts as a large food source as well as a carbon sink, becoming more and more important as the amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is increasing in our atmospheres.

For sailors, it has allowed for exploration, adventure and an endlessly changing playing field for competition. Without healthy oceans, overall planet health quickly degrades, putting both humans and whole ecosystems at risk of decline. Part of supporting a healthy marine ecosystem, is supporting marine mammals. Cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) play various roles in a marine ecosystem, with whales shown to increase levels of carbon sequestration.

While I was in Lorient, France for the Transat CIC, I was able to attend a talk on collision avoidance during the race. For the first time in the races history, no-go zones were put in place based on the Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the North Atlantic. The aim of the MPAs is to protect marine mammals in areas of high activity or important areas in their life cycle. The hope is that by removing these areas from the race course, the chances of striking a cetacean will be reduced, and the risk of damage to a animal or sailor is minimised as much as possible. The IMOCA class have been proactive in their attempts to reduce strike risk on the race course and intend to impose a range of strategies.

Alongside the MPA no-go zones on the race course, they are also introducing marine strike logging, sighting reports, issue awareness, training and new technology to reduce the risk of strikes. With more marine debris in the oceans than ever before, strikes to racing boats provides a real threat to both the racing and the safety of the sailors on board. Through Adrena and Expedition navigation software packages, reporting buttons allow skippers to alert others of sightings of UFOs (unidentified floating objects), marine creatures or known debris, allowing for other boats to avoid the risk later on. With the greatest risk to cetaceans being strikes by marine vessels, this marine strike log also provides a record of sightings and incidents with positioning that are entered into a marine strike log; this data will provide greater insight into marine mammal distribution and the number of incidents in offshore racing.

The IMOCA class are also raising awareness on the issue, which compared to racing in the UK, the effort to increase visibility of risks to marine health is something the British racing scene could learn from. In France, with large parts of the population following offshore racing, by increasing visibility the issue gains more public attention which in the long run, may help inforce legislation or attitudes towards ocean protection. Most teams are now backed by companies or non-profit organizations that strive for ocean health, sustainability and environmental goals against climate change.

The pressure on a skipper to take part in programs such as this is higher than in the UK, which in the case of the marine strike log, encourages greater participation and increases the amount of data collected and the success of reducing impacts of offshore racing on the ocean as a whole. The class is also providing training for interested skippers to help identify different cetaceans, which allows them to more actively participate in the marine strike log by entering more reliable information on species of cetaceans. Understanding of marine mammals and ocean issues is always a big step in helping support these problems and the fact that the class is actively engaging suggests good things for the future.

One thing that surprised me the most was the attitude towards proactive behaviour in finding solutions to protect our oceans. The approach from the class involves a combination of smart race organisation, technology and increasing participation. The idea is that a multi-faceted approach is the best option, and the IMOCA class is combining the use of technology to the problem, engaging with the idea of using hydrophones, radar, sonar, pingers, cameras etc to locate a cetacean before the strike, especially on boats with limited visibility such as an IMOCA or Class 40.

Of course, with all these solutions, there comes complications, doubt and issues. The strike record is reliant on skippers understanding what cetaceans they are seeing and reporting them accurately. The numbers of report have increased ten-fold since they were first introduced in 2016, but there are still issues around reporting and reliability of the data received. Technology also has its downfall. Fitting new equipment may require more energy to run and requires skippers to understand and to want to use the equipment. Cost and changing of race rules may also have to influence decisions, and it is often a combination of progress and sustainability.

Overall, the multi-faceted approach to reducing marine collisions seems like an extremely positive step forward. Unlike the UK, they have successfully approached the issue of combining marine protection with sailing, important now that there is an ever growing interest in protecting our natural environment. Only time will tell if these solutions are working, but it is imperative that as sailors we continue to question how we can reduce the environmental impact of our sport in the long term.

From the perspective of a British based sailor, I rarely see any moves to make our own racing more ocean friendly, I am unsure if this is due to a disconnect between sailors and how we understand British waters, or a general disinterest. I think by implementing schemes like we have seen in the IMOCA class, we can start to involve more than just high level sailors in supporting our natural environment, and this can be seen in many initiatives in the UK focused around protecting our coastal areas – now its time to push this into our sailing scenes.