While the establishment of new marine protected areas (MPAs) is rife with increased social tensions and political conflicts, their planning process can lead to increased levels of participation, representing potential opportunities for enactment. Here we revised government reports related to 60 MPA proposals spanning nearly three decades along the Brazilian coast to examine the context in which challenges and opportunities to MPA establishment arise. To add nuance and more diverse voices to this evaluation, we also included the perspectives of social actors directly engaged with four MPA proposals. Results highlight that lack of institutional capacity, particularly administrative matters, consistently affected the development of MPAs. The inclusion of social actors’ perspectives revealed a cautious view of the MPA planning process, increasing the strength of the challenges identified such as the lack of political will. While MPA proposals of strict protection tended to have a more diverse set of challenges, such as a spatial configuration considered inadequate by social actors, the ones of sustainable use tended to have more conservation opportunities, such as increased local perception of MPA benefits. Together, these results provide quantitative evidence of concurrent challenges and opportunities associated with proposed MPAs, highlighting improved ways of performing MPA planning globally.

How to cite: Magris, R.: Overcoming challenges and identifying opportunities for marine conservation planning: lessons from Brazil, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-399, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-399, 2025.

How to cite: Legroux, N. and Pottier, A.: Bridging the divide: From fisheries to conservation knowledges and governance. The case of the Costa Rica Dome, an offshore upwelling in the Pacific Ocean (Central America), One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-440, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-440, 2025.

Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) has been identified as a key enabler of a maritime European Green Deal (EGD) (Van de Burg et al., 2021, Bocci et al. 2024 ). Building on recent advances in policy alignment across Europe (e.g., CrossGov, MSP-GREEN, PermaGov), the MEDIGREEN project—Mediterranean Approach Towards a Maritime European Green Deal in MSP—proposes a framework to implement the EGD in the Mediterranean. This project adopts a practical approach to address four core marine activities (offshore renewable energy, fisheries, aquaculture, and nature conservation) relevant to the region to integrate the objectives of the EGD in MSP. It considers the Mediterranean’s unique ecology, socio-economic, landscape, governance structures, and common cultural heritage while recognizing the need for strengthening collaboration at sea-basin level, in order to achieve the EGD objectives through MSP and marine governance and management. A distinctive feature of MEDIGREEN is the collaboration between EU and non-EU partners within the framework of the Barcelona Convention and its engagement with the Mediterranean MSP Community of Practice (MED-MSP-CoP). The project also seeks to effectively overcome the simple dissemination of results, going from “communication” to “exchange” and exploring maritime sectors' non-economic value at the sea basin. It will also link to ongoing Black, North, and Baltic Sea initiatives to align MSP and EGD efforts at the EU level. The results of this project are expected to enable EU countries to reinforce and integrate EGD-related actions in the finalization or implementation of national MSP plans while enlarging the consideration of these issues to non-EU countries. This study, by presenting the design and origins of MEDIGREEN, aims to demonstrate pathways for collaboration with non-EU countries to enhance the sustainability of maritime activities in the framework of an integrated planning approach that not only promotes environmental and economic sustainability but also addresses social sustainability by considering non-economic values.

References

Martina Bocci, Emiliano Ramieri, Folco Soffietti, Alexandre Cornet, Arki Vesa et al. The Green Deal Component of the EU MSP Plans - First policy brief, 2023. MSP-GREEN: GA101081314-EMFAF-2021- PIA-MSP

Van den Burg, S., Chouchane, H., Kraan, M., Selnes, T., Roebeling, P., Bogers, M., (Wageningen Research), Neumann, T., Finello, F., Pirlot, A., Giraud, L., (Ramboll), Arora, G., Roestenberg T., Viana de Miranda, A., (Deloitte). 2022. Assessment of the relevance and effect of the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive in the context of the European Green Deal. Final Report. European Commission B-1049 Brussels

How to cite: Soffietti, F., Cervera Nuñez, C., Ramieri, E., Bocci, M., Bachouche, S., Leroy, Y., Papageorgiou, M., Alloncle, N., Markovic, M., Campillos Llanos, M., Carella, F., Brigolin, D., and Musco, F.: Beyond EU policy harmonization and economic values in MSP: the design of the MEDIGREEN project, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-500, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-500, 2025.

Electronic monitoring systems (EM, sometimes known as remote electronic monitoring or REM) have been put forward since the 1990s as a promising solution to fisheries monitoring and data collection challenges. These systems, which produce, store, and in some cases transmit video, location, and sensor data, allow fisheries managers to remotely ‘see’ the activities of individual fishing vessels and entire fleets. Governmental, non-governmental, and corporate actors are rallying behind EM as a key tool for achieving sustainable fisheries, touting their benefits over existing fisheries monitoring approaches using logbooks and human observers. A sizable gap exists, however, between the discursive prominence of EM in fisheries governance fora and operational realities. In the global fishing fleet, coverage by EM systems is a drop in the ocean. Like other private sector-led environmental interventions, EM derives its allure from promises of effectiveness, efficiency, transparency, and scalability in service of a more desirable future, even as it faces myriad implementation challenges in the present. In this presentation, I critically assess the promise and functioning of electronic monitoring systems, with particular attention to the monitoring of seabird bycatch in fisheries. Drawing on interviews with marine ecologists, fisheries policy experts, and technology providers, and document analysis of published research and technical reports, I outline the tensions and obstacles facing EM at three key stages: upstream of implementation, on-board fishing vessels, and downstream data analysis. Although promoted as technologies of transparency, I show how this transparency is selective: at each stage, various interventions aim to maintain business-as-usual. Rather than argue for a more powerful, top-down model to overcome this selectiveness, the presentation makes the case for understanding the failures of EM in the context of wider relations of power and knowledge in fisheries governance and challenges transparency as a necessarily ‘good’ normative ambition for ocean governance. 

How to cite: Hartman Davies, O.: Selective Transparency: Friction in the rollout of electronic monitoring in fisheries governance, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-563, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-563, 2025.

In response to defined Sustainable Development Goals and planetary boundaries, environmental policymakers need to monitor the state of the environment to evaluate the effectiveness of their actions and to prioritize policies. In the case of ocean sustainability, there is a rapidly moving research and political agenda on the development of ocean accounts, with the adoption of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) and the structuring of the ocean accounting community around the Global Ocean Accounting Partnership. The Environmental Sustainability Gap (ESGAP) framework is being developed to provide a reporting system at the national level aligned with strong sustainability principles that allows an operational dialogue between science and public policies. It is intended to complement current ocean accounting initiatives by introducing a synthetic dashboard of state indicators from a strong sustainability perspective, adopting strict criteria on the maintenance of critical natural capital. This work focuses on implementing and extending the ESGAP framework to include other dimensions related to ocean sustainability in two case-studies in South-East Asia: Indonesia and the Philippines. There is a mismatch between the scale at which decision-making takes place and the scale at which ecological processes underlying critical natural capital occur, which parallels a tension between scientific and political definitions of ocean sustainability objectives. There is uneven availability of information on the four environmental functions that compose the ESGAP, i.e., source, sink, life-support and human health and welfare. The Blue ESGAP provides another perspective on ocean sustainability in both countries. It also identifies gaps in ocean monitoring and the need to define targets, as well as the cost of reaching them, which aims to inform ocean management and policies. This preliminary work is an important building block to start conversations on defining shared values of a sustainable ocean and monitor the gap to reach these targets.

How to cite: Carranza, D., Ancog, R., Bonnin, M., Herrmann, M., Lanco, S., Lecuyer, O., Retnoningtyas, H., Rosdiana, A., Sutarto, A., Yulianto, I., and Comte, A.: Adding an aggregate sustainability gap metric to ocean accounting: a Blue ESGAP application in South-East Asia, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-622, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-622, 2025.

The BIOMA thesis is part of the Nawras project (Assessing Ocean Legal Protection using AI) conducted by Cadi Ayyad University (Morocco) and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (France).

Its aim is to respond to a twofold observation: on the one hand, the state of marine biodiversity keeps getting worse; on the other hand, the number of texts aimed at protecting it is increasing significantly. However, it is still difficult to link these two elements effectively.

The poster will therefore present this innovative project which, by combining research in legal science and artificial intelligence, aims to develop indicators to assess “where, when and how the law protects marine biodiversity”.

These indicators will make it possible to represent graphically the content of legal texts prohibiting human activities that are particularly harmful to biodiversity.

The various construction phases, in particular aspects relating to scope and operationalization, will be detailed. This information will be used to assess the content and implementation of the laws, supplemented by a comparison with analyses of the state of ecosystems.

In this work, AI plays a key role, as the model used enables automated data extraction within documents through the use of automated language processing (ALP).

The poster will illustrate the methodology by analyzing and evaluating the ban on bottom trawling, a fishing method with disastrous consequences for marine biodiversity. 

The first results presented will demonstrate the usefulness of this innovative method and its contribution to observing, understanding and evaluating the legal protection of marine biodiversity.

How to cite: Perdereau, M. and Bonnin, M.: Assessing the legal protection of marine biodiversity: an interdisciplinary approach combining law and artificial intelligence., One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-625, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-625, 2025.

An EU-funded initiative is underway to develop an integrated marine observation and monitoring strategy at a regional scale in Galicia, Spain, an area highly dependent on marine resources and known for its complex ecosystem within a dynamic upwelling system.

To develop this strategy, over 200 marine researchers from diverse fields and from 14 research institutions across Galicia are collaborating through a participative approach involving  the quintuple helix—government, academia, industry, civil society, and the natural environment— on four coastal and marine system key areas:

i) advancing new observation technologies, tools, and platforms with a high degree of automation, enabling extensive and sustained collection of essential data for comprehensive ecosystem management. This effort particularly targets variables for which commercial technology is currently limited or unavailable;

ii) creating an integrated marine big data platform that ensures high standards of data storage and standardization, adhering to FAIR principles and connecting with other ongoing international data platforms. A Marine Virtual Laboratory is also being developed within this platform to allow end-users to visualize and utilize the data effectively;

iii) constructing a multi-scale, transdisciplinary marine simulator, a crucial tool for integrating data from multiple sources to generate insights and provide a structured framework to tackle environmental, social, and economic challenges. This simulator will aid in exploring and predicting the impacts of global change on the marine environment and will support knowledge-based decision-making processes for sustainable management of marine uses and resources; and

iv) planning through a participatory approach the governance of marine monitoring in Galicia by fostering synergies among stakeholders, enhancing existing systems and services, increasing visibility, coordinating ongoing and future initiatives, implementing new monitoring strategies, developing services, refining data policies, and facilitating national and international collaborations in Galician observation efforts.

The goal of this strategic plan is to lead to better-informed decision-making for the modernization and reinforcement of marine observation and monitoring as a foundation for a robust social, economic and environmental resilience, enabling sustainable use of Galicia’s marine environment ecosystems.

How to cite: Saborido-Rey, F., Rey, D., Ayensa, G., Balsa, E., Bellas, J., Casas, M., Fernández, M., Gesteira, R., Molares, J., Rubio, B., Ruiz-Villarreal, M., Taboada, J., and Torres, S.: An integrated observation and monitoring strategy at regional level, Galicia, Spain, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-737, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-737, 2025.

The coastal management model that has been implemented in Brazil dates back to the 1980s, and has neocolonial and paternalistic characteristics and is centralized in the role of the State, perpetuating inequality and marginalization of artisanal fishers, traditional coastal communities and their local knowledge. We argue that we need to change this coastal management model, promoting an alternative one that is at the same time just, sustainable and aligned with the aspirations of local inhabitants. Therefore, our main goal is to develop an understanding, elaborate on and demarcate the term “decolonial coastal management”. Based in empirical transdisciplinary ethnobiological participatory-action research in the artisanal fishing community of Jubim (located in the delta of the Amazon River), and on our theoretical foundations, we propose a set of five essential principles aiming to contribute to the delineation of a decolonial management approach: (I) community empowerment (strengthening communal ties and governance to enhance self-sufficiency and resilience), (II) knowledge co-production (valuing traditional ecological knowledge and composing it with scientific research to inform sustainable practices), (III) advocacy and negotiation (engaging in advocacy and negotiation with external stakeholders, insisting on development that respects the rights and knowledge of the community), (IV) cultural continuity (ensuring that economic opportunities do not undermine cultural practices and values but rather support cultural continuity and biodiversity conservation) and (V) environmental stewardship (emphasizing the role of the community as stewards of their environment, advocating for policies and practices that reflect this principle). Those components are key to a just and sustainable future in any community-based strategy and should be taken into account in coastal management and policy making.

How to cite: Renck, V., Vivacqua, M., Moura, G., Serafini, T., Hellebrandt, L., and Gonçalves, L.: Decolonial coastal management - a concept under development, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-912, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-912, 2025.

Coastal areas are places where land and sea meet. They offer many opportunities but also face profound social and environmental challenges, such as rising sea levels, habitat degradation, pollution, and coastal erosion, which are difficult to address due to limitations in current governance systems. Often, land and sea governance are managed separately, leading to a lack of coordination, inconsistent policies, and ineffective responses to rapidly changing coastal environments. Barriers such as unclear mandates and roles, fragmented knowledge, power dynamics, and limited stakeholder involvement are common in coastal governance. Transforming coastal governance is essential to enhance the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance systems. Yet, current practices and past experiences have shown that bringing about necessary changes for sustainable ocean and coastal governance, adaptive decision-making, or improved coordination is anything but easy.

Our study explores strategies for transforming coastal governance, drawing on a novel perspective from Evolutionary Governance Theory. It highlights the role of evolving configurations of actors and institutions in shaping governance pathways in coastal areas, emphasizing the dependencies such as path, inter-, goal, and material dependencies that influence both governance outcomes and opportunities for transformation.

Through examples from various coastal practices in European case studies, we illustrate how these dependencies manifest in real-world contexts and how strategies can be developed to navigate them. For example, the shift in the Western Scheldt estuary/region (the Netherlands and Belgium), from traditional flood management approaches to more integrated, nature-based solutions reflects governance transformation shaped by historical legacies, technological advances, and climate change impacts. Similarly, the Isle of Wight Biosphere (UK) illustrates the governance challenges of balancing environmental protection with social and economic priorities, especially in the wake of political changes like Brexit. Another example, from the Oslofjord (Norway), highlights the complex relationship between governance strategies and ecosystem health, revealing the need for more holistic, adaptive approaches. Lastly, in Valencia, (Spain) the case of coastal development and erosion offers insights into the barriers posed by institutional misalignment, due to overlapping or conflicting policies and regulations that fail to adapt to environmental change, while also illustrating enablers such as improved scientific data use and stakeholder engagement.

Ultimately, these examples underscore the importance of adaptive, inclusive governance strategies that can evolve in response to changing environmental, social, and political dynamics. In line with Evolutionary Governance Theory, we elaborate on how strategies for transforming coastal governance can be developed through continuous reflection and adaptation, which are essential for enhancing their likelihood of success. By fostering collaboration and aligning governance systems with the complex, evolving nature of coastal challenges, we can enhance resilience and ensure more sustainable management of coastal and marine ecosystems in the face of ongoing global changes.

How to cite: Fathima Mafaziya Nijamdeen, T. W. G., Beunen, R., Löhr, A., and Van Assche, K.: Strategies for Transforming Coastal Governance: Addressing Barriers and Evolving Dependencies, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-933, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-933, 2025.

In spite of being essential to the functioning of physical, biological and societal processes, the oceans are often ‘out of sight and mind’. However, technological advances including remote sensing techniques, ocean sensor networks and underwater robots enable the acquisition and analysis of marine big data making oceans somehow known. Through the use of AI, more and more ‘smart’ ocean technologies such as intelligent ocean sensor networks are emerging, marking a new era in ocean observation, identification of ocean processes and ocean forecasting (1). As AI can bridge and fill the gaps in ocean data and enhance ocean modelling, it creates virtual representations of the ocean, called Digital Twins of the Ocean. The development of the European Digital Twin Ocean is believed to be of crucial importance in reaching the EU mission ‘Restore our Oceans and Waters’ by 2030 as “it will transform data into knowledge for everyone's benefit” and “will help design the most effective ways to restore marine and coastal habitats (...) and mitigate and adapt to climate change” (2). Likewise, the 2024 ‘AI for Good’ impact report states that AI could be a key driver in “getting back on track” to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (including SDG 14 ‘Life Below Water’) “without leaving anyone behind” (3). However, historically it has been shown that advancements in technology lead first and foremost to increasing extraction of marine living and non-living resources resulting in overfishing and fossil fuel-driven climate change. Hence, this paper raises critical questions to the belief that AI will play a main role in solving the ‘grand challenges of our time’ towards reaching SDG 14. Despite the potential of AI in optimising certain processes (e.g. the identification of fish), AI cannot compensate for poor marine management decisions. On the contrary, the application of AI faces a multitude of risks with potential negative social consequences, raising the question by and for whom AI ‘solutions’ are developed and deployed. The presentation will elaborate on how biases and flaws in AI training data (e.g. due to lacking integration of diverse knowledges), narrow optimization of AI and deployment risks raise ethical concerns and may further exacerbate environmental injustice and skew power dynamics in and around the marine realm.

(1)Song et al. (2023) A review of artificial intelligence in marine science, Frontiers in Earth Science, https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2023.1090185

(2) EU official webpage, retrieved on 06.11.2024, https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/ funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/eu-missions-horizon-europe/restore-our-ocean-and-waters/european-digital-twin-ocean-european-dto_en

(3) AI for Good Impact Report (2024) International Telecommunication Union, Geneva, Switzerland, retrieved on 06.11.2024 https://aiforgood.itu.int/newsroom/publications-and-reports/

How to cite: Franke, A. and Peters, K.: Is Artificial Intelligent Governance Smart? Assessing AI in Marine Management Use, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-957, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-957, 2025.

Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) has emerged as central to achieving policy goals in ocean governance. As the list of commitments and challenges grows, governments are urged to increase their delivery capacity. MSP governance aims to manage individual and collective behaviours and government actions in pursuit of public goods and related societal outcomes through the use of marine resources and space. While substantive research on MSP governance is available, none of it uses a geospatial data approach.

Governance is a complex topic that is not readily amenable to data approaches and has a limited scale dimension for geographical representation. Hence, it is either excluded from the geographical information systems or included at the bare minimum: the administrative units, dividing areas where countries have and/or exercise jurisdictional rights, for local, regional and national governance, separated by administrative boundaries. However, there are substantive benefits in advancing towards a more analytical approach. Operationalizing governance through data sets allows for: i) monitoring, review and improvement; ii) demonstrating progress and showcasing public action in designing and implementing MSP plans; iii) supporting adaptive planning and revisions according to performance and new policy objectives; iv) allowing cross-comparison and benchmarking at international level.

We present an analytical model to assess the capacity and performance of MSP governance. The module defines what objectives and attributes of the governance system are pivotal (conceptual module), what types of data are available, how they can be meaningfully represented on a spatial scale (Analytics Input & Data Model), as well as how the data output could be at service in preparing, monitoring and updating MSP (Analytics Output). The conceptual design of the governance module builds on the multilevel governance framework, as well as the governance, institutional, public administration and organizational theories.

The primary goal of MSP-Gov is to conduct exploratory data analysis on instruments and mechanisms for coordination, linking them with spatial representations of the governance system's plans and features. Combining qualitative analytical techniques, MSP-Gov facilitates understanding how coordination influences the plan's implementation, setting the baseline and generating evidence for improving vertical, horizontal and regional coordination. The module is currently being tested in three case studies in Europe: one at the local level (Galicia, Spain), one at a cross-border level between three countries (West Mediterranean, including Italy, France and Spain), and one at the regional sea basin (Baltic, eight countries). This talk summarizes the findings in collecting, organizing and analysing the governance data, the challenges of designing data sets systematically integrated with other data layers and represented through visualization tools, and the usefulness of putting governance on a map to inform decision-making.

How to cite: Ballesteros, M.: Using governance to govern: a geospatial data approach to measuring Marine Spatial Planning governance. , One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-1003, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-1003, 2025.

The Ocean is a common good and all people are stakeholders in its health and sustainability, because all people require a healthy marine environment, and we all impact upon it through our consumption, waste and emissions. However, there is a broad perception that ‘ocean positive’ actions available to people are individual choices or behaviours, and are limited by participatory processes which are weak or not well understood.

UK marine environmental management and policy is largely determined by the national Government, with some responsibilities devolved to local government. With many marine environmental campaigns focusing on wider, national issues, such as fishing regulation or marine protected areas, local government is often missed as an important actor in marine policy, particularly for the coastal zone.

However local government has a range of statutory responsibilities that impact the marine environment. Local Councils are also key partners working across public, private and third sectors, whether they are coastal or inland, and many public authorities and partnerships include a democratic element via Councillor representation on their boards. Local Council decisions and actions are relevant and visible to people in the place where they live.

To address this knowledge-action deficit, we identified a gap in local scale political action for the marine environment. We used a UK local government mechanism of the model Motion – this takes the form of a template of background information and Council pledges on a specific issue. 

We developed an Ocean Recovery Declaration (or ‘Motion for the Ocean’) which was informed by PhD research investigating marine citizenship (Buchan, 2021).  It was also supported by findings from the first UK Ocean Literacy Survey.  The Ocean Literacy survey is part of the larger project “Understanding Ocean Literacy and ocean climate-related behaviour change in the UK” delivered in partnership by Defra and the Ocean Conservation Trust and in collaboration with Natural Resources Wales which also included an evidence review of Ocean Literacy and Ocean-Climate related behaviour which was undertaken by Dr Emma McKinley (Cardiff University) and Dr Daryl Burdon (Daryl Burdon Ltd.)

The model Motion also includes national government asks which are informed by marine science (Rees et al., 2020), providing a link between local marine citizenship action, through local government policy, and up to national government. In this way the Motion empowers people to take marine citizenship action to help shape future marine policy.  It is a mechanism for local people to participate in governance by holding local policy to account.  There are currently 30 Motions declared across the UK, with the first EU motions expected imminently.  A community of practice has been formed which supports Councils to adapt the model Motion for their locality.  

This presentation will outline the timeline from first declaration to current activity, as well as an analysis of key themes in Motions from around the UK, wrapping up with how this initiative is being scaled outside of the UK.   

How to cite: Bridge, N., Buchan, P., Cunningham, E., and Lofts, R.: The Local Government Ocean Recovery Declaration - a mechanism for change, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-1170, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-1170, 2025.

The ocean, as the largest and most dynamic space on Earth, is both a critical area for scientific research and a complex geopolitical arena. This study explores the selective transmission of scientific conclusions as they are integrated into international policy, particularly in the context of Southern Ocean governance. It questions the frequent disconnect between scientific research and political frameworks, which hinders the full application of scientific knowledge in international negotiations, especially for environmental processes that are poorly understood but could have a major impact on ecosystem viability.

Biogeochemistry, essential to ocean protection, governs interactions among living organisms, chemical elements, and geological processes, shaping ecosystem health and resilience. Disruptions to these cycles, caused by local human impacts, or climate change, can affect carbon storage, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. The study focuses on how these complex insights, which have not traditionally shaped ocean conservation debates, can inform policy discussions and conservation strategies, particularly in the Southern Ocean—a key area for global climate adaptation and a model for governance of ocean commons.

To examine this process, the study uses a semantic analysis of grey literature from the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and the diverse stages of science integration (scientific academic articles, scientific working groups, scientific committee, commission). The methodology includes mass analyzing documents submitted prior to meetings and official reports to trace the evolution of scientific discussions and policy recommendations along these steps and along time. The semantic analysis of thousands of documents was conducted using the GarganText software from CNRS ISC-PIF, with an emphasis on keywords such as "carbon," "climate change," and "biogeochemical". This approach, computing order-one and order-two cooccurrences of a lexicon of about 500 followed terms tracks how the use and meaning of these terms evolves at each stage of science-policy integration, giving us the opportunity to quantify concepts diffusion at each step.

The study also enriches this analysis through observations of meetings and interviews with researchers and participants, providing insights into how scientific knowledge informs policy within CCAMLR.

In conclusion, CCAMLR serves as a unique case study for understanding the relationship between science and policy in complex environmental management. This work underscores the importance of transdisciplinary integration and dealing with uncertainties to preserve ecosystem resilience. It also proposes indicators to assess the capacity of ocean governance to integrate all the best available science and manage uncertainties, offering valuable lessons for the governance of international marine areas, particularly in the context of the BBNJ implementation.

How to cite: Astruc Delor, C., Delavande, C., and Durfort, A.: Governing a resilient ocean under uncertainty: Lessons from a Semantic Analysis of Knowledge Integration and Environmental Decision-Making in the Southern Ocean, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-1180, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-1180, 2025.

Increasing consensus exists on the key role of inclusive participatory approaches to be able to reach global conservation goals. Meeting the Convention of Biological Diversity’s 30 by 30 commitment, which advocates for at least 30% of marine areas to be protected, including a fully protected 10%, will entail the expansion and creation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) all over the world. However, current MPAs and potential MPA networks continue to face limitations for their conservation roles due to stakeholder conflicts, policy will and capacity. In this work we address these challenges through a comprehensive stakeholder engagement process to support the co-creation of an updated and ecologically effective management plan for the Atlantic Islands of Galicia (Illas Atlánticas) National Park. The Illas Atlánticas is a network of four archipelagos declared a maritime-terrestrial national park in 2002 and as MPA under the OSPAR convention in 2008. The existing management plan, effective since 2018, was established to regulate activities within the park through designated protection zones. Currently, only 0.44% of the MPA consists of no-take areas, bur only on the seafloor, while the majority remains partially protected, allowing artisanal fishing, tourism, diving and other recreative activities. This limited protection has scope to contribute to increased conservation area. Recognizing that over 60% of the region’s livelihoods are linked to the fishing sector and that tourism and local community interests also significantly impact the MPA, we explore to what extent an inclusive stakeholder identification and planning process can balance conservation and socio-economic interests.

This participatory process includes the identification and interviewing of key stakeholders, such as artisanal and industrial fishers, tourist organizations, local communities, and environmental groups, ensuring an inclusive representation in management decision-making. Then, a mapping of stakeholder priorities and challenges under marine conservation goals, where we aimed at evaluating the impacts of existing and future ocean governance goals,  synthesizing data on stakeholder preferences to enable the identification of high-priority conservation areas. Our preliminary results delivered a multilayered, interactive stacked map that captures both stakeholder usage patterns and scientifically prioritized conservation areas within the Illas Atlánticas that highlighted both compatible and conflicting uses of the maritime space.

By comparing stakeholder insights with current management zones, we pinpointed several key areas suited for stricter protection. Therefore, inclusive participatory approaches serve as a comprehensive approach, leading to mapping outputs for conservation that not only illustrate the distribution of current marine uses but also act as a decision-support system for establishing strictly protected areas in the MPA. The findings pave the way for a refined management plan, combining stakeholder insights with empirical conservation needs to advance the MPA’s alignment with the international Agenda, and serve as an experience that can contribute to other MPA establishment and zonation. 

How to cite: Blanco, A., van Rijs, C., Rayo-Luengo, S., and Ojea, E.: A comprehensive stacked map to help identify compatible and conflicting uses of the maritime space in the Illas Atlánticas de Galicia National Park., One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-1263, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-1263, 2025.

Biodiversity has been defined as the variability among living beings from all sources and at different taxonomic and spatial scales, with specific reference to genes, species and ecosystems. This definition automatically includes terrestrial and marine organisms and ecosystems on the same level. However, to a closer look, the characterisation of biodiversity in terms of static entities is less suitable for the marine context. Not surprisingly, terrestrial environments were the original target of the first conservation strategies, such as the establishment of national parks at the end of the 19th century. Many authors still underline the importance of protecting biodiversity by identifying and delimiting relevant places, and this idea has been transposed to the conservation of the sea through the creation of Marine Protected Areas. But do these entities – especially species, ecosystems and places – account for the specific nature of the marine environment?

This question is extremely important since the fundamental ecological role of the ocean for essential ecosystem services such as climate regulation and resource provision is now widely recognised. This contribution aims to compare the characterisations of marine and terrestrial biodiversity in order to show the limits of the traditional categories employed to describe biodiversity and to highlight the potential of new alternative or complementary concepts.

As regards the first point, species and ecosystems only allow for a partial comprehension of marine biodiversity. As an example, the identification of marine species can hardly be based on morphological criteria since many marine organisms (such as jellyfish) significantly change their morphology during their life cycle. Moreover, a great part of marine species diversity is still unknown, due to the ocean's reduced accessibility: this epistemic limitation may help to explain why biodiversity concepts are implicitly associated with terrestrial – and more familiar – living entities despite the longer evolutionary history of marine diversification. Also, although marine species richness seems to be lower compared to terrestrial one, diversity among marine phyla is higher. Shifting from the taxonomic to the ecological level of biodiversity, marine ecosystems' boundaries are hardly separable based on merely geographic criteria, because of the dynamic nature of the water.

Concerning the second point, marine organisms undergo biological processes which develop in a particularly close relationship with the surrounding physical environment. This aspect suggests that a deeper consideration of the processes and environmental interactions which shape biodiversity is needed. Rather than considering marine life forms as merely different from terrestrial ones, we could think of the ocean as a new paradigm to better understand biodiversity in a broader sense, shifting from a compositional view to a process-based conceptualisation. This theoretical redefinition could promote the integration of new efficient approaches to marine conservation management. 

How to cite: La Penna, C.: From the land to the sea: towards a redefinition of biodiversity?, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-1280, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-1280, 2025.

European Ocean Observers and scientists bring together a diverse array of ocean and coastal observers and modelers that provide information to meet national and cross-border needs for predicting and managing Europe’s Seas. While national efforts are essential, effective coordination across nations and other actors is required to overcome fragmentation and maximize benefits. This integration is vital for gaining insights into climate change impacts on European waters, as well as for cross-border marine resource management. Our work identifies the current state of European ocean observing activities, highlighting key gaps that hinder its effectiveness, including issues with spatial and temporal observation coverage, data integration and accessibility, technological barriers, uncertainties in projections, and engagement and communication challenges. To address these, detailed recommendations are offered, extending beyond academic interest and carrying significant implications for climate change mitigation, marine resource management, ecosystem resilience, disaster preparedness, economic gains, and broader scientific advancement. To further enhance the capabilities, we introduce a scoring approach to evaluate the readiness in observing and forecasting essential ocean phenomena. Applied at both European and regional or national levels, this transformative methodology provides a means to scrutinize the capability of the community. While notable readiness levels exist for certain phenomena, findings reveal that 83% of the assessed elements remain at developing stages, ranging from “Idea” to “Trial” readiness levels. Deficiencies are most prominent in coordination, observational processes, and data management outputs. By regularly adopting such a scoring framework, progress can be tracked, guiding strategic investments and support to build a resilient, future-ready European Ocean Observing and Forecasting communities, ultimately benefiting society and supporting sustainable ocean initiatives.

How to cite: Hassoun, A. E. R., Tanhua, T., Karstensen, J., Álvarez, M., Petihakis, G., Lønborg, C., García-Ibáñez, M., Heslop, E., Giani, M., Velaoras, D., and Bange, H.: Advancing the European Ocean Observing Community: integrating efforts to address gaps and enhance readiness for essential ocean phenomena, One Ocean Science Congress 2025, Nice, France, 3–6 Jun 2025, OOS2025-1331, https://doi.org/10.5194/oos2025-1331, 2025.