Integrated ocean management for a sustainable ocean economy

Satellite mapping reveals extensive industrial activity at sea

The world's population increasingly relies on the ocean for food, energy production and global trade1-3, yet human activities at sea are not well quantified4,5. We combine satellite imagery, vessel GPS data and deep-learning models to map industrial vessel activities and offshore energy infrastructure across the world's coastal waters from 2017 to 2021. We find that 72-76% of the world's industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with much of that fishing taking place around South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa. We also find that 21-30% of transport and energy vessel activity is missing from public tracking systems. Globally, fishing decreased by 12 ± 1% at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels by 2021. By contrast, transport and energy vessel activities were relatively unaffected during the same period. Offshore wind is growing rapidly, with most wind turbines confined to small areas of the ocean but surpassing the number of oil structures in 2021. Our map of ocean industrialization reveals changes in some of the most extensive and economically important human activities at sea.

Particle-associated denitrification is the primary source of N2O in oxic coastal waters

The heavily human-perturbed coastal oceans are hotspots of nitrous oxide (N2O) emission to the atmosphere. The processes underpinning the N2O flux, however, remain poorly understood, leading to large uncertainties in assessing global N2O budgets. Using a suite of nitrogen isotope labeling experiments, we show that multiple processes contribute to N2O production throughout the estuarine-coastal gradient, sustaining intensive N2O flux to the atmosphere. Unexpectedly, denitrification, rather than ammonia oxidation as previously assumed, constitutes the major source of N2O in well-oxygenated coastal waters. Size-fractionated manipulation experiments with gene analysis further reveal niche partitioning of ammonia oxidizers and denitrifiers across the particle size spectrum; denitrification dominated on large particles and ammonia oxidizers on small particles. Total N2O production rate increases with substrate and particle concentrations, suggesting a crucial interplay between nutrients and particles in controlling N2O production. The controlling factors identified here may help understand climate feedback mechanisms between human activity and coastal oceans.

Does marine ecological compensation policy have improved marine carbon emission efficiency? Evidence from coastal areas in China

The marine ecological compensation (MEC) policy is a scheme for protecting and restoring marine ecology. The previous studies have verified that the policy has improved the marine environment, ignoring the comprehensive performance of the economy and environment. Is the MEC policy actually effective for reducing marine carbon emission considering resource input and economy output? To address the question, this paper evaluates the impact of MEC policy on marine carbon emission efficiency by introducing the multi-stage difference-in-difference with propensity score matching. The results show that the MEC policy significantly improves marine carbon emission efficiency, and the positive effects dynamically enhance over time. Low-carbon technology innovation is confirmed to play a mediating role by which the MEC policy improves marine carbon emission efficiency. Therefore, gradually popularizing the MEC policy and accelerating low-carbon technology innovation are crucial measures to improve marine carbon emission efficiency and achieve sustainable marine development.

Harnessing synthetic biology to enhance ocean health

Ocean health is faltering, its capability for regeneration and renewal being eroded by a steady pulse of anthropomorphic impacts. Plastic waste has infiltrated all ocean biomes, climate change threatens coral reefs with extinction, and eutrophication has unleashed vast algal blooms. In the face of these challenges, synthetic biology approaches may hold untapped solutions to mitigate adverse effects, repair ecosystems, and put us on a path towards sustainable stewardship of our planet. Leveraging synthetic biology tools would enable innovative engineering approaches to augment the natural adaptive capacity of ocean biological systems to cope with the swiftness of human-induced change. Here, we present a framework for developing synthetic biology solutions for the challenges of plastic pollution, coral bleaching, and harmful algal blooms.

Analysis of Marine Economic Development and Innovation under Environment Constraint Based on the VAR Model

Building a new development pattern based on the “double-cycle” is a major strategic plan of China. Under the background of the new development pattern of the “double-cycle” and the context of environmental constraints, this paper tries to explore the impact of marine economic development on marine cultural industry and marine innovation development, the extent of the impact of marine cultural industry on marine economic growth, and the internal relationship between them under the new development pattern of double circulation. In this paper, Fujian Province is taken as the research object to construct an indicator system of the marine culture development to reflect the living standard, employment level, and spiritual and cultural levels of people in the marine area, and the external influence of the marine economy and marine culture industry is taken as the indicator variable to measure the integrated development. The internal changes are regarded as the index to assess the integration level of the two, and the evaluation theoretical model of the dynamic evolution level of the marine economy and marine cultural industry is constructed. The vector autoregression model and impulse response function are used to study the interactive correlation between the growth of the marine economy and the development of the cultural industry. The results show the following: In the long run, there is a cointegration relationship between the marine culture industry and the gross ocean product (GOP), which is a long-term balanced and stable relationship. The development level of the marine economy and the development of marine culture industry are mutually influencing and promoting.

The Sustainable Development Path of the Gold Exploration and Mining of the Sanshan Island-Jiaojia Belt in Laizhou Bay: A DID-SVAR Approach

Gold is a vital strategic resource, and it plays an irreplaceable role in maintaining national financial security, enhancing currency guarantee capabilities, and serving as a country’s last means of payment. Gold plays an essential role in several fields that are vital to sustainable development. In 2020, an ultra-large-scale gold deposit spanning land and sea was discovered in Sanshan Island-Jiaojia Belt, Laizhou Bay, China. Its owner, Shandong Gold Group, also established Sanshan Island as a new ecological mine model. Applying a difference in differences-structural vector autoregression (DID-SVAR) approach, our research found that the whole biodiversity of Laizhou Bay decreased by 0.27% purely due to gold exploration in Sanshan Island-Jiaojia. In the long run, gold mining will have an apparent 2.9% adverse effect on marine products, and fishing for marine products will have a 2.1% adverse effect on marine products themselves.

Autonomous Surface and Underwater Vehicles as Effective Ecosystem Monitoring and Research Platforms in the Arctic-The Glider Project

Effective ocean management requires integrated and sustainable ocean observing systems enabling us to map and understand ecosystem properties and the effects of human activities. Autonomous subsurface and surface vehicles, here collectively referred to as “gliders”, are part of such ocean observing systems providing high spatiotemporal resolution. In this paper, we present some of the results achieved through the project “Unmanned ocean vehicles, a flexible and cost-efficient offshore monitoring and data management approach—GLIDER”. In this project, three autonomous surface and underwater vehicles were deployed along the Lofoten–Vesterålen (LoVe) shelf-slope-oceanic system, in Arctic Norway. The aim of this effort was to test whether gliders equipped with novel sensors could effectively perform ecosystem surveys by recording physical, biogeochemical, and biological data simultaneously. From March to September 2018, a period of high biological activity in the area, the gliders were able to record a set of environmental parameters, including temperature, salinity, and oxygen, map the spatiotemporal distribution of zooplankton, and record cetacean vocalizations and anthropogenic noise. A subset of these parameters was effectively employed in near-real-time data assimilative ocean circulation models, improving their local predictive skills. The results presented here demonstrate that autonomous gliders can be effective long-term, remote, noninvasive ecosystem monitoring and research platforms capable of operating in high-latitude marine ecosystems. Accordingly, these platforms can record high-quality baseline environmental data in areas where extractive activities are planned and provide much-needed information for operational and management purposes.

Large-scale data analysis for robotic yeast one-hybrid platforms and multi-disciplinary studies using GateMultiplex

BACKGROUND

Yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) is a common technique for identifying DNA-protein interactions, and robotic platforms have been developed for high-throughput analyses to unravel the gene regulatory networks in many organisms. Use of these high-throughput techniques has led to the generation of increasingly large datasets, and several software packages have been developed to analyze such data. We previously established the currently most efficient Y1H system, meiosis-directed Y1H; however, the available software tools were not designed for processing the additional parameters suggested by meiosis-directed Y1H to avoid false positives and required programming skills for operation.

RESULTS

We developed a new tool named GateMultiplex with high computing performance using C++. GateMultiplex incorporated a graphical user interface (GUI), which allows the operation without any programming skills. Flexible parameter options were designed for multiple experimental purposes to enable the application of GateMultiplex even beyond Y1H platforms. We further demonstrated the data analysis from other three fields using GateMultiplex, the identification of lead compounds in preclinical cancer drug discovery, the crop line selection in precision agriculture, and the ocean pollution detection from deep-sea fishery.

CONCLUSIONS

The user-friendly GUI, fast C++ computing speed, flexible parameter setting, and applicability of GateMultiplex facilitate the feasibility of large-scale data analysis in life science fields.

Four-dimensional evaluation and forecasting of marine carrying capacity in China: Empirical analysis based on the entropy method and grey Verhulst model

This study separates marine carrying capacity into four key dimensions, i.e., social, economic, resource, and ecological, and uses the entropy method to evaluate the carrying capacity of China's 11 coastal regions during the period 2007-2016. We then predict the values of marine carrying capacity in the subsequent five years (2017-2021) using the grey Verhulst model. Results reveal a significant disparity in marine carrying capacity among the 11 coastal regions of China, and social and ecological carrying capacities illustrate among the four subcategories. Pearl River Delta in the south has the highest marine carrying capacity value and shows an increasing trend, while Yangtze River Delta and Bohai Rim Region in the north are stable. With regard to the predicted values for 2017-2021, forecasting results illustrate that the industrial structure of China's coastal areas is gradually turning towards the mode of diversified and comprehensive utilization of marine resources.

Attuning to a changing ocean

The ocean is a lifeline for human existence, but current practices risk severely undermining ocean sustainability. Present and future social−ecological challenges necessitate the maintenance and development of knowledge and action by stimulating collaboration among scientists and between science, policy, and practice. Here we explore not only how such collaborations have developed in the Nordic countries and adjacent seas but also how knowledge from these regions contributes to an understanding of how to obtain a sustainable ocean. Our collective experience may be summarized in three points: 1) In the absence of long-term observations, decision-making is subject to high risk arising from natural variability; 2) in the absence of established scientific organizations, advice to stakeholders often relies on a few advisors, making them prone to biased perceptions; and 3) in the absence of trust between policy makers and the science community, attuning to a changing ocean will be subject to arbitrary decision-making with unforeseen and negative ramifications. Underpinning these observations, we show that collaboration across scientific disciplines and stakeholders and between nations is a necessary condition for appropriate actions.