In this episode, who is making money from our oceans and is it sustainable? And why Brazilian women who lived through Zika are avoiding getting pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Listen to episode 18 of The Conversation Weekly. 

From deep-sea mining, to fishing, to oil and gas exploration, the ocean economy is booming. A key question is what the economic exploitation of our oceans is doing to the ocean environment. It's important to balance economic growth both with preservation of ocean habitats and the livelihoods of the people who’ve depended on the ocean for generations. 

In this episode, we speak to three experts about the scale of the problem, and what's being done to make the exploitation of the oceans more sustainable. Jean-Baptise Jouffray, post-doctoral researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, explains the size of the ocean economy and how it’d dominated by 100 large corporations. Anna Metaxas, professor of oceanography at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, tells us what mining of the deep sea floor for precious metals could do the environment. And Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood, lecturer in sustainable development at St Andrew's University in Scotland, explains how the pressure on marine resources in West Africa is pushing fishing communities to criminality to survive. 

In our second story, we're heading to Brazil, which remains a global epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic -- just a few years after another devastating epidemic, Zika. Catesby Holmes speaks to Letícia Marteleto, professor of sociology at the The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts, about her new research into how Zika and COVID-19 have had a double effect on women’s attitudes about getting pregnant.

And Françoise Marmouyet, editorial coordinator for The Conversation in Paris, tells us about a new podcast series about the state of democracy in France, the US and China.

On World Ocean’s Day, June 8, The Conversation will be holding a webinar about the next ocean decade. Find out more here. 

The Conversation Weekly is produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

If you'd like to sign up for The Conversation's free daily newsletter, please subscribe here. To get in touch, find us on Twitter @TC_Audio or on Instagram at theconversationdotcom. Or you can email us on [email protected]. Full credits for this episode can be found here.

Further reading:

You can read more stories from our Oceans 21 series here, examining the history and future of the world’s oceans.

Blue economy: how a handful of companies reap most of the benefits in multi-billion ocean industries, by John Virdin, Duke University; Henrik Österblom and Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Stockholm University

Getting to the bottom of things: Can mining the deep sea be sustainable?, by Anna Metaxas, Dalhousie University and Verena Tunnicliffe, University of Victoria

Women are a mainstay of fishing in West Africa. But they get a raw deal, by Ifesinachi Okafor-Yarwood and Sayra van den Berg Bhagwandas, University of St Andrews

New mangrove forest mapping tool puts conservation in reach of coastal communities, by Trevor Gareth Jones, University of British Columbia

Scarred by Zika and fearing new COVID-19 variants, Brazilian women say no to another pandemic pregnancy, by Letícia Marteleto, The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts

Quelle démocratie ? (1 / 3) : “La démocratie française est-elle en crise ?” (Podcast in French)