Oceanography

Oceanographic monitoring is critical to our understanding of marine processes. The regional waters around Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland are home to significant fisheries, incredible wildlife and substantial potential energy resources.

Monitoring is undertaken by government, academic and commercial interests to help the effective management of our marine resources, contribute towards regional weather forecasting, and in a range of other areas of applied and academic research.

The COMPASS project will enhance the delivery of data from dedicated surveys, moored instruments and underwater autonomous vehicle (UAV) observations. It will ensure the methods used across the region provide information which is compatible with existing datasets.

The Oceanography work-package will deliver:

• A regional network of oceanographic buoys with new moored observation stations at key locations integrated with the established monitoring stations
• Additional parameters for monitoring and assessing Ocean Acidification
• Reinforced and enhanced monitoring programmes, delivering regional scale baseline data and information on key oceanographic processes
• Observational data through a co-developed data management infrastructure to deliver data to the National Data Centers, as well as to support the project work-programmes on salmonids and marine mammals
• Extended validated domains for the regional hydrodynamic models