Regional oceans governance mechanisms: A review

The development of regional governance for the protection of the environment, sustainable use of natural resources and conservation of its biodiversity is unquestionably a cornerstone of international environmental law and policy. With regard to marine and coastal issues, it has mainly been taking place through Regional Seas programmes, Regional Fishery Bodies and Large Marine Ecosystems mechanisms. Based on a similar geographical approach, however, these regional mechanisms raise concerns relating to their coordination and efficiency, and possibly overlap in what they aim to achieve. This paper provides a review of existing regional oceans governance mechanisms, assessing their individual and collective capacities to move towards ecosystem-based management, and highlighting options to make the regional landscape more coherent and effective.     

Argo: A new tool for environmental monitoring and assessment of the world’s oceans, an example from the N.E. Pacific

Argo is an international project that is deploying profiling drifters in all of the oceans of the world, with the exception of the Arctic Ocean. Though still in its implementation phase the Argo array is now supplying an impressive amount of data which offers new opportunities to assess and monitor the environmental status of many regions of the world oceans. Recently, changes in the Gulf of Alaska have been documented by other means that suggest large changes in the T/S relationships and related changes in nutrient supply and productivity. This paper examines these unusual changes to demonstrate the use of the Argo database to determine the physical status of an ecosystem. While the methods of analysis are general, they are here specifically applied to the N.E. Pacific Ocean. We show how it is possible to monitor the baroclinic geostrophic circulation fields in near real-time and correlate these changes with alterations in the stratification of the upper water column.     

A Sustainable Development Goal for the Ocean and Coasts: Global ocean challenges benefit from regional initiatives supporting globally coordinated solutions

The ocean regulates the global climate, provides humans with natural resources such as food, materials, important substances, and energy, and is essential for international trade and recreational and cultural activities. Together with human development and economic growth, free access to, and availability of, ocean resources and services have exerted strong pressure on marine systems, ranging from overfishing, increasing resource extraction, and alteration of coastal zones to various types of thoughtless pollution. International cooperation and effective governance are required to protect the marine environment and promote the sustainable use of marine resources in such a way that due account can be taken of the environmental values of current generations and the needs of future generations. The high seas deserve particular attention since they suffer from a number of regulatory shortcomings due to the basic structures set out under international law. Against this backdrop, developing and agreeing on a focussed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) specifically for the Ocean and Coasts could prove to be an essential element to provide guidance and a framework for regional implementation agreements.     

The development of world oceans & coasts and concepts of sustainability

The current phase of technological development and expansion in the world economy is leading to greater human activity and development offshore. Some have described this as the colonisation of the oceans, one phase in the wider history of world industrialisation. This study empirically tests notions of ‘industrialisation’ and ‘colonisation’ in the oceans for the first time. It finds that human activity in the oceans has increased by multiple factors in the most recent long term wave of economic development. The methods include the combined use of Raster and R! to overcome methodological challenges to analyse large spatial datasets which map the footprint of human activity. In response to increasing human activity in the oceans, nations and supranational institutions are developing new governance regimes. These regimes are characterised by policy integration and a commitment to sustainability. Sustainable development is a central tenet of most national and international policies for the world's oceans. An analysis of sustainable development terminology within coastal and ocean policy is provided for seven major maritime governance regimes: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, EU, South Africa, UK and the US. The results show that sustainability is highly differentiated in the context of ‘the blue planet’ (oceans and coasts). The diverse interpretations of sustainability present an impasse to measuring progress in the field. Therefore the paper concludes by offering a framework for explanation and interpretation of sustainable development, by linking it to foundational assumptions held by systems of thought or philosophical traditions.     

First steps in the enclosure of the oceans: The origins of Truman's proclamation on the resources of the continental shelf, 28 September 1945

The movement to establish coastalstate jurisdiction over a distance of 200 miles has its origins in President Truman's proclamation of September 1945 on the resources of the continental shelf and ‘certain high seas fisheries’. The author analyses the processes and motives which led to the proclamation, the US justification of its revolutionary policy statements, the reactions of other nations (in particular the warning of the UK and the parallel declaration of Mexico), and the subsequent assessment of the consequences of the action in the USA.     

A digitally recording probe for heat-flow measurements in lakes and oceans

Some technical problems commonly encountered in marine heat-flow measurements have been overcome with a digitally recording seabottom probe containing in its pressure case no moving parts except a stepper relay. The probe stores digitally at regular time intervals the resistances of 11 thermistors in a 240-word CMOS memory. After return to the surface, it is connected to a digital printer to read out the measured data. The probe can be reused immediately since it need not be opened or recharged.     

中国近海的环流动力机制研究

本文总结国内外对我国近海环流所作的工作,对渤海、黄海、东海和南海等环流的主要动力机制作一简述.     

A theoretical reason to expect inviscid western boundary currents in realistic oceans

The conventional picture of an ocean gyre, based on an ocean with vertical sidewalls, assumes a balance between an input of vorticity by wind stress curl, and a viscous flux of vorticity through the boundary at the same latitude, resulting from a viscous western boundary current which may be significantly modified by nonlinear terms. Potential interactions with topography are also commonly acknowledged as a possible complicating factor. In this idealized picture, the zonal momentum balance is taken to be geostrophic, as numerous model analyses confirm. A theoretical argument is given here which shows that, in an ocean with sloping sidewalls, this geostrophic balance results in bottom pressure torques which balance the wind stress curl at each latitude. This removes the requirement for a viscous western boundary current at each latitude suggesting that the dynamics within a western boundary current may be essentially inviscid. While inviscid western boundary currents have already been found in certain idealized systems, and in one set of diagnostics from an eddy permitting model, the generality of the argument presented here gives a strong reason to believe that these are not special cases. Inviscid western boundary currents are in fact the rule, and the vertical sidewall case is an unrealistic exception.     

A proposal for boundary delimitation for integrated coastal zone management initiatives

ICZM relies heavily on the definition of major multidisciplinary characteristics/elements of the coastal area of interest. Usually, only terrestrial boundaries are considered, which tend to respond to a specific sectoral problem and can be determined by administrative limits. In this study, we propose a method for establishing a decision-making tool to inform boundary delimitation for ICZM initiatives that is proactive and widely applicable as opposed to reactive and problem specific. This method integrates environmental, economic and societal characteristics of the marine and terrestrial boundaries of the coastal zone, starting at the boundary of the jurisdictional zone of influence (shoreline units), increasing in detail through the definition of their influential areas from jurisdictional, environmental or socio-economic perspectives (functional areas) and, within them, specifying the finest scale at which relevant indicator data may be obtained (analysis units).     

热带三大洋海-气耦合主模态及其相互作用的研究进展

从地球气候系统的角度,回顾了国内外热带太平洋、大西洋和印度洋海洋-大气相互作用研究,特别是有关这三大洋海-气耦合主模态研究已取得的成就;提出了热带印度洋、大西洋在被热带太平洋“充电”的同时,如何通过大气桥“放电”,从而改变热带太平洋海洋动力过程是目前面临的重要科学问题.指出了海洋动力过程在三大洋相互作用中的重要性.     

Multidecadal climate variability in the subtropics/mid‐latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere oceans

Observations of multidecadal variability in sea surface temperature (SST), surface air temperature and winds over the Southern Hemisphere are presented and an ocean general circulation model applied towards investigating links between the SST variability and that of the overlying atmosphere. The results suggest that the dynamical effect of the wind stress anomalies is significant mainly in the neighbourhood of the western boundary currents and their outflows across the mid‐latitudes of each Southern Hemisphere basin (more so in the South Indian and South Atlantic than in the South Pacific Ocean) and in the equatorial upwelling zones. Over most of the subtropics to mid‐latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere oceans, changes in net surface heat flux (particularly in latent heat) appear to be more important for the SST variability than dynamical effects. Implications of these results for modelling and understanding low frequency climate variability in the Southern Hemisphere as well as possible links with mechanisms of decadal/interdecadal variability in the Northern Hemisphere are discussed.     

Contemporary initiatives on the future of the International Whaling Commission

In his term as Chairman of the International Whaling Commission between 2006 and 2009, Dr BillHogarth championed a process for finding a way forward for the IWC. In parallel with, and in places intertwined with the Hogarth Initiative, a number of other initiatives attempting to move the IWC forward have been proposed by a range of stakeholders; both governments and NGOs. This paper traces the more important suggestions, commenting on their likelihood of success.     

Implementing integrated oceans management: Australia's south east regional marine plan (SERMP) and Canada's eastern Scotian shelf integrated management (ESSIM) initiative

Integrated oceans management (IOM) is emerging in the international arena as a tool in meeting requirements for sustainable use of ocean space and marine resources. Australia and Canada are at the forefront of these developments and, being without set precedents, each state has adopted quite different strategies to implement IOM—Australia adopting a policy-driven approach delivered through Regional Marine Plans and Canada developing legislation that provided a framework for policy implementation delivered through an Integrated Management Framework. Despite these significant differences, examination of initiatives in both states indicates that there are also significant commonalities and shared experiences, providing important lessons for implementing IOM.