High-Quality Development of the Marine Economy Driven by Scientific and Technological Innovation
Hongmei Xin
Director
Ocean Consulting Center, Ministry of Natural Resources of China
This talk will review the current status of the marine scientific and technological development in China, and analyze the challenges and opportunities faced. It will also outline the goals and key tasks for advancing marine scientific and technological innovation and supporting the high-quality development of the marine economy in the next five years.
Dr. Xin has been engaged in marine scientific and technological innovation, industrialization of marine technologies, and management of scientific and technological innovation in natural resources for years. She currently serves as the Director of the Ocean Consulting Center under the Ministry of Natural Resources, China. Previously, she held positions including Deputy Director of the Division of Science and Technology at the State Oceanic Administration, Deputy Mayor of Beihai, Guangxi, and Deputy Director of the Division of Science and Technology Development at the Ministry of Natural Resources. She has organized the compilation of multiple national marine science and technology development plans, medium- and long-term strategic research reports on marine science and technology, and research reports on marine strategic emerging industries. She has also overseen the implementation of several major national scientific and technological initiatives, such as national key projects on deep-sea and deep-earth exploration, key national research and development programs in the marine sector, and public welfare marine sector-specific research projects. Additionally, she has managed several key national industrialization programs, including regional demonstrations for innovative marine economic development and special funds for marine energy. She has contributed to the promotion of scientific and technological innovation in natural resources, as well as the cultivation of emerging strategic marine industries in China.
Revealing the Deepest Realms of the World's Ocean: Bridging Technology and Science
Xiaotong Peng
Professor and Deputy Director
Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences
The hadal zone is one of the least understood and most mysterious habitats on Earth, harboring numerous frontier scientific questions in geology and biology. Unlocking these questions hinges on the development of cutting-edge technologies for accessing, detecting, and conducting in-situ experiments in the hadal environment. This talk reviews the historical development of hadal science and technology in China, outlines the key contents of the Global Hadal Exploration Program (GHEP), and summarizes recent significant advances in hadal scientific research and technological innovation in the country.
Dr. Peng currently serves as Deputy Director and Chair of the Academic Committee at the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He also holds the position of Director of the State Key Laboratory of Deep-Sea Science and Intelligent Technology. Having long worked on the front lines of deep-sea scientific research, he is dedicated to studies in deep-sea/hadal science and exploration technology. He has served multiple times as the team leader and chief scientist for Chinese and international joint manned deep-diving scientific expeditions, undertaking over fifty deep-sea dives and completing hadal expeditions in 10 major global trenches, including the Kermadec Trench, Java Trench, Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, Aleutian Trench, and Mariana Trench. He initiated the international hadal science programs—the Global-TREnD Program and the Global-HEP Program. He led the discovery of the world's deepest and largest chemosynthetic ecosystem and hadal methane reservoirs, proposing the "Global Chemosynthetic Life Corridor" hypothesis. He has published a series of research papers in journals such as NATURE and PNAS.
A Deep Subsea Borehole Monitoring Program of Slow Slip Events in the Nankai Trough Megathrust Seismogenic Zone
Eiichiro Araki
Senior Research Scientist
JAMSTEC
Along the Nankai Trough, where the Philippine Sea Plate subducts beneath the Japanese Islands, great megathrust earthquakes accompanied by devastating tsunamis have repeatedly occurred at intervals of approximately 100–200 years. The most recent megathrust events occurred in 1944 and 1946, and nearly 80 years have now passed since then, leading to growing concern that the next great earthquake may be approaching.
Under these circumstances, borehole observations conducted through the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) have revealed that slow slip events (SSEs) repeatedly occur around the expected megathrust rupture zone. The spatiotemporal evolution of these slow slip events is thought to interact with the physical state of the megathrust fault and may influence the preparation process of future great earthquakes.
To capture the temporal evolution of the megathrust seismogenic zone through slow slip activity, we are implementing a regional monitoring program across the Nankai Trough. This program aims to establish six high-sensitivity borehole observatories, including three existing sites, distributed across the megathrust rupture zone. All observatories are connected to the seafloor cable network, enabling real-time, continuous monitoring.
Between 2023 and 2024, the first new borehole observatory of this program was successfully drilled, instrumented, connected to the DONET-2 submarine cable network, and placed into continuous operation. In 2025, slow slip events were detected at this new site, demonstrating the effectiveness of the observatory design. Preparations for the installation of the second borehole observatory are currently underway.
Dr. Araki received his PhD in Geophysics from the University of Tokyo and joined JAMSTEC in 2000. He has worked on the development and implementation of seafloor borehole observatories and the DONET seafloor cable network in the Nankai Trough seismogenic zone. He is currently a Senior Research Scientist at the Research Institute for Marine Geodynamics, JAMSTEC, where he plays a leading role in advancing fiber-optic sensing technologies using submarine cables and seafloor observatories.
Physics Informed Machine Learning for Dense Ocean Observations
Peter Gerstoft
Professor
Technical University of Denmark & University of California, San Diego
In less than a decade, machine leaning has revolutionized ocean observations. It is an integral part of many ocean observations and prediction systems augmenting tasks without full knowledge of the processes. To bring further success, we need more ocean physics into the machine learning approaches. The talk will review previous successes, lay the statistical foundations, and focus on the way forward. To demonstrate bringing physics into machine learning I will focus on Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINN) used for sound field reconstruction from a limited number of observations (interpolation). PINN can also be used for solving the inverse problem that is extracting physical properties from observed vibrations. PINN have emerged as the interface between machine learning methods and physics-based models, supplement the information content from limited data with constraints based on physical models to provide physically viable predictions. Hence, PINNs are well adapted for robust interpolation of the sound fields from sparse recordings without requiring training data.
Dr. Gerstoft received the Ph.D. degree from the Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark, in 1986 where he has been a professor since 2025. Since 1997, he has been with the University of California, San Diego where he is now Distinguished Emeritus Professor. His research interests include signal processing and machine leaning applied to acoustic, seismic, and electromagnetic signals. He was elected as Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of Acoustical Society of America.
