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Accessing the world's oceans is essential for monitoring and sustainable management of the maritime domain. Difficulty in reaching remote locations has resulted in sparse coverage, undermining our capacity to deter illegal activities and gather data for physical and biological processes. Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs) have existed for over two decades and offer the potential to overcome difficulties associated with monitoring and surveillance in remote regions. However, they are not yet an integral component of maritime infrastructure. We analyse 15 years of non-autonomous and semi-autonomous USV-related literature to determine the factors limiting technological diffusion into everyday maritime operations. We systematically categorised over 1,000 USV-related publications to determine how government, academia and industry sectors use USVs and what drives their uptake. We found a striking overlap between these sectors for 11 applications and nine drivers. Low cost was a consistent and central driver for USV uptake across the three sectors. Product 'compatibility' and lack of 'complexity' appear to be major factors limiting USV technological diffusion amongst early adopters. We found that the majority (21 of 27) of commercially available USVs lacked the complexity required for multiple applications in beyond the horizon operations. We argue that the best value for money to advance USV uptake is for designs that offer cross-disciplinary applications and the ability to operate in an unsheltered open ocean without an escort or mothership. The benefits from this technological advancement can excel under existing collaborative governance frameworks and are most significant for remote and developing maritime nations.

Ports and neighbouring cities function as connectors between land and water and have long accommodated a substantial flow of goods and services. Port cities in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region and the Global South (GS) are rapidly and inevitably expanding as the demand for global trade increases. However, this expansion has numerous impacts on the surrounding marine ecosystem and the socio-economic livelihoods of local communities. We propose a framework to evaluate the sustainability of port cities in the WIO region and more broadly for cities in the GS. Through an exploratory approach, a systematic literature review (SLR) was undertaken to identify existing themes on port city and marine ecosystem sustainability indicator frameworks. The results revealed a strong bias towards sustainability publications designed for port cities in Global North. The approach developed from this study focuses on the socio-economic and environmental attributes relevant to ports in the WIO region and for GS countries. This draws from the Drivers, Pressures, States, Impacts and Responses (DPSIR) framework and includes 78 indicators. The indicators are designed to identify and report on the complex land and sea interdependencies of port cities. To test the validity of these indicators their interdependencies were examined through a Causal Network (CN) structure which identified 12 priority DPSIR CN. These were also mapped to the UNSDGs enabling the wider applicability and transferability of the framework. The resulting framework enables port cities in emerging economies to establish robust sustainable reporting systems and provides a framework that offers a unique lens for evaluating interactions embedded in the land and sea continuum.

This paper makes a systematic visual analysis of cruise research literature collected in science network database from 1996 to 2019. The results show that: the overall number of published literatures on cruise research are growing; North American states, Europe, and Asia are the main regions of cruise research. The evolutionary of theme development of cruise research has three stages, and the current hot topics of cruise research can be summarized as cruise tourism, luxury cruises, cruise passengers, destination ports, environmental and biological conservation, and cruise diseases. Future research in the cruise field is in the areas of cruise supply chain, technology in cruise, children's cruise experience, itinerary design, planning and optimization, brand reputation and luxury cruises, public transportation in destinations, environmental responsibility of passengers and corporate social responsibility, optimization of energy systems, climate change in relation to the cruise industry, the Chinese cruise market and risk management of cruise diseases.

Seabed fluid flow is a widespread and important natural phenomenon in marine environments, which involves complex multi-physics, multi-process and multi-scale processes. The developments in offshore geophysical technology have facilitated the discovery of the widespread emissions of seabed fluids. For an overview on the state-of-the-art seabed fluid flow research and for obtaining a perspective on future research in the China Seas, we reviewed the data, reports, and publications particularly that associated with cold seeps such as pockmarks, seeps, domes, mud volcanoes, and gas hydrates in the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea. This study presents the first report for seabed fluid flow on all China Seas with the basic information required to undertake additional analytical studies of these features. Furthermore, we explore processes responsible for them and their implications. Although the seabed fluid flow is widespread, dynamic, and influential, it is still poorly examined and understood. To understand seabed fluid flow in both time and space, it is important to investigate how and why these seabed fluids form and migrate.

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP), on behalf of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), has successfully prosecuted a ship's master and shipping company, following a serious accident involving a ship's mooring master in 2023.

Emission trading is an efficient measure to combat climate change, which is one of the biggest threats to the international community and human health. The shipping industry has previously been considered an energy-saving industry but the growth rate of its emissions far exceeds that of other industries. On 10 May 2023, the EU enacted Regulation (EU) 2023/957, which officially included the shipping industry in the EU-ETS. Therefore, this may lead to investor-state disputes regarding emission trading in the marine industry due to the conflicts between the obligation to combat climate change and the obligation to protect investments of the host states. This has resulted in the breaching of International Investment Agreements. In this context, this study aimed to propose practical recommendations for global marine market practitioners to avoid the potential risks of disputes by reflecting on the existing practice regarding climate change-related investor-state dispute resolutions and identifying the trends and problems of the current dispute resolution mechanism. These included inconsistency in the review standard, inconsistency in the review scope, and broad interpretation by the tribunal. Finally, this study proposed that by setting public purpose and exception clauses in the preambles of the International Investment Agreements and incorporating the specific obligations of the foreign investors and the regulatory power of the hosting states in the drafting stage, the potential risks for disputes regarding the new EU directive in the global marine industry could be effectively reduced.

As part of the progressive process of extending spatial plans to cover an increasing number of marine areas, with the aim of objectively balancing the interests of various users of the marine area, it has become necessary to establish the value of marine areas as a yardstick or determinant of the user group for which a given marine area is of greater value. This study seeks to fill a research gap by attempting to develop a method to calculate the value of marine areas for the commercial shipping industry. This is done to make it possible in the future to prepare the ground for policy regulating the spatial rent of the sea, whose most important users are shipowners and their ships. We use the homogeneous basin of the Polish Marine Areas (PMA) in the Baltic Sea. Based on a literature review, we conclude that such a method does not exist, posing a significant challenge in the process of marine/maritime spatial planning (MSP) and maritime policy formulation. Conducting an in-depth analysis of 2020 data on ship traffic in the basin noted above, combined with a financial analysis of shipowners' operating costs and profitability indicators, we can determine the value of marine areas both in aggregate for all shipping in the studied basin and for each of the five segments of shipping - the bulk cargo, ro-ro cargo, container, tanker, and passenger segments. In addition, through a dynamic analysis of ship traffic, it is possible to determine the value of sea area in Polish seawaters per unit of area (1 km²) at the average level and for the five specified market segments. The obtained values show that the total profits of shipowners in the Polish Marine Areas, which are at the level of more than EUR 103 million per year, and the average value of profits per 1 km² of marine area used by a ship provide future decision-makers with an objective point of reference to shape future policies for the fiscalization of public space, including the sea.

The Kyrenia Ship, found off the north coast of Cyprus, is a key vessel in the history of scientific underwater excavations and in the history of Greek shipbuilding. The first volume of the site's final publication appeared in 2023 and provides detailed archaeological information tightly constraining the dating of the ship. A very specific date range is proposed: ca. 294-290 BCE, but is based on a less than certain reading of one coin recovered from the ship. While there is clear benefit to finding high-precision dates for the Kyrenia Ship and its rich assemblage using independent scientific dating (combined with Bayesian chronological modeling), efforts to do so proved more challenging and complex than initially anticipated. Strikingly, extensive radiocarbon dating on both wooden materials from the ship and on short-lived contents from the final use of the ship fail to offer dates using the IntCal20 calibration curve-the current Northern Hemisphere radiocarbon calibration curve at the time of writing-that correspond with the archaeological constraints. The issue rests with a segment of IntCal20 ca. 350-250 BCE reliant on legacy pre-AMS radiocarbon data. We therefore measured new known-age tree-ring samples 350-250 BCE, and, integrating another series of new known-age tree-ring data, we obtained a redefined and more accurate calibration record for the period 433-250 BCE. These new data permit a satisfactory dating solution for the ship and may even indicate a date that is a (very) few years more recent than current estimations. These new data in addition confirm and only very slightly modify the dating recently published for the Mazotos ship, another Greek merchant ship from the southern coast of Cyprus. Our work further investigated whether ship wood samples impregnated with a common preservative, polyethylene glycol (PEG), can be cleaned successfully, including a known-age test.

24 September celebrates World Maritime Day, with the theme for 2020 "Sustainable shipping for a sustainable planet" providing an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We, a young, dynamic and public-spirited team of activists at Happiness Ville, are constantly brainstorming ideas and ways to bring about the change we always talk about and hardly put into action. Our aim is to eradicate the 'mal' out of malnutrition, 'ill' out of the illiteracy, 'in' out of the injustice and the 'issues' out of the environment.

After more than a month of war in Ukraine, the negative consequences for global trade are now becoming clear. According to the latest data update of the Kiel Trade Indicator, the conflict is weighing on the trade data of almost all economies and also clearly on global trade overall (month-on-month, price and seasonally adjusted). Russia's increasing isolation is reflected in an abrupt decline in the number of container ships arriving and departing from its ports. Globally, the number of shipping containers in congestion is increasing again.

More ventilation does not mean safer cabin conditions.