Marine Technology Reporter Blogs - ocean

The VENUS observatory in the Salish Sea is represented by a series of installations in Saanich Inlet and Strait of Georgia. The Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) has been in continual operation since February, 2006 and is operated by Ocean Networks Canada at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The cabled instrument arrays are deployed in the coastal waters of southern British Columbia, and the facility provides long-term oceanographic data on physical, chemical, biological, and sediment conditions in Saanich Inlet and in the Strait of Georgia near Vancouver, British Columbia. The data, including images and audio, are processed and made available to researchers and the public through the VENUS website.

Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coast that is 7,491 km (4,655 mi) long. Offshore, numerous islands and archipelagos form part of Brazilian territory, such as Fernando de Noronha, Rocas Atoll, Abrolhos, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and Trindade and Martim Vaz Islands. Yet Brazil has no Coast Guard, the coast being patrolled by the Brazilian Navy, which does not have a mandate to make arrests, but which does keep in check illegal fishing. Costal policing would theoretically be done by the Federal Police. However, the reality is that they do not have anything near enough assets to patrol such a large coast. In terms of environmental monitoring…

The GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel is one of the world’s leading institutes in the field of marine sciences. The institute investigates the chemical, physical, biological and geological processes of the seafloor, oceans and ocean margins and their interactions with the atmosphere. With this broad spectrum GEOMAR is unique in Germany. Additionally, the institute has successfully bridged the gap between basic and applied science in a number of research areas. The institute specializes in the interdisciplinary investigation of marine sciences, from sea floor geology to marine meteorology, with research efforts being conducted worldwide in all oceans and seas.

It is widely known that for at least two weeks after Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactors were damaged by a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on 11 March 2011, large quantities of radioactive material leaked directly from the plants into the Pacific Ocean. A study by scientists from Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station and Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) revealed that Pacific Bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) carried traces of radioactive isotopes from Japanese waters to the waters off California. The research additionally pointed out that cesium traces from Fukushima’s radioactively contaminated water found in fish are potentially a very useful tool to trace the origin and timing of animal movements.

The main idea leading to the instrument developed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Oceanographers was to automatically run microbiological incubations in situ – in this case underwater. This was deemed necessary in order to avoid having to bring the samples to the surface in order to incubate them, because by doing this, the samples would not be in the same habitat in which they live and would be subjected to different pressure, temperature, light, and other conditions, which would probably alter the way they function. The SID concept began to unfold more than 30 years ago through the vision of microbiologist Craig Taylor and engineer Ken Doherty at WHOI. They wanted a way to see exactly what the multitudes of microbes in the ocean were doing.

With companies such as Kongsberg and ECA bringing state of the art AUV models into the Brazilian market, and with the great demand for AUV services from the O&G industry, government agencies and universities, the future of AUVs in Brazil looks really promising. Presently, most AUVs are being employed by the O&G industry for pipeline routing and monitoring, seabed mapping and other specialized services. However there is a growing demand from academia to employ AUVs is oceanographic research and environmental research, this is an important development because it will allow universities to have unprecedented leverage to undertake complex research programs from shallow water to the deepest ocean basins off Brazil and off all the eastern South American coastline…