At a recent seminar in Dublin on the INFOMAR project to map Ireland’s seabed territory, Peter Croker Petroleum Affairs Division (PAD) with the Department of Communications, Marine & Natural Resources said that deep-water data from the survey had been critical in building Ireland’s case to the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS) to extend Ireland’s seabed territory.

 
Co-hosted by the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) and the Marine Institute (MI), the seminar also revealed plans to survey several important bays during 2007 and presented results from 2006.

According to Koen Verbruggen, GSI, and joint INFOMAR project manager, the near-shore data being collected was of great strategic importance to the Irish State: 

“Combined with a Free Data Policy in GSI recently announced by Noel Dempsey, Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, a myriad of exciting opportunities are now available to the marine sector,” he said. 

Verbruggen then scoped the project for its current 20-year timeframe but noted that the pace of change in the sector may support a shorter time-frame. 

Dr Peter Heffernan, CEO of the Marine Institute (MI) told the floor that opportunities to flourish in Irish marine science had never been greater, witnessed by their seven-year Sea Change initiative; the Griffith Geoscience Research Awards; the Geoscience section of the National Development Plan and a planned Euro Atlas for the marine sector. 

Airborne surveying
Nigel Townsend of Tenix LADS Corporation (Australia), a leading airborne survey company presented the results from their 2006 INFOMAR survey.

(LIDAR – meaning Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging – is an airborne near-shore surveying technique particularly useful in rugged or complex bays. The use of aircraft allows the laser measurements to be made much more efficiently than surveying the same areas with boats and echo sounders.)

Townsend stressed the need for reconnaissance before embarking on airborne surveys, and said the reconnaissance had predicted that good quality data was achievable to depths of 20m but that areas required 200% coverage (i.e. to be flown twice), to manage tides, turbidity and low cloud levels.

As well as extending the number of flights from the planned 12 to 15 the survey team extended their field period by several weeks in an attempt to counteract downtime due to bad weather in September. Good coverage (200%) was achieved in parts of Bantry Bay, particularly behind Whiddy Island and at Bantry Harbour and towards the east of Dunmanus Harbour. 

In other areas however, coverage was affected by high levels of run-off (white water due to the large swells and persistent low cloud), so the survey team identified an alternative survey area - south Galway Bay - where the results were comprehensively good. 

Tri-nation project
Bill Collins from Canada’s Quester Tangent Corporation (QTC) presented details of a world first project. As a result of co-operation between Tenix, QTC and GSI, the latter will become the first recipient of seabed classification maps based on airborne laser sensing. 

In previous airborne surveys only bathymetry (water depth) maps have been available; however, GSI sought more from the data and encouraged Tenix and QTC to collaborate to extend the limits of the technology.

As a result, the GSI will have maps of sea floor diversity showing distribution of sediments and sea grasses. Collins heralded the new development saying it would provide a rich source of additional information that would be useful across a wide range of disciplines such as habitat mapping and for the marine communities of counties Kerry and Cork.

The seminar programme particularly concentrated on research building from the massive datasets now available from INFOMAR and the INSS. Habitat mapping; cold-water corals; carbonate mounds and the most recent existence of ice sheets on Ireland’s continental sheets were all explored in presentations delivered by PhD students and lecturers from UCC, NUIG and the University of Ulster to name but a few. 

Tommy Furey, MI, gave a demonstration of the difficulty in integrating the various types of marine datasets, and pointed out that whilst there will always be gaps, these could be minimised and managed.  INFOMAR, he said, is all about policy-driven, prioritised seabed & resource mapping.

Other highlights of the seminar included a presentation from Stuart Bennett of GSI and Trinity on Ireland’s shipwreck heritage. This presentation will be reviewed in detail in the June issue of Inshore Ireland.