6th Underwater Science
Symposium
'Monitoring and Measuring the
Underwater Equipment'
3–6 April 2003 held at University of Aberbeen, Oceanlab
Sponsored by Shell UK
Report
by
Professor IG Priede
Overview
This lively, friendly and fascinating event featured content about areas from the Arctic to the Antarctic and from the Marianas Trench to the Solent, and all the marine science disciplines were represented.
In addition to the Scottish Ceilidh evening, the 80 delegates found themselves entertained by video of fish sprinting at 3000m depth (David Bailey, Oceanlab) and the first underwater holographic movies of Corophium brown shrimp burrowing in sediment and kicking up streams of particles (John Watson, Aberdeen University).
The recurrent theme of the meeting was the interaction between industry and science; many examples were presented of advances in observation technology resulting in advances in marine science. Jean-Claude Duchêne of the Banyuls observatory reported remarkable insight into alternative lifecycles of spionid Boccardia worms on the seafloor around the Kerguelen islands, gained using a camera platform and image analysing devices. Realtime deep sea monitoring of the Gulf of Corinth seafloor spreading, with a suite of sensors and platforms, in the ASSEM project was described by Roland Person of IFREMER, France.
One demonstration of biology assisting technology was given by Mike Fedak from the Sea Mammals Research Unit. He showed an impressive ocean data set obtained by White Whales in the Arctic and proposed that satellite trackable data loggers he and his team routinely attach to marine mammals for biological studies can also be used for oceanographic survey purposes.
New technology presented included: the long-awaited optode oxygen sensors (Denmark’s Anders Tengberg and Norway’s Andreraa Instruments); a novel sediment profile camera made by adapting a computer document scanner with pressure compensation and water-proofing (Adrian Patterson, Ireland); the high-performance petrol driven SASS (Survey Autonomous Semi-Submersible—Hugh Young, UK); and the 6500m depth capability UK ISIS ROV (Gwyn Griffiths, Southampton Oceanography Centre). These advances in observation technology promise to open new horizons in ocean science.
You can read Monty Priede’s report of this meeting in full by clicking on the above link. The collected abstracts of the symposium, a valuable reference work, are available ringbound for £25.
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