Addressing ocean noise pollution in the artificial intelligence era: Regulatory challenges and future responses
Abstract
The accelerating advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping approaches to ocean governance, offering novel opportunities to address one of the ocean's most pervasive and underregulated threats – anthropogenic noise pollution. This paper examines how AI technologies are being applied to identify, monitor, and mitigate ocean noise, and explores the regulatory, ethical, and institutional challenges that accompany their use. It argues that while AI can enhance the precision and efficiency of marine monitoring – through automated noise classification, predictive mapping, and real-time data analytics – its deployment also exposes significant governance gaps within the existing international legal framework. These include issues of data sovereignty, accountability, transparency, and equitable access to technology. Drawing on developments under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and recent International Maritime Organization (IMO) guidelines, the paper proposes a coherent regulatory strategy grounded in algorithmic accountability, ethical oversight, and global cooperation. It concludes that AI should be governed as a public-interest technology within ocean governance, reinforcing rather than undermining the international rule of law and environmental justice in the marine domain.