When History Is Catching Up With Us - Risk Analysis and Decision-Making for the Risk Management of Historic Ship Wrecks

Ship wrecks are fascinating. They have inspired stories of heroes, monsters, and the perils of the sea for centuries. They inspire artists, treasure hunters, and a substantial tourism industry for wreck diving. Yet, there s a part of their story we dont usually hear about: the potential for environmental pollution.

In 2017 the UK Ministry of Defence tasked an interdisciplinary group of historians, oceanographers, chemists, and ecologists to investigate and prioritize the risk of oil pollution from ships that had been sunk in the North Sea during the first and second world war. A fascinating and challenging task, since there was no method, guideline, or even previously published research on how to do what they were asking for.

In this seminar, I would like to discuss the approaches, questions, challenges, and - quite frankly - fun we had figuring out how to make decisions about 100 year old ships at the bottom of the ocean.

About the Speaker

Dr. Roxana Sühring is an Assistant Professor in Analytical Environmental Chemistry at the Department for Chemistry and Biology at Toronto Metropolitan University. She holds doctor of natural sciences (Dr. rer. nat.) degree in environmental chemistry from the Leuphana University in Lueneburg and conducted postdoctoral research in Germany, Canada, and Sweden. From 2016-2018 she led a regulatory scientist team at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science. During this time, she also was the policy advisor to the Netherland’s delegation for the OSPAR Offshore Industry Committee (OIC) regarding offshore chemicals and advisor for the UK Ministry of Defence regarding potentially polluting shipwrecks. Her interdisciplinary research encompasses the development of innovative analytical strategies for the characterization of plastic pollutants in water as well as the development of analysis strategies to help understand the chemical, physical and socio-economic factors that drive the observed pollution patterns. She is a sought-after invited and keynote speaker at international conferences and was featured in the Agilent Technologies Podcast "Spectral Stories from the North", the microplastic information campaign by Ocean Diagnostic, le Journal de Québec documentary “Microplastiques: Menace dans le Saint-Laurent", and as editor and author in the children’s journal “Frontiers for Young Minds”.