Frontiers in Marine Science最新文献

{"title":"Promoting sustainable fishing: from the perspective of Fisheries Funding Mechanism under the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies","authors":"Jiayu Bai, Muyun Guo, Min Zhao","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2025.1699171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2025.1699171","url":null,"abstract":"With widespread depletion of the world’s marine resources, the sustainable fishing has risen more and more concern on a global scale. After rounds of hard negotiations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) adopted the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies (AFS) on June 17, 2022. This agreement came into force on September 15, 2025. It aims to promote ocean sustainability by prohibiting harmful fisheries subsidies. Recognizing the factual constraints and development needs of some developing country Members, the AFS provides Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) for them. According to Article 7 of the AFS, the WTO established a Fisheries Funding Mechanism to provide developing and least developed country (LDC) Members with targeted technical assistance and capacity building for the purpose of implementing the disciplines under the Agreement. By normative analysis and interdisciplinary approach, this study reviews this Funding Mechanism and determines potential operational challenges, including unpredictable financing, administrative and technical access barriers, vague prioritization and allocation procedures, monitoring, evaluation and learning gaps, and coordination risks. It further proposes certain refinements to enhance transparency, access, and long-term effectiveness. These include clearer prioritization criteria, simplified application procedures, more reliable funding sources, and stronger monitoring and coordination frameworks. A well-functioning assistance system will offer technical and financial aid to support countries in need, enable them to build their national capacity, therefore better complying with the fisheries subsidy disciplines while ensuring their sufficient development space, ultimately helping to achieve the goal of marine sustainable development.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"157 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149235677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Implementing BBNJ across fisheries institutions: policy options for interoperable ocean governance","authors":"Wanwoo Nam","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1986237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1986237","url":null,"abstract":"The entry into force of the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) creates a practical implementation problem for fisheries governance. Biodiversity information, area-based management, environmental assessment, fisheries authorization, vessel identity, port measures, maritime safety and market controls are governed by institutions that were not designed as a single compliance system. This Policy and Practice Review uses a structured qualitative institutional appraisal to compare four governance architectures—autonomous implementation, centralized integration, sectoral liaison, and federated interoperability with phased implementation. The method specifies a source hierarchy, four units of comparison, six pre-defined criteria, and an evidence-to-finding protocol that distinguishes existing-authority fit, conditional adaptation and structural constraint. Each finding is tied to treaty text, official institutional material and relevant peer-reviewed scholarship available through 31 August 2026. The legal foundation for cross-regime coexistence is anchored in BBNJ Agreement articles 5(2), 22, 29, 47(6)(c) and 51, which combine non-undermining, cooperation and coordination, respect for institutional competences, and links to existing information mechanisms. The comparison does not claim to predict governmental policy choices or empirically prove an optimal design. Instead, it identifies institutionally workable options under stated legal and administrative constraints. On that basis, federated interoperability is carried forward as a conditional policy proposition for staged testing, subject to provenance controls, verification and legal assessment by the competent authorities, cybersecurity, capacity support and review. The article proposes a three-stage pathway—pre-COP mapping, first-COP institutionalization, and post-COP pilots and review—linking BBNJ bodies, RFMOs, FAO/PSMA mechanisms, IMO-related systems and national administrations.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149235704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sustainable microbial and microalgal production of omega-3 fatty acids: cultivation strategies, sustainable substrates, and waste valorization","authors":"Swetha V., Shreya Praharaj, Shweta Sunil Nambiar, Aarka Undar, Manasvi Suchindra, Dhanya V., Faraz Ahmad, Jeevitha G. C.","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1950929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1950929","url":null,"abstract":"Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs), particularly docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), are important bioactive lipids that play critical roles in cardiovascular, neurological, visual, and immune health. Although humans can synthesize EPA and DHA from shorter-chain precursors, endogenous conversion is limited, making dietary intake an important source of these long-chain fatty acids. Fish oil remains the predominant commercial source of EPA and DHA; however, declining fish stocks, overfishing, marine pollution, and climate change have raised concerns regarding the sustainability, safety, and long-term availability of conventional marine sources. Consequently, microorganisms, including bacteria, microalgae, dinoflagellates, thraustochytrids, and other oleaginous protists, have emerged as promising alternative sources of omega-3 PUFAs. This review provides a comprehensive overview of microbial and microalgal platforms for large-scale EPA and DHA production, focusing on cultivation strategies, lipid extraction and purification, and factors influencing product stability and bioavailability. The potential of inexpensive and sustainable substrates derived from agricultural residues, food-processing by-products, waste oils, and wastewater is also discussed in the context of waste valorization and the circular bioeconomy. Furthermore, the health benefits, advantages, limitations, and technological challenges associated with microbial and microalgal omega-3 production are critically evaluated, along with emerging strategies for improving productivity, process sustainability, and commercial feasibility.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149235679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Multi-scale ship detection with high-resolution SAR images based on improved YOLOv8","authors":"Dandan Liu, Hao Chen, Jiajie Chen, Yuxiang Ding, Jiahua Zhu, Pengzheng Lei","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1943050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1943050","url":null,"abstract":"To improve the detection accuracy of SAR ship targets under complex background clutter, this paper proposes an improved YOLOv8 detection method for SAR ship detection tasks. Three optimization strategies are adopted, including CA attention module, improved DSConv convolution module, and Shape-IoU loss function. A series of ablation experiments are performed to verify the effectiveness of different embedding positions, independent modules, and multi-module collaborative optimization. Quantitative results show that the proposed method achieves significant improvements in precision, recall and mAP@0.5 compared with the original YOLOv8 baseline. The introduced CA module enhances multi-scale feature representations of ship targets while attenuating responses from irrelevant background regions. The DSConv module extracts fine-grained ship features to reduce missed and false detections. The Shape-IoU loss function introduces shape-aware regularization to optimize bounding-box shape matching for ship targets. It improves multiple metrics when used alone. However, when jointly optimized with CA and DSConv, the complete model achieves prominent gains in precision, recall and mAP@0.5 at the cost of degraded mAP@0.5:0.95 due to multi-module coupling effects. Comparative experiments with multiple mainstream lightweight models demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior detection performance under conventional IoU thresholds. Visualization results on four polarization modes further verify the strong anti-clutter capability and stable feature extraction ability of the improved model. Cross-dataset generalization tests show that the model trained on the SAR-SHIP (2021) dataset maintains stable accuracy gains on HRSID and SSDD datasets, proving excellent cross-domain generalization ability. Nevertheless, the multi-module optimization brings a certain performance trade-off. The proposed method sacrifices partial fine localization accuracy and inference speed to obtain higher conventional detection precision. It is suitable for high-precision SAR ship detection scenarios with moderate real-time requirements.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149235702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Experimental investigation of impact pressure characteristics and predictive models for dam-break waves over a sloping wet bed","authors":"Hao Yuan, Shirui Liu, Xidong Zhou, Qian Sun, Yunfei Mao, Ruichang Hu","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1974638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1974638","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding the variation characteristics of impact pressure induced by dam-break waves is essential for a deeper understanding of the impact pressure mechanisms on structures and for enhancing their impact resistance. In this study, large-scale laboratory experiments were conducted in a flume with varying upstream and downstream water depths, bed slopes, and channel lengths. Impact pressure and water levels in front of the wall were recorded and processed to obtain pressure distributions and wave velocity ahead of the wall. The results demonstrate that both the upstream water depth ( <jats:italic> h <jats:sub>u</jats:sub> </jats:italic> ) and bed slope ( <jats:italic>i</jats:italic> ) play a significant role in amplifying the peak impact pressure ( <jats:italic> P <jats:sub>max</jats:sub> </jats:italic> ) exerted on the vertical wall, whereas an increase in the downstream channel length ( <jats:italic>L</jats:italic> ) leads to a reduction in <jats:italic> P <jats:sub>max</jats:sub> </jats:italic> . The horizontal variation of <jats:italic> P <jats:sub>max</jats:sub> </jats:italic> exhibits nonlinear characteristic. Under bore wave conditions, the water depth ratio ( <jats:italic>α</jats:italic> ) shows a clear inverse correlation with <jats:italic> P <jats:sub>max</jats:sub> </jats:italic> , with an approximately linear decay observed within the range of 0.1 &amp;lt; <jats:italic>α</jats:italic> ≤0.2. By incorporating the effect of bed slope, a predictive formulation for the maximum impact force on the vertical wall is developed based on the conservation of mass and momentum. For undular wave conditions, <jats:italic> P <jats:sub>max</jats:sub> </jats:italic> exhibits a non-monotonic dependence on <jats:italic>α</jats:italic> , initially increasing and subsequently decreasing, with a maximum occurring at <jats:italic>α</jats:italic> ≈ 0.57. Further analysis indicates that the maximum pressure ( <jats:italic> P <jats:sub>m</jats:sub> </jats:italic> ) follows an exponential decay pattern during the relative fluctuation phase. Based on the experimental measurements and in conjunction with the Bernoulli equation, a predictive model for the maximum run-up height at the vertical wall is proposed.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149235701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bio-based antifouling strategy using sterile Ulva lactuca cultivation for marine structures","authors":"Shin Hirayama, Kazuya Urata, Miyuki Kusumoto, Yasuyuki Ikegami","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1970848","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1970848","url":null,"abstract":"The adhesion of marine organisms to ships and marine structures can significantly impair operational performance. Biofouling accelerates structural deterioration, increases hydrodynamic drag, and reduces buoyancy, ultimately compromising the functionality and lifespan of marine structures and ships. Common mitigation strategies include antifouling paints, sea-water-electrolysis based marine growth prevention systems, and periodic removal of fouling organisms. We found that culturing sterile <jats:italic>Ulva lactuca</jats:italic> from Imari Bay, Japan, in seawater reduced the attachment of fouling organisms, such as algae and barnacles, to metal and plastic components. The presence of <jats:italic>Ulva lactuca</jats:italic> reduced the dry weight of the fouling organisms by up to a factor of 31.5. Based on these findings, we propose a method for preventing the attachment of marine organisms by establishing contact between sterile sterile <jats:italic>Ulva lactuca</jats:italic> and offshore structures by setting up a cultivation area adjacent to the offshore structure. In conclusion, we report the antifouling effects of cultivating sterile <jats:italic>Ulva lactuca</jats:italic> .","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149235700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Technological opportunity identification for green marine fuels: a BERTopic-based patent mining study","authors":"Zhuhao Li, Guangnian Xiao, Salvatore Antonio Biancardo, Min Zhang, Tian Wang","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1898136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1898136","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction As shipping decarbonization research shifts from evaluating fuel emission-reduction potential to identifying deployment bottlenecks, more robust empirical evidence is urgently needed to characterize ship-level industrial innovation. This study takes patent mining as the core analytical basis to identify innovation clusters and compare five green marine alternative fuel pathways: hydrogen, ammonia, liquefied natural gas (LNG), methanol, and biofuels. Methods Based on 4,471 Derwent Innovations Index patent families covering 2000–2025, we employ BERTopic-based semantic mining to extract patent topics, fuel-specific innovation directions, and cross-fuel engineering modules. Meanwhile, 955 Web of Science core publications are utilized to construct the literature-frontier dimension of the analytical framework via keyword timeline and burst analyses, which lays a foundation for the subsequent literature–patent positioning of fuel development patterns. Results Hydrogen exhibits the strongest consistency between frontier research attention and sustained patent activity. Ammonia and methanol present remarkable recent frontier signals and late-stage patent growth, while LNG and biofuels mainly reflect transitional or continuity-oriented technological accumulation. Further patent-mining findings demonstrate that hydrogen innovation concentrates on fuel-cell conversion, energy management, and hybrid-power integration; ammonia and methanol technological opportunities focus on storage, supply, safety, and ship–fuel interfaces; LNG innovation centers on cryogenic storage and pressure management; and biofuel patents prioritize upstream feedstocks and renewable liquid-fuel production. Discussion Overall, technological opportunities are concentrated in both fuel-specific pathways and cross-fuel generic modules, especially onboard storage, fuel supply, emissions control, and ship-wide energy management. This study establishes a patent-validated approach to identifying differentiated technological opportunities, providing empirical support for targeted and efficient maritime decarbonization innovation strategies.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149236083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dear Sloane: a letter to my granddaughter","authors":"Stephen R. Gittings","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1927928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1927928","url":null,"abstract":"Milestones in life invite reflection on the past and consideration of the future. At retirement, I reached a troubling conclusion: I had played a part in a largely unsuccessful effort to protect coral reefs (particularly in the Western Atlantic, where most of my career played out) from decades of stressors driven or intensified by human development and exploitation. Those of us responsible for management did not do enough to control them, and reefs paid the price. An apology to my granddaughter is an admission that my dream career ultimately left her generation with less than it deserves. But is all lost, or can we recover from past mistakes, use what we’ve learned, and help restore biodiversity and ecological function to the world’s reefs? We know the causes of decline, and we have decades of coral reef science and management experience to guide us. We also have powerful new technologies, and an ally in Nature <jats:xref> <jats:sup>1</jats:sup> </jats:xref> itself, which has a remarkable capacity to recover when stressors are reduced. Restoration of Nassau grouper populations in the Cayman Islands provides a compelling example. And a few coral reefs remain in remarkably good condition. By protecting them, we can learn what works, use them as benchmarks for restoration elsewhere, and demonstrate what remains possible under current environmental conditions.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149235680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sediment transport disturbances and seabed erosion-deposition evolution induced by the Zhoushan–Daishan Sea-Crossing Bridge","authors":"Xiaotong Li, Bin Ying, Shaoju Cheng, Shunxiang Zhang, Ruinan Guo, Yunlin Ni, Wei Chen, Mingtao Jiang","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1941094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1941094","url":null,"abstract":"With the rapid development of coastal cross-sea transportation infrastructure, sea-crossing bridges significantly alter local hydrodynamic and sedimentary environments, thereby affecting regional seabed evolution. A hydrodynamic numerical model was established using MIKE 21 to investigate the influence of the Zhoushan–Daishan Sea-Crossing Bridge (hereafter referred to as the Zhoudai Bridge) on sediment transport and seabed evolution in the Zhoushan sea area. Model performance was validated by comparing simulated results with field measurements. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The hydrodynamic influence of the bridge is mainly concentrated in the waters adjacent to the bridge. Overall tidal-level modifications are minor. A weak local drawdown feature can be observed 2–4 km east of the bridge. (2) Bridge construction induces localized redistribution of the tidal flow field around the bridge alignment and adjacent navigation channels. In the middle navigation span, the maximum current-velocity increase reaches approximately 0.08 m/s, with an average increase of about 0.05 m/s, while a local velocity-reduction zone occurs approximately 3 km east of the bridge. (3) The piers enhance suspended sediment transport capacity through increased flow velocities. These effects attenuate with increasing distance from the bridge, with sediments ultimately deposited in distal areas and accumulating progressively over time.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149235703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A wavelet kernel design for the detection of sperm whale echolocation clicks","authors":"Meisam Jahanshahi Zeitouni, Nikola Mišković, Roee Diamant","doi":"10.3389/fmars.2026.1903330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2026.1903330","url":null,"abstract":"Sperm whales ( <jats:italic>Physeter macrocephalus</jats:italic> ) produce powerful, broadband echolocation clicks that are used to detect and identify prey in deep ocean environments. Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) systems provide a non-invasive method to study the abundance of these animals, but face the challenge of false detections due to transient noise sources. In this paper, we propose a wavelet-based method to identify regions of interest (ROIs) containing sperm whale (SW) clicks by exploiting the impulsive characteristics of the clicks. A wavelet kernel is designed to match a Gabor function representing an SW click model. The signal reconstructed using this wavelet then produces high peaks primarily in ROIs containing SW clicks, while ambient noise and transient noise are suppressed. Compared with the commonly used Teager–Kaiser energy operator (TKEO) reference method and a reference wavelet-based SW click detection method, our work demonstrates a favorable trade-off between true and false detection rates for a large dataset of manually annotated SW clicks recorded near Dominica Island and the Bahamas.","PeriodicalId":12479,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Marine Science","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2026-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149236082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}