Methodology

What counts as a finding

A material, documented problem in the marine or coastal environment: a specific event, condition or decision with a place, a date and a source. It can be physical (a marine heatwave, a flooded coast, a bleached reef), a pollution event, a change in living resources (a collapsed stock, a stranding, a lost habitat) or a governance and economic matter (a licence, a ruling, a treaty step, a port or fishery out of use). Marine and coastal issues belong here, including coastal flooding from sea level or storm surge, marine algal blooms and the dead zone a river causes at sea. Freshwater, drinking water, groundwater and inland flooding are out of scope. A general environmental story with no material effect on the ocean is excluded, and so is a finding that rests only on a dataset or dashboard with no report, agency page, court record or news article about the specific issue.

Categories

Every finding has one primary category and may list secondary ones. Rank is computed within each category, never across categories.

Primary issue layer

Each finding gets exactly one primary layer, a one-sentence rationale, and any secondary drivers.

Severity score (0–10)

Each finding is scored on five components from 0 to 2. Every point must rest on cited evidence. Missing data earns no points, and mixed evidence takes the lower supported score.

Critical 9–10 High 7–8 Moderate 4–6 Low 0–3

The site calculates each level from the component scores, so a level always matches its breakdown.

Ranking rule

Findings are ranked within their category by severity score; the newer source date breaks ties. There is no global or cross-category rank: a Critical reef finding is not compared with a Critical shipping finding, and the overview never combines categories into one list.

Economic risk

Each finding carries an economic-risk level for the fishery, port, coastal economy or operator concerned, with the signals that support it. Levels are Severe, Elevated, Watch, Not Indicated and Unknown.

Quantitative evidence

• Reported: the source's own figure, cited (area bleached, tonnes spilled, stock biomass against reference points).
• Estimated: simple arithmetic on compatible sourced figures, with the conversion shown.
• Not reported: used instead of guessing. Population affected is often not reported for ocean findings.
• When credible sources conflict, the site shows both figures and explains the difference.

Trends and projections

Trend direction (worsening, improving, stable, volatile or mixed) comes from comparable dated history. A projection is an analyst's judgment, not a fact. It appears only when enough history exists, and it always states a time horizon, evidence, assumptions, a confidence level and what would reverse it. Otherwise the finding reads Insufficient History.

Source standards

Original and authoritative sources come first: NOAA, Copernicus Marine, FAO, UNEP, IMO, the International Seabed Authority, IUCN, regional fisheries bodies and regional seas conventions, national maritime and environment agencies, and official records such as licences, enforcement actions, court filings and treaty documents. Original reporting is next. Sources in other languages are accepted when they are official (a ministry, a coast guard, a court), and the record notes the language.

• Every fact comes from a page opened during the run, and every finding carries at least one dated, direct source link. Critical findings use several independent sources where they exist.
• A source's date is its publication or issue date (empty if the page shows none); accessed is the day it was opened. Database and dashboard lookups carry an accessed date only.
• No finding rests only on a dataset or dashboard: each needs a report, agency page, court record or news article about the specific issue.

Geography

The regional sea is the unit of the map, the side panel, coverage counts and the re-verification rotation. Each finding names one regional sea (or several, for a finding that spans seas), its ocean basin (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, Arctic, or global), the countries involved as ISO codes, with ABNJ for the high seas (areas beyond national jurisdiction), an extent (site, local, national waters, regional sea, basin or global) and, where the sources allow, coordinates with a stated precision (exact, site, city, coastline or sea). Open-ocean and global findings may have a basin and no sea; they appear in the lists and the Explorer but not on a sea tile. The overview map shades each sea's approximate outline over Natural Earth coastlines; the outlines are illustrative, not hydrographic or legal boundaries. A tile grid of the same 32 seas is available as an alternative view.

Daily continuity

Research runs daily. Each run sweeps the last seven days across every category, re-verifies two regional seas in rotation by the oldest verification date, re-checks low-confidence findings, and matches new evidence to existing finding IDs before creating new ones. Changes are logged as new, changed, escalated, de-escalated, resolved, reopened or unchanged. Earlier sourced values and statuses are never erased: changes are appended with dates, and corrections are published on the Changes & Coverage page. The coverage count ("N of 32 seas") is cumulative across runs.

Data access

The findings are published as JSON under /api/ocean/. Everything on this site is rendered from the same feed.

The latest full report, when one is published, is at /reports/latest.pdf.

Limits

This is a ranking of discoverable, reported or officially documented issues, not a census of every problem in the world ocean. Low coverage or missing public records do not prove that an issue is absent. Each run's limitations are listed on the Coverage page.