When the Management Board and General Assembly of JPI Oceans met in Gdańsk, Poland, for their biannual gatherings, one concrete and much-anticipated outcome was the update to JPI Oceans’ portfolio. Three topics that had been explored as Scoping Actions were adopted as full Joint Actions; two ideas recently submitted by our community were picked up for scoping; and it was decided that a third would find its home in some of our existing work.
Together, these decisions show how member countries rely on JPI Oceans to move from identifying shared priorities to coordinating shared resources, in the form of funding, expertise or both, and to employ the instrument that best fits each.
It is official: all three Scoping Actions that have been running over the past year have been deemed sufficiently relevant to evolve into Joint Actions. The first, on Plastic-Associated Chemicals, builds on JPI Oceans’ historical work on the ecological aspects of microplastics and on the integrated assessment of new pollutants, now shifting the attention to the chemicals that plastics carry and release. Plastics contain additives and persistent substances like PFAS, which can leach into the marine environment. More than 13,000 of these chemicals have been identified, yet only about half have been screened for risk. The Joint Action will be implemented through a Joint Call, still to be developed, to generate scientific knowledge that informs regulatory frameworks such as the EU Plastics Strategy, REACH and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.
The second new Joint Action, on Offshore Infrastructures, stemmed from four separate ideas we had received in 2025, covering the environmental monitoring and ecological impacts of ocean energy and offshore wind farms, as well as the observation and effects of human-made structures and critical infrastructure on marine ecosystems. It seemed, therefore, that the right format for this would be a multi-year Knowledge Hub to synthesise knowledge across technologies, sectors and sea basins. The timing responds to the large-scale expansion of offshore energy systems, subsea cables, pipelines and interconnectors planned in Europe over the coming decade.
Finally, a Joint Action on Electromagnetic Fields will also take off as a Knowledge Hub. Anthropogenic electromagnetic fields in the ocean are increasing rapidly as a consequence of the proliferation of cables, offshore energy, and electrified maritime infrastructure. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive identifies electromagnetic fields as a pressure under Descriptor 11 on energy, a descriptor we have held dear since our Joint Actions on underwater noise and marine lightscapes. The Electromagnetic Fields Knowledge Hub will build a common scientific basis that might later evolve into a Joint Call.
Scoping Actions have become increasingly central to JPI Oceans because they are the mechanism through which we can identify emerging priorities, assess knowledge gaps and stakeholders' needs, and determine where transnational cooperation can truly add value before countries commit to larger activities. JPI Oceans maintains an open, bottom-up process for identifying new topics through annual solicitation of ideas. In Gdańsk, the Board reviewed a shortlist of thirteen ideas submitted through the 2026 solicitation, and two made it to the other side for exploration.
The first will look at shipwrecks, covering the risks, benefits and management challenges they pose in European waters, and potentially complementing our work on Munitions in the Sea. The second will focus on marine extreme events, in response to growing concern about ocean-related hazards and their consequences for ecosystems, societies, and economies.
It was fitting that the Board agreed on these topics in Poland, because the Baltic Sea illustrates both issues well. A 2025 review of the Gulf of Gdańsk by researchers at the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences identifies coastal flooding and storminess among the region’s major environmental changes. The same sea holds thousands of wrecks, many of them from the Second World War and increasingly corroded, and HELCOM estimated in 2025 that more than 1,000 of them may still contain large amounts of oil as fuel or cargo.
These Scoping Actions are the stage at which we will assess whether they justify a greater joint effort. Over no more than a year, a group of nominated national experts will review the state of knowledge, main gaps and potential courses of action. The outcomes of this process will determine whether they follow the same path as the three topics adopted as new Joint Actions this time.
Another topic volunteered by the community will receive different treatment. Maritime domain awareness, understood as the effective understanding of events at sea that could affect security, safety, the economy, or the environment, gained prominence in Europe following Russia’s war against Ukraine and the 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines. Taking note of that relevance, the Board agreed to integrate it into JPI Oceans’ broader work on ocean observing.
These decisions come on top of a portfolio that is already moving on several fronts. Preparations for the Joint Call on Ocean Oxygen Loss continue, the AMOC in Focus report is heading towards publication, the Sea Level Rise Knowledge Hub is starting its second cycle, and the Ocean Carbon Capacities Knowledge Hub has been approved for a third phase. At the same time some Joint Actions are concluding, among them the Blue Carbon Knowledge Hub, which has given way to four funded projects under the Blue Carbon Joint Call. We will look at these ongoing and concluding actions in more detail in future articles.
The thematic decisions described here were accompanied by positive news on other fronts, including governance and membership. This piece is the first in a series on the meeting's outcomes – keep an eye on our website to catch those, or subscribe to our newsletter if you would like to receive them directly in your inbox.