IMO approves global framework for maritime autonomous ships

 From The Shipping Brief

 

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has taken a significant step toward the commercial adoption of autonomous shipping by approving the first global regulatory framework for Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS).

The framework establishes baseline international requirements for the safe operation of autonomous and remotely operated vessels. 

It is designed to provide a harmonised approach across flag states, reducing fragmented national interpretations and creating a consistent structure for future deployment.

 

Key elements of the framework

The approved framework includes several foundational components intended to govern the safe integration of autonomous vessel technologies:

• Classification of different levels of vessel autonomy, from ship-controlled to fully autonomous operations
• Requirements for human oversight and accountability, including the role of shore-based control centres
• Mandatory safety management provisions for autonomous and remotely operated systems
• Cybersecurity standards addressing system resilience and operational integrity
• Testing, certification, and approval processes for autonomous vessel technologies
• Allocation of responsibility between onboard systems, remote operators, and regulatory authorities

Yara Birkeland was the world’s first fully autonomous container ship

(source: Yara Marine Technologies)

Why this matters for shipping markets

For years, autonomous vessel technology has progressed through trials and pilot projects, but regulatory uncertainty has remained one of the main barriers to wider commercial adoption.

This framework provides the first structured pathway for integration into international shipping rules.

The development is relevant not only for maritime technology providers but also for commodity shipping markets, where operational efficiency and cost structures are closely linked to vessel performance.

Expected operational benefits

Autonomous and AI-enabled vessel operations are expected to support several efficiency gains across global shipping networks:

• Improved voyage optimisation and route planning
• Reduced fuel consumption and emissions
• More efficient port arrivals and reduced waiting times
• Enhanced predictive maintenance capabilities
• Greater use of remote monitoring and operational support

A broader shift toward digitalisation in shipping

The IMO’s move reflects a broader industry transition toward digitalisation, where AI-assisted navigation, digital twins, and advanced analytics are becoming increasingly embedded in vessel operations.

Rather than being a standalone innovation, autonomous shipping is emerging as part of a wider transformation in how maritime logistics systems are managed and optimised.

MASS stands for Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships.

These are ships that can operate with varying degrees of autonomy, ranging from partial automation to fully autonomous operations without human intervention.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has defined four levels of autonomy for MASS: 

Degree One: Crewed Ships with Automation: Ships with automated processes and decision support. Seafarers are on board to operate and control shipboard systems and functions. Some operations may be automated. 

Degree Two: Remotely Operated Ships with Crew Onboard: Remotely controlled ships with seafarers on board. The ship is controlled and operated from another location, but there are still crew members on board. 

Degree Three: Remotely Operated Ships without Crew Onboard: Remotely controlled ships without seafarers on board. The ship is operated entirely from a remote location, and there is no crew on board.

Degree Four: Fully Autonomous Ships: Fully autonomous ships. The ship’s operating system can make decisions and take actions independently without human intervention.

  

What comes next

While fully autonomous deep-sea bulk carriers and tankers remain some way off, this framework marks an important transition from experimentation toward regulated implementation.

It will be interesting to see which segment adopts first: coastal shipping, offshore support vessels, short-sea trades, or eventually large-scale deep-sea commercial fleets.

Links :

• IMO : IMO adopts first global Code for autonomous ships
• Quasa : The First Global Rules for Robot Ships: IMO Approves Non-Mandatory MASS Code 
• MarineLink : IMO Outlines Plans for Binding Rules for Autonomous Ships
• TheMarineExecutuve : IMO Passes Non-Mandatory Safety Code for Autonomous Ships 

A vast dam across the Bering Strait could stop the AMOC collapsing

The Bering Strait separates Alaska and Russia
Ocean Color/OB.DAAC/OBPG/NASA

 

From NewScientist y Joshua Howgego  

 

If a key ocean current collapses it could plunge northern Europe into a big freeze.
Now researchers are weighing up a drastic intervention – building a 130-kilometre-wide dam between the US and Russia

It would be an engineering project on a truly epic scale, but we may one day need to consider building a dam between Alaska and eastern Russia.
The audacious proposal would be designed to stave off the worst consequences of the collapse of a vital ocean current, and researchers have been mulling it over this week at a major conference.

The idea comes from Jelle Soons and his colleague Henk Dijkstra at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who study the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC.
This current system, which includes the Gulf Stream, is a major reason why northern Europe has a relatively mild climate for its latitude.

However, we know the current is weakening. 

There is huge uncertainty about what would happen if it collapses, but some models suggest it could see temperatures in northern Europe drastically plunge.

Soons thought a dam could be a possible intervention after hearing about how during the Pliocene era, from roughly 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, sea levels were lower and there was a land bridge where we now find the Bering Strait.
Simulations of the Pliocene climate show the AMOC was stronger then, mainly thanks to that land bridge.
“I was like: ok, could we do this again?” says Soons.
To investigate the effects of building such a dam, Soons and Dijkstra ran simulations of the AMOC varying both the date when the dam would be built and the exact amount of freshwater present.
Freshwater is a key part of the equation because it currently flows from the Pacific through the Bering Strait into the north Atlantic, which weakens the AMOC.
Building a dam would stop or slow the flow.
In work published a few weeks ago, Soons and Dijkstra obtained mixed results: in some scenarios the dam appeared to strengthen the AMOC, but in others it had the opposite effect.
However, those results came from a relatively simple and low-resolution model.
On 5 May at the European Geosciences Union general assembly in Vienna, Austria, Soons presented work that repeated the simulations on a supercomputer using a much more advanced climate model.
This indicated that closing the Strait would strengthen AMOC, especially if the dam were built early – by at least 2050.
“I was surprised at how strong the recovery was,” says Soons.

The Bering Strait is only 59 metres deep at its deepest point and there are two small islands in the middle, meaning any barrier could conceivably be built in two halves.
Ed McCann, a past president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and now at Expedition Engineering says the best way to do this would be to avoid concrete and instead use floating machinery to build a barrier of rock and dredged sand.
“This sort of construction is pretty simple, just very big and very expensive,” he wrote in an email.
Jonathan Rosser at the London School of Economics says that the work is interesting but that because we don’t fully understand the AMOC, we can’t be sure of the consequences of such an intervention.
“These drastic things really do have big uncertainties attached.”
Soons agrees and says that while building a dam might be helpful to northern Europe, it could create other problems, such as altering rainfall patterns, elsewhere.
“Whether you would consider this a serious proposal? I don’t think we’re there yet,” he says.
This is not the first time that researchers have mulled the idea of building a huge sea dam to mitigate climate change.
In 2020, Sjoerd Groeskamp at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research unveiled an idea called the Northern European Enclosure Dam, which would involve building two barriers to hem in the sea between the UK and Europe and prevent rising sea levels from inundating low-lying parts of the continent.
As well as effects on climate, any such dam would have other side effects on things like marine-mammal migrations, tides and shipping to remote communities.
Soons says he has toyed with ideas like building half a barrier or having it descend to a depth of only say 10 metres.
These are “interesting ideas” he says, although he hasn’t yet had a chance to consider their merits properly.

 

 Links :

•  Collapse of key ocean current may release billions of tonnes of carbon

ECDIS knowledge gaps exposed: what 5,000 bridge team assessments reveal about navigational risk

Report

From Safety4Sea

The recently released NorthStandard ECDIS Training Assessment (ETA) Report provides one of the most revealing datasets yet on how bridge teams understand and use ECDIS onboard.

Based on more than 5,000 assessments conducted since February 2024, the report exposes a reality the industry has long suspected but rarely quantified: mandatory ECDIS certification does not necessarily translate into operational competence.

The findings are important because ECDIS today is no longer simply a chart display tool.
It is effectively the primary navigation environment onboard most SOLAS vessels.
When bridge teams misunderstand safety contours, datums, ENC updates, alarms, display layers or data quality indicators, the result is not merely inefficiency.
It creates elevated grounding risk, unsafe passage planning, alarm fatigue, positional inaccuracies and degraded situational awareness.

The report is particularly valuable because it moves beyond generic “training awareness” discussions and identifies where the actual knowledge gaps exist at a granular operational level.

What the ETA initiative is about

NorthStandard launched the ECDIS Training Assessment (ETA) platform in February 2024 as a structured competency assessment tool for bridge teams.
The objective is to evaluate practical ECDIS knowledge across the four pillars of passage management: Appraisal, Planning, Execution and Monitoring.

The platform is not designed merely as another CBT module.
It functions more as a diagnostic intelligence tool for identifying competency weaknesses at both individual and fleet level.
The assessment evaluates how bridge teams understand:

• ENC installation and updates
• Safety settings and contours
• Alarm management
• Display layers and scale usage
• Datum interpretation
• CATZOC and data quality
• Passage plan verification
• Monitoring and positional awareness

The report’s core message is clear: many bridge teams can operate ECDIS mechanically, but a significant portion do not fully understand the underlying navigational logic and limitations of the system.

That distinction matters enormously.

 

 

Why the report is important

The significance of the report lies in the fact that it moves beyond theoretical training discussions and quantifies actual operational weaknesses using real assessment data.

The findings suggest that while most bridge teams can operate ECDIS functionally, many officers still lack a strong understanding of the system’s logic, limitations and risk implications.
This distinction is critical.

Modern navigational incidents increasingly stem not from absence of technology, but from overreliance on automation, alarm fatigue, poor understanding of safety settings and incorrect interpretation of navigational data.

Among the report’s key findings:

• Around one-third of bridge teams lacked understanding of critical ECDIS features such as datum discrepancies and ENC updates.
• Nearly half failed to prioritise correct ENC scale during passage planning.
• Half of respondents struggled to distinguish alarms from alerts and highlights.
• Significant gaps were identified regarding safety contours, symbols, display layers and ENC update management.
• Perhaps most concerning, the report found that many bridge teams relied excessively on automated route checking without performing sufficient visual verification of planned passages.

The broader implication is clear: compliance with mandatory ECDIS certification requirements does not necessarily guarantee operational competency.

10 Key lessons learned from the ETA Report

1. Mandatory ECDIS certification is not enough
The report demonstrates that certified officers still show major competency gaps in operational ECDIS use.
Knowledge deficiencies appeared consistently across all four operational pillars.

This reinforces that compliance-driven training does not automatically produce operational mastery.

2. Datums remain a major industry weakness
Datum-related misunderstanding appeared repeatedly throughout the report.
Many bridge teams failed to understand WGS84 discrepancies, sounding datums and vertical datum implications.
This is dangerous because datum errors directly affect positional accuracy, under-keel clearance calculations and air draft assessments.

3. ENC updating is poorly understood
Nearly two-thirds of crews struggled to recognise ENC updates and understand update content.
This is not a procedural detail.
Outdated or improperly updated ENCs can create direct navigational hazards.

4. Officers overtrust automation
The report highlights overreliance on automated route checks and automated alarm logic.
ECDIS should support navigational judgement, not replace it.
Visual verification and critical assessment remain essential bridge team responsibilities.

5. Alarm fatigue and alarm confusion are still widespread
Half of the assessed personnel struggled to distinguish alarms, alerts and highlights.
Poor alarm understanding leads directly to alarm desensitisation, which is a recurring contributor in navigational incidents and casualty investigations.

6. ENC scale selection is frequently mishandled
Nearly half of bridge teams failed to prioritise correct ENC scale during passage planning.
Using the wrong scale can hide critical hazards or create excessive clutter that reduces situational awareness.

7. Safety contours are commonly misunderstood
The report repeatedly identified confusion around safety contours, deep contours and available charted depth contours.
This is one of the most operationally critical findings because incorrect contour logic directly affects grounding prevention.

8. Crews often do not understand data quality indicators
Many respondents misunderstood CATZOC, M_SREL, pick reports and survey reliability indicators.
ECDIS is only as reliable as the underlying hydrographic data.
If officers cannot assess data quality, they cannot assess navigational risk properly.

9. GPS overreliance persists
Some respondents reportedly believed GPS provides “100% accuracy.” This remains a dangerous mindset in an era of spoofing, jamming and sensor degradation.

10. Practical familiarisation is still weak
The report identified weak understanding of hover-over functions, display layers, symbol recognition, time zones and practical monitoring features.
This suggests that many officers use ECDIS functionally but not fluently.
There is a major difference.

Action plan for ship managers and maritime stakeholders

The ETA findings suggest that ECDIS competence should increasingly be treated as an operational risk management issue rather than purely a training compliance matter.

Ship managers and maritime stakeholders should consider the following actions:

Conduct fleetwide ECDIS competency assessments

Managers should identify vessel-specific and rank-specific weaknesses through structured assessments and scenario-based evaluations.

Prioritise high-risk competency areas

According to the report, urgent attention should focus on:

• ENC installation and updating
• Datum understanding
• Safety contours and safety settings
• Alarm management
• ENC scale usage
• Symbol recognition
• Display layer configuration

Strengthen practical, scenario-based training

Traditional CBT and generic certification alone are insufficient.
Practical simulator-based training involving real operational scenarios should become standard.

Rebuild manual verification culture

Bridge teams should be encouraged to challenge automation rather than rely blindly on automated checks and alerts.

Standardise ECDIS procedures fleetwide

Companies should harmonise:

• Safety setting procedures
• Alarm management protocols
• ENC update verification
• Passage planning standards
• Watch handover checks

Improve bridge audits and navigational assurance

Internal audits should focus more closely on actual ECDIS operational practices, including alarm settings, ENC management and safety contour logic.

Enhance type-specific familiarisation

Differences between ECDIS manufacturers and presentation libraries remain a source of confusion and require more robust familiarisation practices.

Integrate ECDIS competence into SMS risk management

ECDIS competency should become part of navigational risk assessment frameworks and not remain isolated within training departments alone.

Final thoughts

The NorthStandard ETA report sends an important message to the industry: ECDIS competency gaps remain widespread despite years of mandatory implementation.

The issue is no longer whether bridge teams can operate ECDIS systems mechanically.
The challenge is whether they fully understand how those systems behave under operational conditions, how to interpret their limitations and how to manage navigational risk when automation fails or becomes misleading.

As vessels increasingly depend on integrated digital navigation systems, strengthening operational ECDIS competence may become one of the most important loss prevention priorities for the maritime industry over the coming years.

Links :

• Marine News Mag :  Report: Many Bridge Teams Struggle with ECDIS Functions
• GeoGarage blog : ATSB: Cruise ship's chief mate distracted by ECDIS ahead ... /Investigation finds unintended risks with ECDIS navigation

Birth of a rainbow

第一次看到彩虹的诞生，这个摄影师好厉害。 pic.twitter.com/2F9JZEiGLn

— Gavinly (@Fengyi1811) May 29, 2026

The secret life of the Arctic: what's really happening under the ice

A snail fish, or Liparidae, passes near the upward-looking camera in Inglefield Bredning, Greenland. 

Far below Greenland's frozen surface, cameras have captured a rarely seen world where narwhals glide through darkness and strange deep-sea creatures drift beneath melting ice.

Researchers studying Inglefield Bredning Fjord lowered a video camera equipped with red lights and a hydrophone 260 meters (853 feet) to the seafloor.

Over the course of a week, they recorded rare sights including a backward-swimming fish and narwhal vocalizations, alongside other elusive deep-sea creatures.

 

From ArcticToday

Far below Greenland’s frozen surface, cameras have captured a rarely seen world where narwhals glide through darkness and strange deep-sea creatures drift beneath melting ice.

Researchers studying Inglefield Bredning Fjord lowered a video camera equipped with red lights and a hydrophone 260 meters (853 feet) to the seafloor.

Over the course of a week, they recorded rare sights including a backward-swimming fish and narwhal sounds, alongside other elusive deep-sea creatures, according to findings published in PLOS One.

The team’s primary goal was to study narwhals in the area, so they angled the camera upward to maximize observation without sediment clouding the lens — narwhals are known to approach filming equipment from above.
What they found exceeded their expectations.

“Arctic glacial fjords are hotspots of marine life, but they are understudied as a result of their remoteness and difficult access, particularly their seafloor ecosystems,” the authors wrote.

Although the camera caught only a single glimpse of a narwhal tusk during the filming period, researchers were rewarded with an entire hidden underwater world.
“Overall, the results show that portable moorings with video recorders are an important tool for exploration of the Arctic seafloor,” the study concludes.

Key Takeaways

 

• Elusive Arctic marine life on display: The footage documented a range of organisms living just above the seafloor, including shrimp, jellyfish, amphipods, copepods, snailfish, and narwhals.
• A strange backward-swimming fish drew particular attention: Researchers observed a snailfish drifting backward with its tail curled — a behavior rarely documented in the wild. “It curled its tail and remained motionless for at least 16 seconds before disappearing from view.”
• Narwhals were detected both visually and acoustically: Hydrophones recorded narwhal vocalizations nearly every day, and one narwhal tusk passed within centimeters of the camera lens.
• The system was designed to minimize wildlife disturbance: Rather than bright white lights, researchers used red LEDs, which are less visible to many deep-sea species, enabling more natural behavior to be observed.
• Dramatic shifts in “marine snow” were also recorded: Organic particles drifting through the water column doubled in concentration within hours and changed direction with tidal currents, underscoring how dynamic Arctic deep-water systems can be.
• The technology could expand Arctic monitoring globally: Because the system is relatively lightweight and portable, scientists say it could make long-term monitoring of remote polar ecosystems easier and more affordable.

Why It Matters

Much of the Arctic’s underwater world remains poorly understood — even as climate change rapidly reshapes the region.
Fjords like Inglefield Bredning are biological crossroads, where glaciers, ocean currents, marine mammals, and deep-sea ecosystems converge in ways scientists are only beginning to document.

This study offers a rare, direct window into that hidden environment.
Beyond its striking imagery, it demonstrates how new technology could allow scientists to track ecological shifts in real time as warming oceans, retreating glaciers, and shrinking sea ice reshape Arctic food webs.

What makes the research especially urgent is what it reveals about the limits of our current knowledge: the most consequential environmental changes in the Arctic are often happening out of sight — beneath the ice, below the surface, in the dark.
As the Arctic continues to warm faster than anywhere else on Earth, understanding these invisible systems may matter more than we yet realize.