This study compares the details and performance of fisheries management between the EU and a selection of other countries worldwide: Iceland, New Zealand, and Australia, which are considered in many respects to be among the most advanced in the world in fisheries management. Fisheries management in the EU, Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand has developed following different paths, despite being based on similar instruments and principles. Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand have been at the forefront of developing management practices such as stakeholder involvement, legally binding management targets (Australia, New Zealand), individual transferable quotas, and discard bans (Iceland, New Zealand). The EU has since the beginning of the 21st century taken significant steps to better involve stakeholders and establish quantitative targets through management plans, and a landing obligation is gradually being implemented from 2015 onwards. The management of domestic fisheries resources in Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland has, overall, performed better than in the EU, in terms of conservation and economic efficiency. It should, however, be stressed that, compared to Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland, (i) initial over‐capacity was more of an issue in the EU when management measures became legally binding and also that (ii) the EU has been progressive in developing common enforcement standards, on stocks shared by sovereign nations. The situation of EU fisheries has substantially improved over the period 2004–2013 in the northeast Atlantic, with fishery status getting close to that in the other jurisdictions, but the lack of recovery for Mediterranean fish stocks remains a concern.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, its impacts on the maritime transportation and logistics field have been multi-dimensional. In addition to the green shipping corridor proposed by the Clydebank Declaration in the United Kingdom in 2021, port digitalisation and decarbonisation of the maritime industry have become focal issues in the field. The industry needs a new framework to offset the negative impacts of the pandemic and to accommodate integrated technologies comprising of artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud systems, internet of things (IoT) and others, which have been applied to the industry. Having considered these circumstances, this paper aims to propose the 6th-generation ports model with smart port (6GP) as a new framework for the port logistics industry in the post-COVID-19 period. The proposed 6GP contributes to providing business development strategy and port development policy for stakeholders in the industry in the post-pandemic era reflecting focal challenges such as digitalisation, decarbonisation, sustainability and smart transformation. It also contributes to expanding port devolution theory from the fifth-generation ports (5GP) to 6GP.
While European policies have progressed towards an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM), limited attention has been paid to the implications for its advisory system. This paper analyzes the advisory landscape in the European Union (EU) by addressing two questions: to what extent can the needed advice be provided? how prepared is the management system to integrate ecosystem advice? We provide a systematic analysis of the relevant advisory bodies, explore gaps related to the requested and delivered advice, and identify paths for improvement. The findings confirm earlier observations of lack of a formalized process to provide and integrate advice in support of an ecosystem approach into EU fisheries management. Instead of enabling existing capacities to embed ecosystem components (eg investments and initiatives made by stakeholders (and authorities) to move to EAFM -pushing strategies), the system relies heavily on mandatory requests from policy makers (pulling mechanisms). Furthermore, social and economic dimensions are the weakest aspects in the advisory process, which hampers the balancing of objectives that represent one of the hallmarks of EAFM. The policy framework has adopted EAFM for European fisheries, but the advisory processes have not yet been adapted to substantially support EAFM.
A new motivation for marine restoration has been observed, associated with the dissatisfaction with current marine restoration governance arrangements (MRGAs). An MRGA consists of alliances of public and private actors (coalitions) who, through their common conceptualisation of the problem (discourses), try to influence and design marine restoration activities while considering the rules of decision-making, and the management of limited resources. Emerging MRGAs rise in parallel to existing ones and aim to contribute to the same goals or show another way of reaching those goals. This phenomenon raises questions of legitimacy both for the emerging and the existing arrangement. Building on existing literature, this paper proposes an analytical framework to simultaneously explore input, throughput and output legitimacy as three essential pre-conditions of legitimacy for MRGAs. The framework is tested in three European cases of MRGAs that were part of the European Union MERCES project (http://www.merces-project.eu/). Analysis showed that actors who are influential in achieving restoration goals, and also those who are impacted by restoration actions, should be involved in the MRGAs (input legitimacy); actors within MRGAs should establish and follow procedures for decision-making that are both transparent and clear (throughput legitimacy); and actors within MRGAs need to establish a common understanding of restoration, of the goal to reach and of the related uncertainties (output legitimacy). Awareness of these pre-conditions allows actors internal and external to MRGAs to address aspects that give legitimacy to restoration actions. It also creates a language that allows actors to engage in discussion on legitimacy that goes beyond the mere application of the rule of law.
Satellite imagery has become a fundamental part for maritime monitoring and safety. Correctly estimating a ship's identity is a vital tool. We present a method based on facial recognition for identifying ships in satellite images. A large ship dataset is constructed from Sentinel-2 multispectral images and annotated by matching to the Automatic Identification System. Our dataset contains 7.000 unique ships, for which a total of 16.000 images are acquired. The method uses a convolutional neural network to extract a feature vector from the ship images and embed it on a hypersphere. Distances between ships can then be calculated via the embedding vectors. The network is trained using a triplet loss function, such that minimum distances are achieved for identical ships and maximum distances to different ships. Comparing a ship image to a reference set of ship images yields a set of distances. Ranking the distances provides a list of the most similar ships. The method correctly identifies a ship on average 60 % of the time as the first in the list. Larger ships are easier to identify than small ships, where the image resolution is a limitation.
This paper emphasizes some of the challenges and trends associated with the future development of marine structures. Its main focus is on ways to improve the efficiency of energy-consuming ships, and on design challenges related to energy-producing offshore structures. This paper also discusses the analysis tools that are most needed to enable sustainable designs for future ships and offshore structures. The last section of the paper contains thoughts on the role of universities in education, research, and innovation regarding marine structures. It discusses curriculum requirements for maritime-technology education, basic research activities, and international cooperation.
The hybrid combination of hydrogen fuel cells (FCs) and batteries has emerged as a promising solution for efficient and eco-friendly power supply in maritime applications. Yet, ensuring high-quality and cost-effective energy supply presents challenges. Addressing these goals requires effective coordination among multiple FC stacks, batteries, and cold-ironing. Although there has been previous work focusing it, the unique maritime load characteristics, variable cruise plans, and diverse fuel cell system architectures introduce additional complexities and therefore worth to be further studied. Motivated by it, a two-layer energy management system (EMS) is presented in this paper to enhance shipping fuel efficiency. The first layer of the EMS, executed offline, optimizes day-ahead power generation plans based on the vessel's next-day cruises. To further enhance the EMS's effectiveness in dynamic real-time situations, the second layer, conducted online, dynamically adjusts power splitting decisions based on the output from the first layer and instantaneous load information. This dual-layer approach optimally exploits the maritime environment and the fuel cell features. The presented method provides valuable utility in the development of control strategies for hybrid powertrains, thereby enabling the optimization of power generation plans and dynamic adjustment of power splitting decisions in response to load variations. Through comprehensive case studies, the effectiveness of the proposed EMS is evaluated, thereby showcasing its ability to improve system performance, enhance fuel efficiency (potential fuel savings of up to 28%), and support sustainable maritime operations.
Each year maritime accidents occur at sea causing human casualties. Training facilities serve to reduce the risk of human error by allowing maritime teams to train safety procedures in cooperative real-size immersive simulators. However, they are expensive and only few maritime professionals have access to such simulators. Virtual Reality (VR) can provide a digital all-immersive learning environment at a reduced cost allowing for increased access. However, a key ingredient of what makes all-immersive physical simulators effective is that they allow for multiple participants to engage in cooperative social interaction. Social interaction which allows trainees to develop skills and competencies in navigating situational awareness essential for safety training. Social interaction requires social fidelity. Moving from physical simulators into digital simulators based upon VR technology thus challenges us as HCI researchers to figure out how to design social fidelity into immersive training simulators. We explore social fidelity theoretically and technically by combining core conceptual work from CSCW research to the design experimentation of social fidelity for maritime safety training. We argue that designing for social fidelity in VR simulators requires designers to contextualize the VR experience in location, artifacts, and actors structured through dependencies in work allowing trainees to perform situational awareness, coordination, and communication which are all features of social fidelity. Further, we identify the risk of breaking the social fidelity immersion related to the intent and social state of the participants entering the simulation. Finally, we suggest that future designs of social fidelity should consider not only trainees in the design, but also the social relations created by the instructors’ guidance as part of the social fidelity immersion.
The offshore de-oiling process is a vital part of current oil recovery, as it separates the profitable oil from water and ensures that the discharged water contains as little of the polluting oil as possible. With the passage of time, there is an increase in the water fraction in reservoirs that adds to the strain put on these facilities, and thus larger quantities of oil are being discharged into the oceans, which has in many studies been linked to negative effects on marine life. In many cases, such installations are controlled using non-cooperative single objective controllers which are inefficient in handling fluctuating inflows or complicated operating conditions. This work introduces a model-based robust H ∞ control solution that handles the entire de-oiling system and improves the system’s robustness towards fluctuating flow thereby improving the oil recovery and reducing the environmental impacts of the discharge. The robust H ∞ control solution was compared to a benchmark Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control solution and evaluated through simulation and experiments performed on a pilot plant. This study found that the robust H ∞ control solution greatly improved the performance of the de-oiling process.
There has been a continued increase in the load on the current offshore oil and gas de-oiling systems that generally consist of three-phase gravity separators and de-oiling hydrocyclones. Current feedback control of the de-oiling systems is not done based on de-oiling efficiency, mainly due to lack of real-time monitoring of oil-in-water concentration, and instead relies on an indirect method using pressure drop ratio control. This study utilizes a direct method where a real-time fluorescence-based instrument was used to measure the transient efficiency of a hydrocyclone combined with an upstream gravity separator. Two control strategies, a conventional PID control structure and an H ∞ robust control structure, both using conventional feedback signals were implemented, and their efficiency was tested during severely fluctuating flow rates. The results show that the direct method can measure the system's efficiency in real time. It was found that the efficiency of the system can be misleading, as fluctuations in the feed flow affect the inlet concentration more than the outlet oil concentration, which can lead to a discharge of large oil quantities into the ocean.