As offshore wind energy expands into cold-region waters, offshore wind turbines (OWTs) are increasingly exposed to ice-structure interaction. In this study, a three-dimensional fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model was developed in LS-DYNA to simulate the dynamic response of a typical 5 MW monopile-supported OWT subjected to ice impact. The model explicitly accounts for coupled interactions among ice, water, and structure. A systematic parametric study was conducted to explain the effects of ice speed, shape, size, and immersion ratio on the peak impact force, structural energy absorption, local indentation depth, and tower-top acceleration and displacement responses. The response metrics were normalized to conduct a sensitivity analysis. The overall results indicate that ice speed has the greatest influence on the structural response, followed by ice shape, ice size, and the immersion ratio. These findings help improve the understanding of the ice-structure impact mechanism.

Microplastics (MPs) contamination of aquatic organisms is on the rise globally. The effect of extreme hydrologic events on the movement MPs and ecological hazards is poorly understood. Riverine transportation routes connect the plastic inputs on land to the shallow marine ecosystems, which contribute to the high biodiversity and the essential ecosystem processes. This review provides global evidence on flood-driven microplastic inputs into shallow coastal waters, with particular emphasis on river-dominated coastal regions and flood-prone environments. Evidence suggests that severe precipitation and flooding events rapidly mobilise the plastically built-up stores in the soils, sediments, and urban landscapes, resulting in concentrated but brief microplastic pulses that increase background levels of contamination in coastal waters over time. In order to sufficiently assess and control MPs pollution in coastal ecosystems with high risks of floods, the present review shows that extreme-event dynamics should be included in the monitoring procedures and ecological risk assessment.

Ocean carbon sinks are receiving growing attention in climate mitigation and sustainable ocean development. This makes their governance an increasingly important legal and institutional issue. Although China has made notable progress in developing ocean carbon sink activities, the corresponding legal framework remains insufficient, particularly in regulatory design and institutional coordination. More importantly, the current challenge does not lie in a complete absence of policy responses but in the lack of a legal regulatory system capable of translating policy objectives into consistent practice. It is precisely this gap between policy and practice that makes it necessary to focus on the legal regulation of ocean carbon sinks. Against this background, this article examines the legal regulation of ocean carbon sinks in China through an integrated analysis of relevant international conventions and domestic laws. It adopts a three-dimensional analytical framework centered on regulatory authorities, regulatory objects, and regulatory bases. The analysis identifies a structural mismatch between the development of ocean carbon sink activities and existing legal regimes. At the international level, the governance of ocean carbon sinks is constrained by the limited role of regulatory authorities, the ambiguity and regulatory stagnation surrounding the standard of marine scientific research, and the lack of specificity and coordination in the applicable international legal framework. At the domestic level, regulation is weakened by overlapping institutional responsibilities, fragmented oversight, inconsistency in the scope of regulatory objects, and the absence of a comprehensive legal framework specifically designed for ocean carbon sinks. On this basis, the article proposes legal pathways for improving China’s ocean carbon sink governance at both the international and domestic levels. Internationally, China should strengthen scientific and regional cooperation to support the future development of international rules. Domestically, China should adopt a phased legislative strategy for building its ocean carbon sink regulatory framework and establish a coordinated oversight mechanism involving multiple regulatory actors. These measures would help enhance legal clarity, regulatory coherence, and institutional coordination, and thereby provide a stronger legal foundation for the sustainable development of ocean carbon sinks in China.

Anthropogenic climate forcing is altering ocean circulation and water mass distribution across the Southern Ocean, reshaping the habitat of circumpolar marine predators such as threatened crested ( Eudyptes ) penguins. Understanding species vulnerability remains challenging due to substantial uncertainties in climate projections. Here, we integrate two state-of-the-art climate assessment tools—storylines and time of emergence—to evaluate the vulnerability of crested penguins to ocean warming while explicitly addressing projection uncertainties. Using this framework, we select a discrete set of projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) that capture qualitatively different global circulation responses and climate sensitivity. Uncertainty in global atmospheric circulation responses, particularly the degree of intensification of the Westerlies, strongly influences both the magnitude and spatial pattern of projected sea surface temperature (SST) warming within penguin foraging habitats. Storylines and climate sensitivity explain a greater proportion of overall projection uncertainty compared to conventional CMIP6 scenario ensembles. We identify two groups of SST sensitivity among crested penguins: (1) highly sensitive species, including Northern Rockhoppers ( E. moseleyi ) and Aotearoa/New Zealand endemic species, and (2) species with broader distributions, such as Southern and Eastern Rockhoppers ( E. chrysocome ) and Macaroni/Royal penguins ( E. chrysolophus/E. schlegeli ), which exhibit spatially heterogeneous exposure and sensitivity. Spatial variability in exposure among widely distributed species highlights opportunities for targeted monitoring to detect early climate change impacts. However, limited data on population dynamics, gene flow, and foraging ecology constrain vulnerability assessments, emphasizing the need for expanded ecological and tracking studies coupled with environmental monitoring. We advocate for interdisciplinary, uncertainty-aware approaches and transparent workflows, including open data and code sharing, to strengthen future climate vulnerability assessments for threatened species.

In this study, diagnostic schemes for sea fog and lower atmospheric ducts were established based on the WRF model. Using these schemes, four groups of ten-year continuous simulations were conducted for the Hangzhou Bay area, covering the historical period and three future scenarios, to investigate the spatio-temporal characteristics of lower atmospheric ducts associated with sea fog and their response to changes under different emission scenarios. The simulation results showed that in the Hangzhou Bay area, the occurrence rates of elevated ducts and simple surface ducts were 5.81% and 5.65% respectively, while the occurrence rates of surface-based ducts and composite ducts were relatively low, at 3.15% and 0.25%. The duct rate exhibited a bimodal monthly pattern in summer and autumn with a trough in winter, which was consistent with the onset and withdrawal of the East Asian summer monsoon. Among sea fog-associated ducts, elevated ducts accounted for the highest proportion (27.43%), while the proportion of simple surface ducts was extremely low. Their peak occurrence coincided with the high-incidence season of sea fog, slightly earlier than the overall ducts’ average. Under future scenarios, the occurrence rates of the four types of atmospheric ducts increased with rising carbon emissions, with the largest increases in autumn and winter and a weaker increase in spring. For sea fog-associated ducts, due to the decrease in sea fog events during the scenario periods, the changes in different duct types varied. The occurrence rates of simple surface ducts and surface-based ducts both decreased significantly compared to the historical period. The average rates of elevated ducts and composite ducts increased slightly, with the increasing areas concentrated in the eastern offshore areas. However, the amplitude of seasonal oscillations in these two types of ducts was strengthened during the scenario period, and this amplitude showed a negative correlation with carbon emissions.

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are champions on the global stage of sustainable and equitable ocean management. This paper addresses the contributions of SIDS to the negotiation and development of the legally binding agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement). Firstly, we reflect on how SIDS claimed space and asserted voice during the negotiation process. We illustrate SIDS’ emergence as active, effective and influential participants in the BBNJ negotiation process, highlighting issues key for SIDS such as special circumstances of SIDS as a principle, special considerations relating elements of the Agreement’s package, and representation on key institutional structures. Secondly, we analyse how and why SIDS created space and gave voice to important topics for equity in the agreement - such as transparency, participation, traditional knowledge, gender, and effective capacity building and technology transfer. We argue that these contributions by SIDS stand to benefit the implementation of the agreement as a whole. Thirdly, we look ahead to consider how SIDS might cement space and maintain voice, including in relation to promoting SIDS expertise in implementation, enabling knowledge exchange between SIDS negotiators, and filling capacity and financing shortfalls in SIDS. Our analysis illustrates a strategic approach of internal coordination geared towards targeted external influence that served SIDS well during the negotiations and stands to benefit SIDS and the ocean overall in future.

Underwater radiated noise (URN) from vessels is an anthropogenic stressor that negatively affects marine ecosystems. Accordingly, the ability to estimate URN levels is a critical component for environmental assessment. Predictive models are widely used to estimate URN emissions from different vessel types and operating conditions; however, comparable models for small recreational vessels are largely lacking, even though these vessels are arguably a dominant source of noise pollution in coastal areas. Here, we use a large dataset of acoustic measurements of recreational vessels to extend the empirical framework to small motorized vessels (motorized yachts and sailboats) by constructing regularized log-linear regression models that provide length and speed dependent source spectra over 23–24,000 Hz.

This study examines how Belt and Road Initiative port investment translates into maritime activity and port-city economic growth along the Maritime Silk Road. We frame impacts as a conversion process from investment to operational activation and then to local growth, and test whether this conversion is stronger where baseline constraints limit service capture. Using a multi-country panel of MSR port cities from 2014 to 2023, we estimate conservative fixed-effects models with port fixed effects and country-by-year controls, incorporate adjustment lags consistent with infrastructure lead times, and apply strict temporal ordering to assess whether earlier ship-call density predicts later GDP growth after accounting for prior investment. Results show that investment relevance is conditional on conversion capacity: associations are more consistently detected where operational and institutional conditions support recurring services and local value capture, and are weaker for already advantaged hubs. Evidence further indicates that lagged ship-call density provides a clearer link to subsequent GDP growth than contemporaneous reduced-form investment–growth correlations, consistent with gradual network and local adjustment. These findings imply that BRI appraisal and monitoring should emphasize conversion-oriented portfolios and operational leading indicators, including ship-call density and port-time performance, and bundle hard infrastructure with facilitation and coordination reforms where procedural constraints bind. The results are best interpreted as mechanism-consistent evidence under strict timing rather than a full causal mediation decomposition.

In this Research Topic, 14 publications highlighted ecological responses in coastal environments (Table 1) to a number of potential changes, including climate change (Gross et al. 2023, Huard et al. 2024), marine heatwaves (Beck et al. 2024, Graham et al. 2025), atmospheric heatwaves (Miner et al. 2025, Raymond et al. 2024, Rubinoff et al. 2025), aquaculture (Veggerby et al. 2024), wetland habitat loss (Chamberlin et al. 2025, Greene et al. 2025, Toft et al. 2023), species reintroductions (McArdle et al. 2025), and introduction of non-native species (Beck et al. 2024, Grason et al. 2025, Rubinoff et al. 2025). While this suite of changes is not an exhaustive list, it collectively highlights that due to the intersection of terrestrial and marine processes, impacts to coastal environments are likely to be greater than their landward and seaward counterparts. Importantly, authors highlighted the significance of cumulative natural and anthropogenic effects that complicate recovery of coastal habitats and the species they support (Huard et al. 2024, Greene et al. 2025, Gross et al. 2023, McArdle et al. 2025, Raymond et al. 2024, Sobocinski et al. 2025, Toft et al. 2023).This collection also offered solutions to some of these threats (Table 1), including habitat restoration (Greene et al. 2025, Chamberlin et al. 2025, Sobocinski et al. 2025, Toft et al. 2023 2025) detected successful growth and adequate survival rates in native Olympia oyster reintroductions, they also noted numerous challenges and recruitment failure. The studies collectively demonstrated that recovering coastal communities takes time and investment because of constraints such as opposing natural geomorphic processes (Toft et al. 2023), lags in ecological responses, inherent sensitivity of key species to intertidal extremes (Graham et al. 2025, Gross et al. 2023), and society's tendencies to underinvest recovery and restoration efforts (Chamberlin et al. 2025). All of these issues delay the timeline for functional recovery.The studies collectively noted the many challenges of documenting responses of coastal habitats and their resident species. Intertidal environments are inherently dynamic, and studies must account for highly variable changes in water levels, temperature, and salinity (Rubinoff et al. Despite these challenges, this Frontiers Research topic highlights the importance of monitoring coastal ecosystems. While the concept of "monitoring" has sometimes been criticized as secondtier science due to the lack of controlled experimentation or a strong basis in hypothesis testing (Lindenmayer and Likens 2009), this collection of studies reveals their power, especially in the context of land-and seascape-scale questions often associated with coastal ecosystems. Longterm monitoring of juvenile salmon cohorts was essential to link habitat restoration "experiments" to their demographic responses (Greene et al. 2025), and even shorter monitoring efforts can help shed light on species sensitivity to climate impacts (Graham et al. 2025, Gross et al. 2023, Miner et al. 2025, Rubinoff et al. 2025, Beck et al. 2024). The concept of monitoring extends as well to monitoring habitat change -for example, Chamberlin et al. ( 2025) and Greene et al. ( 2025) highlight how tracking habitat change of vegetated wetlands using multiple spaced years of aerial photography revealed the pace of wetland recovery through restoration projects. In addition, monitoring can help bridge the gap between scientists and practitioners through participatory science. As shown by several authors, data gathered by engaging citizens in shoreline monitoring can help reveal recovery of ecosystem function (Toft et al. 2023, Rubinoff et al. 2025) and serve to warn us about invasions of nonnative species (Grason et al. 2025, Beck et al. 2024).The studies in this collection also raise questions for additional research. Table 1. Summary of studies in the Salish Sea intertidal Research Topic by author. We illustrate the topics concerning hypothesized impacts (red) or efforts to ameliorate them (blue), the ecological responses studied, and whether impacts/improvements and their ecological responses were measured.

To improve the accuracy and robustness of significant wave height prediction under complex marine conditions, a multi-strategy Snow Ablation Optimization (GVSAO) model based on the Good Point Set Initialization Strategy (G), Cyclic Oscillation Mutation Strategy (V), and Snow Ablation Optimizer (SAO) is proposed to enhance parameter optimization. The GVSAO model combines Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Units (BiGRU), and a Self-Attention Mechanism (SA) to construct the GVSAO-CNN-BiGRU-SA framework, which fully exploits the nonlinear characteristics of wave height time series. The study utilizes observed data from two observation points along the U.S. East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico (Stations 41013 and 42002) as well as from the Arabian Sea (Station 23020) and the Pacific Ocean (Station 46044). Comparative experiments on input feature combinations reveal that Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF) components derived from Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) contribute more significantly to prediction accuracy than single physical features by effectively capturing dynamic time-frequency characteristics. The results demonstrate that the GVSAO model outperforms SAO, GSAO, and VSAO in terms of global exploration and stability, as validated by performance comparisons on the CEC2005 benchmark functions. Compared with the BiGRU model, the GVSAO-CNN-BiGRU-SA model exhibited superior performance, with RMSE reduced by 44.01% at Station 41013 and 15.12% at Station 42002. Similarly, it outperformed the CNN-BiGRU and CNN-BiGRU-SA models across all key metrics. The model achieved high-accuracy predictions in diverse marine environments, with relative mean errors within 0.5472%, RMSE within 0.1064 m, and correlation coefficients (R2) exceeding 0.99. Furthermore, in multi-step forecasting (3 to 48 hours), the model maintained high reliability with R2 values remaining above 0.84 across diverse geographic environments. The GVSAO-CNN-BiGRU-SA model provides a reliable solution for wave height prediction, contributing to marine engineering early warnings and energy utilization.