Protecting the ocean is vital to Newport. Summit details how The Ocean Race is helping

NEWPORT – In places such as Newport, the health of the ocean is critical to the future.

Mayor Xay Khamsyvoravong, R.I. Gov. Daniel McKee and philanthropist Wendy Schmidt – co-founder of Newport’s 11^th Hour Racing Team, which just won the 5,500 nautical mile Leg 4 of the Ocean Race, dueling their way to victory in front of a hometown crowd at the end of a 17-day run from Itajai, Brazil – were all on hand to speak to a packed room at Newport’s fourth Ocean Summit and detail why protecting the ocean is vital.

Xhamsyvoravong, who sailed with 11^th Hour skipper Charlie Enright in college at Brown University, said in his remarks to the audience, “Newport’s success is directly tied to the health of our ocean, and because of that we are proud to be a voice fighting to protect its health. Newport is America’s most inspiring seaside destination and the U.S. capital of sailing.”

The Ocean Summit started as a stand-alone event during the 2014-15 edition of the Ocean Race stopover in Newport and has become a prominent global element of the Racing with Purpose sustainability program co-founded by 11^th Hour Racing.

The summits were expanded to all stopover cities in the 2017–18 edition of the race with a focus on reducing plastic waste in the ocean and eliminating single-use plastics from competitive sailing events, and now 11^th Hour Racing and The Ocean Race use the summits to address a set of broader issues affecting the ocean including lack of governance, lack of protection, and climate change.

Speakers at this year’s Newport summit reflected the broadening approach to address issues beyond the plastic crisis, speaking in favor of a “universal declaration of ocean rights” by 2030. Along with partners including the government of Cabo Verde, Brazil, The Ocean Race has been collecting signatures from the public in support of the ocean rights declaration they intend to present at the Ocean Summit in the final port of Genova, and then deliver to the UN Assembly in New York in September 2023.

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Climate Interactive founder Andrew Jones demonstrated a climate simulation his organization has developed with the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative – free to the public online at En-ROADS (climateinteractive.org) – which shows that even with considerable alterations to current energy consumption and economic practices to limit global warming, significant pieces of Newport’s coastline will be underwater by the year 2100.

Charlie Enright took part in a panel discussion about sport as a catalyst for environmental change alongside Zandile Ndhlovu, a South African free diver and founder of the Black Mermaid Foundation, and Jess Hotter, a professional skier from New Zealand who works with an organization called Protect Our Winters Alliance. Referencing 11^th Hour Racing’s ambitious environmental research and policy agendas, Enright said he was proud an organization from Newport could make a truly global impact.

This year’s edition of The Ocean Race continued its tradition of data-gathering and environmental research, with the organizers calling the 2023 science program the race’s “most ambitious science program to date” and “the most comprehensive science program of any sporting event in the world.”

The Ocean Race website explains that during the 32,000-mile-long race, 4.3 million measurements of various data will be taken. In addition to throwing out drifter buoys to collect data in some of the most remote reaches of the ocean, the racing sailboats have also been capturing levels of oxygen and trace elements in the water and transmitting data in real-time via satellite to leading scientific organizations including the World Meteorological Organization, National Oceanography Centre, Max Planck Society, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

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Locally, 11^th Hour Racing owns Ocean Hour Farm on Harrison Avenue in Newport, which is a permaculture farm and research center focused on regenerative land management practices and long-term ocean health. 11th Hour Racing and some of Schmidt's other enterprises have also given grants to organizations in Newport County and around the world to tackle environmental problems.

Eva Touhey, the sustainability director at Middletown’s Clean Ocean Access,  spoke to the summit audience about an 11th Hour grant-supported project called Healthy Soils, Healthy Seas Rhode Island which focuses on composting as a waste management solution and a best agricultural practice for healthy watersheds and oceans.

The project includes five compost drop-off locations in Newport County:

• McQuade’s Marketplace in Jamestown

• Newport City Yard  in Newport

• Innovate Newport in Newport

• The Portsmouth Transfer Station

• Clements’ Marketplace in Portsmouth

The hubs are opened with a combination code and are accessible dawn to dusk, seven days a week, and people can sign up to use them online at cleanoceanaccess.org/hshsri.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: 11th Hour Racing Team combines sports and science to protect ocean