Marine environment monitoring in Southeast Asia: A review of research and efforts

Southeast Asia (SEA) consists of many nations with extensive coastlines and marine territories, as well as the Coral Triangle - the global marine biodiversity hotspot. With climate change and increasing coastal urbanisation, changes in the marine environment are expected to significantly impact this region’s biodiversity and the many coastal communities dependent on healthy seas. To date, long-term marine water quality records for SEA are considered sparse, with few contributions to global ocean databases. There are, however, active and long-standing research conducted in this region that incorporate observing and/or characterising the marine environment as part of their efforts. Here, we review published academic literature for SEA, focusing on ASEAN countries, to provide an overview of marine environment research and monitoring, and data availability in this region. Preliminary results (study ongoing) from a review of 581 scientific articles (filtered for relevance; 1970-2020), show the largest number of marine environment data and observations based on research conducted in the South China Sea (25.8%), followed by the Malacca Strait (12.8%), Johor Strait (9.6%), Java Sea (8.9%) Gulf of Thailand (8.2%), Singapore Strait (8.2%), Indian Ocean (3.9%) and Sulu Sea (3.1%). Most of the scientific articles arose from research that focused on pollution (39.5%) and ecological monitoring (30.5%), and a majority were short-term in nature (51.0% as one-off observations). Results of this study will provide valuable insights on the extent of marine environment research in SEA, and identify gaps needed to strengthen networks for collective efforts to better understand and assess the health of our shared seas.