Breathing New Life Into Fight to Save the Seas with Artificial Intelligence
called machine learning. Here algorithms are trained on big sets of data or images to quickly recognise the presence of a whale in a shipping lane, for example, or a fishing vessel in a marine protected area. The tools have become more powerful in recent years, with some of the biggest companies, like Google and IBM, using their software to map coastal blue carbon.“It’s not really possible for a human to look at all of the data that's available and interpret it and draw out what really matters in any reasonable length of time, particularly given that fishing activities and other maritime
MTR100: Underwater Cameras, Lights and Ocean Landers
devised, from acrylic flat plates to clear silicone rubber sheets. Some cast the LEDs in a block of clear acrylic. Heat is the principal enemy of LEDs. Much has been written about topside luminaire design, including the use of heat transfer material behind the PCB to carry the heat away from the LEDs (google “CREE LED Luminaire Design Guide”). LEDs are completely pressure tolerant as they have no compressible volume. A pressure compensating fluid, such as mineral oil may be used. Avoid silicone oil has the cast dome on an LED is often silicone, and may be affected by immersion in a fluid
Indian Fishermen Use Smartphones to Map a Vanishing Way of Life
always owned the land. But the government keeps changing the rules not realising that our customs and our livelihood here is older than their rules,” said Raji, a 33-year-old father of two.Raji and his fellow fishermen of Gunankuppam have captured the co-ordinates of hundreds of special places on Google Maps and other apps, none of them designated as landmarks in official government maps.Industrial proposals to develop the creek around Gunankuppam label the places the fishermen most cherish as “wastelands”, Raji said, fearing the rapid industrialisation that is tranforming much of India
Deep-sea Mining: A New Gold Rush or Environmental Disaster?
the data they're based on, which is limited for deep-sea environments".Lusty, who led a British government-commissioned review on deep-sea mining published in 2021, said companies also face challenges in creating a business case.Some would-be buyers like major technology and car companies like Google, Samsung and BMW have called for a temporary ban, and there are likely extra costs compared to mining on land."Naturally, the economics of mining certain minerals on land will be preferable to doing that in the deep sea," Lusty said.(The Thomson Reuters Foundation - Reporting by Jack Graham
Inside the Subsea Cable Firm Secretly Helping America Take on China
emerges as the world’s preeminent superpower.SubCom, a company born out of a U.S. Cold War project to spy on Soviet submarines, is living a double life.Publicly, it is one of the world’s biggest developers of undersea fiber-optic cables for telecom firms and tech giants like Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta Platforms.Behind the scenes, SubCom is the exclusive undersea cable contractor to the U.S. military, laying a web of internet and surveillance cables across the ocean floor, according to the four people with knowledge of the matter: two SubCom employees and two U.S. Navy
Deep-Sea Mining Threatens Biodiversity 25 Times More Than Land-Based Mining, Report Says
$2.7 million price per square kilometer to mine them, according to the report.Seabed mining in international waters cannot start until the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a Jamaica-based U.N. body, decides on regulations expected by July.Several countries, including Germany, and companies, such as Google, AB Volvo Group, and Samsung SDI are calling for a moratorium on the start of the practice.Others are supporting it. Norway in June proposed opening parts of its extended continental shelf in the North Atlantic for mineral exploration."Any deep sea activity is hugely expensive. In Norway, we'
Grace Hopper Subsea Cable ups Capacity
One year after Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) established a new subsea fiber route between the U.S. and France, the company is increasing network capacity and diversity, investing in a fiber pair on Grace Hopper, a subsea cable system spearheaded by Google, between New York and Bude, Cornwall in the U.K. The Grace Hopper system will use Lumen landing station and infrastructure services at both locations."Data flow and capacity demands don't know boundaries. The bandwidth explosion across continents is real and we're meeting it head on by investing in new subsea cables," said Laurinda
Seamount Named for Iconic Oceanographer Walter Munk
with Scripps Oceanography geophysicist David Sandwell to locate and identify a candidate seafloor feature to honor Munk. Sandwell creates predictive maps of seafloor topography, or bathymetry, from satellite measurements of gravity. These maps are the basis of the seafloor maps available through Google Maps among other sources. Sandwell is also working with the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, which aims to complete the mapping of the world's ocean by 2030, and to compile all bathymetric data into the freely available GEBCO Ocean Map.The 110-million-year drift of Walter Munk Guyot
UN Deep-sea Mining Rules Unlikely to be Completed by 2023 Deadline, Latam Countries Say
, nickel and other battery metals from the Pacific Ocean floor at depths of 4-6 kilometers.Many scientists and environmentalists have called for a ban on deep-sea mining, saying it could cause lasting damage to little-understood habitats.Key metal consumers like carmaker BMW and Alphabet Inc’s Google have called for a moratorium on the practice.The ISA in September said meetings of the ISA Council and ISA Assembly would be held at its Kingston, Jamaica headquarters from Dec 6 to Dec 10 and Dec 13 to Dec 15, but with restrictions on delegation size due to COVID-19.Chile and two environmental groups
February 2024
