Plymouth Marine Laboratory News

The UK-based Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult has said it has secured funding for five projects as part of the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition, funded by the Department for Transport and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.Fifty-five projects successfully secured £23m funding as part of the Competition, announced at an event during London International Shipping Week by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.ORE Catapult is either leading or is a consortium partner in five of those projects, totaling £3.3m in funding awarded.

Ocean acidification can now be seen from space, highlighting an ongoing danger of climate change and revealing the regions most at risk. Pioneering techniques that use satellites to monitor ocean acidification are set to revolutionize the way that marine biologists and climate scientists study the ocean. This new approach offers remote monitoring of large swathes of inaccessible ocean from satellites that orbit the Earth some 700 km above our heads. Seawater absorbs about a quarter of the carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that humans release into the atmosphere each year, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) announced it is to renew its partnership with the Institute for Marine Engineering Science and Technology (IMarEST). The year-long partnership will see the Institute and PML working together to encourage career development among the laboratory’s 166 employees, as well as boost its profile among the international marine community. PML, which develops integrated marine science to promote sustainable oceans, will also have access to the IMarEST’s vast global information resources and industry networks. PML’s CEO, Prof. Stephen de Mora, commented, "I am delighted that Plymouth Marine Laboratory and IMarEST will be working much more closely together in the future and this partnership is the perfect vehicle for making that happen.

Planet Ocean inform that they are supporting the UK Met Office and Plymouth Marine Laboratory to gather real-time Met-Ocean Data with their AXYS Watchman (WM-500) data acquisition and telemetry systems. The WM-500 can be configured to control a large variety of sensors providing data manipulation, logging and have the ability to interface with a variety of communication systems. The UK Met Office (UKMO) are using these systems in their range of inshore and offshore data buoy hulls provided by a growing range of manufacturers.