Submarine introduces the OAE Data Commons at Carbon to Sea Convening

Event Recap

Apr 30

Jacki Long presents at the Carbon to Sea Annual Convening — *Jacki Long presents the OAE Data Commons at the Carbon to Sea Annual Convening. (Photo by Darren Calabrese for Carbon to Sea)*

From April 28–30, Carbon to Sea brought together more than 200 researchers, industry practitioners, policymakers, funders, and other leaders in Halifax, Nova Scotia for its 2026 Annual Convening. The three-day gathering explored the evolving state of ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), spanning field research, efficacy and environmental impacts, policy and governance, markets, and monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV).

As part of the Convening’s field research session, Submarine Scientific co-founder Jacki Long presented the OAE Field Data Commons, an initiative being developed by Submarine Scientific and Carbon to Sea to make OAE field research data easier to discover, access, and use for independent analysis. The Commons builds on the community-developed OAE Data Management Protocol and is designed to support cross-project comparison, transparency, and broader scientific learning while accommodating both open and appropriately protected datasets.

Jacki Long gives a live demo of the OAE Data Commons — *Dariia Atamanchuk (Dalhousie University) tests using the OAE Metadata Builder during Jacki Long’s live demo of the OAE Data Commons. (Photo by Darren Calabrese for Carbon to Sea)*

The Convening provided an opportunity to introduce the Commons to the broader OAE community alongside other emerging tools, research programs, and field projects aimed at building the scientific and institutional infrastructure needed to evaluate OAE responsibly at larger scales.

During the poster session, Jacki Long and Veronica Tamsitt provided a live demo of the OAE Data Commons where participants were able to interact with the tools for the first time and provide feedback for usability.

Veronica Tamsitt and Anna Madlener discuss data accessibility needs for OAE field data — *Veronica Tamsitt and Anna Madlener discussing data accessibility needs for OAE field data. (Photo by Darren Calabrese for Carbon to Sea)*

To gather feedback from the community for how proprietary data should be handled and distributed through the governance system of the OAE Data Commons, Jacki Long and Anna Madlener led an activity during the MRV session where participants were asked to rank specific parameters in terms of their expected accessibility (e.g., whether the data must be public, or if conditional access to scientists may be provided only) and how necessary these parameters are for their research.

[Learn more about the OAE Field Data Commons →]

On the last day of the convening, Jacki Long was invited to lead a fun table discussion during the R&D Roadmapping workshop focused on ocean alkalinity addition from coastal outfalls. The goals of these discussions were to direct inputs to the in-development R&D roadmap by Carbon to Sea such as: knowledge gaps, priority research activities, uncertainty and resolvability metrics, and anticipated timelines.