As the Ocean Health Index makes its public debut, three of its parents describe the moment of 'Eureka!' in summing up the well-being of the global ocean and its human dependents.
The researchers behind the budding Ocean Health Index recognize the hubris of trying to summarize everything from water quality to fishing status to recreation in a single number, but they maintain it’s a necessarily audacious move.
Oceans are peopled, too! Assessing all of the ways the world’s oceans directly benefit humans is not easy, but it must be done in any honest accounting for the Ocean Health Index.
As the gross domestic product shows us, a single number that represents the health of a complex and dynamic system can have amazing and perhaps unexpected power.
In the first of a series of stories tracking their progress in real time, three scientists explain the genesis of a global effort to present the health of the world's oceans with a single number.