Unlocking Ocean Value Through Metagenomics: A Path to Sustainable Funding for Marine Conservation
The ocean holds most of our planet's living space, yet we understand very little about what lives there. As National Geographic explorer Enrique Sala noted, if we tried to write a catalog of ocean life, 99% of the pages would be blank. This knowledge gap represents both a conservation challenge and an economic opportunity.
The Nature Tech Collective invited NewAtlantis Labs to present their groundbreaking approach for addressing this gap through metagenomics, otherwise known as the study of genetic material from entire microbial communities. Their work promises to transform how we understand the ocean, sustainably manage its resources and financially sustain conservation activities by turning invisible microbial data into valuable insights and products.
Why is Understanding the Ocean Critical to its Conservation?
Global efforts to protect the ocean face substantial challenges, particularly funding. Despite a target to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, less than 3% currently has full protection.
In fact, effective marine protected areas (MPA) management is costly, and their economic benefits are often hard to quantify and monetise. This leads to chronic underfunding in the vast majority of MPAs, undermining the enforcement of protection and the monitoring of success. Moreover, conservation practitioners often lack comprehensive, detailed data required to understand, assess and monitor ocean health and the impact of actions.
What is Metagenomics and How Does it Advance Our Understanding of the Ocean?
Ocean metagenomics involves studying the genetic material of entire microbial communities directly from their natural setting (e.g. from seawater samples). This approach captures the full picture of marine life unlike traditional methods that require growing organisms in laboratories and considering most marine microbes cannot be cultured in a lab anyway.
Microbes form the foundation of all ocean life. They serve as primary producers at the base of the food web, recycle nutrients, and drive ocean chemistry. Everything from coral reefs to blue whales depends on these microscopic organisms. By understanding microbial communities, scientists can get a comprehensive picture of ecosystem functions, establish baselines, track changes over time, and predict trends and events.
Metagenomics also enables the discovery of valuable natural products that could lead to new medicines, industrial enzymes, or environmental solutions like plastic-eating bacteria or more efficient carbon capture systems.
How Does NewAtlantis Leverage Metagenomics for Ocean Conservation?
NewAtlantis Labs (NAL) is on a mission to leverage state-of-the-art genomics and artificial intelligence technology to transform marine data into sustainable ecological assets. NAL generates conservation insights and creates revenues via marine biodiscovery, with benefits shared to support further marine conservation. As such, the company looks to tackle the funding gap for the ocean.
Specifically, NAL has developed PISCES (Precision Intelligence for Sustainable Computational Ecosystem Science), the first marine-focused metagenomics AI-native platform. PISCES manages complex scientific workflows and delivers interactive ecosystem reports from biological samples such as seawater and sediment.
The Microcosm Analytics toolkit, a cornerstone part of the platform, processes raw microbiome data from diverse sources using various omics technologies and is able to recover up to 8x more high-quality microbial genomes than standard methods, allowing users to analyze all domains of life from bacteria and archaea to fungi, protists, and viruses.
For example, analysis of samples from Panama's mangroves and coral reefs revealed distinct microbial signatures between Atlantic and Pacific basins, identified 951 microbial genomes containing 1.2M protein-coding genes, 5,068 unique natural products, and showed how evolution has shaped the biodiversity for different environments.
The Role of AI in NewAtlantis Labs’ Metagenomics Platform
For PISCES, AI is indispensable in handling massive and complex genetic datasets from modern sequencing platforms, transforming raw data into understandable knowledge. It helps structure this information into knowledge graphs, generating insights for biomonitoring, bioprospecting, and forecasting. These knowledge graphs are advanced databases allowing users, whether they scientists, conservation managers or policymakers, to query data using natural language and receive meaningful answers.
While individual data snapshots are valuable, the strength of this AI-driven platform lies in continuous monitoring. Collecting data over time allows AI to develop better ecological forecasting models which can identify critical ecosystem changes and disruptions such as algal blooms and declining fish stocks weeks in advance. NewAtlantis Labs is developing such early warning systems. Their preliminary analyses indicate this continuous, AI-enhanced monitoring could substantially improve early detection, prediction accuracy, and risk reduction compared to traditional snapshot sampling.
This predictive capability could transform ocean conservation from reactive responses to proactive prevention, allowing managers to take protective action before damage occurs, thereby safeguarding marine nature more effectively.
How Does NewAtlantis Labs Link Improved Ocean Conservation with New Revenue Streams?
One of the most innovative aspects of NewAtlantis Labs' approach is creating sustainable revenue streams from conservation activities. The discovery of compounds or enzymes through using bioinformatics, also called “bioprospecting”, could unlock income for MPAs while protecting ecosystems.
It proposes a benefit-sharing model compliant with international frameworks like the Nagoya Protocol: When commercial products are developed from marine genetic resources, at least 60% of revenues are reinvested into conservation efforts. This creates a virtuous cycle where protection activities fund themselves over time.
Revenue can come from pharmaceutical compounds, industrial enzymes, biotechnology applications, or risk assessment services for insurance companies. The key advantage of this technology is that these products are developed sustainably in silico rather than physical extraction, leaving ecosystems undisturbed.
How Partnership Models Could Scale Impact for Ocean Conservation
NewAtlantis Labs is currently piloting its platform and plans to expand through a network of partnerships to scale its impact globally. It envisions a collaborative future through:
Scientific Collaborations: Advancing research on the ocean with university labs, research institutions and conservation groups.
Technical Alliances: Integrating genomics data with satellite imagery, sensor networks, and other monitoring systems.
Impact-Focused Funding: Sourcing various forms of funding, including philanthropic capital, government support, and private investment, for data collection and global rollout.
Governmental Partnerships: Integrating AI-driven insights into national ocean conservation strategies.
Commercial Partnerships: Engaging industries (e.g. pharmaceutical, biotechnology) to provide market access for discovered products while generating conservation funding through the benefit-sharing mechanism.
The company works directly with governments, MPA managers, and indigenous communities to build local capacity and ensure equitable benefit distribution.
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Conclusion - A New Blueprint for Ocean Conservation: Intelligent, Inclusive and Self-funded
The convergence of advanced genomics, AI, and innovative financing is opening unprecedented opportunities for ocean conservation. By making the invisible world of marine microbes visible and valuable, metagenomics can address the fundamental challenge facing MPAs: sustainable funding for long-term protection.
This approach represents a paradigm shift from traditional conservation models that rely primarily on philanthropic and public support to self-sustaining systems that generate value from the ecosystems they protect. As sequencing costs continue to decline and analytical capabilities improve, these tools will become increasingly accessible to conservation organizations worldwide.
The potential extends beyond marine environments to terrestrial ecosystems and other applications, suggesting that microbiome intelligence could become a cornerstone of modern conservation strategy. For the first time, we have the possibility of truly understanding the ocean's living engine and using that knowledge to protect and sustain it for future generations.
The success of this approach will depend on continued technological development, supportive policy frameworks, and collaborative partnerships that ensure benefits reach the communities and ecosystems that need them most.