Aspasia Pastra, Assistant Professor at the World Maritime University-Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute and member of LWO-along with Tafsir Matin Johansson, Frank Muller-Karger and Joana Soares – published an outstanding academic article titled ‘The use of emerging autonomous technologies for ocean monitoring: insights and legal challenges’ which has been published in Frontiers in Marine Science: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2025.1561737/full
The findings, which are based on forty-six in-depth interviews with experts across academia, oceanographic institutions, industry, and intergovernmental organizations, identify six principal legal challenges of autonomous technologies relevant to the: operation and navigation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), data collection, security, environmental impact, animal tagging, and intellectual property rights.
The study is part of the Third Pillar of the ‘Future Ocean Program‘ of the Sasawaka Global Ocean Institute of the World Maritime University, funded by The Nippon Foundation
