Seeing beneath Ireland’s seas
Experts from two Irish government bodies are following in the steps of William Bligh, the infamous captain of the Bounty who suffered a mutiny in the south seas during the 18th century. The Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) and the Marine Institute are in the process of updating Irish sea charts produced by the British naval officer during his earlier career.
‘It’s the modern version of what he did,’ says Koen Verbruggen, principal geologist at the GSI. ‘Some of the charts we’re updating were only ever produced once before, and that was by Captain Bligh.’
But the contrast between these 18th-century maps – painstakingly compiled using a plumb line to record depth every few miles – and those being produced by the national marine mapping programme couldn’t be greater. Multi-beam sonar and airborne laser technology are being used to create high-resolution hydrographic, sedimentary and biological maps that will eventually cover more than half a million square kilometres of marine territory.
At the vanguard
The challenges facing the scientists were put into focus when Google Ocean was added to the popular Google Earth program last year. Users hoping to glide along the seabed would have been disappointed – the new program is a spatial framework for others to add information to, with just a few undersea areas mapped to date.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California estimates that it will take about 100 years before high-resolution maps of all of the Earth’s seabed will be produced, and the Irish programme is at the forefront of this last great Earth-bound mapping project. The country aims to be the first to have its entire national marine territory mapped when the project finishes in 2026. ‘Only ten per cent of the world’s seabed has been mapped,’ says Verbruggen. ‘Ireland is unusual in that more than 85 per cent of the total marine area that we claim has now been mapped. Most of the EU countries with a coastline are now trying to follow the Irish lead.’
The Irish data will be included with the next release of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, which forms the basis of the Google Ocean seabed map. ‘In addition, we produce all of our Irish surveys in Google Ocean format free on our Infomar website to allow users to combine them with Google Ocean.’
The project is using multi-beam sonar to build up a three-dimensional picture of the world beneath the waves, providing a detailed insight into not just the physical shape of undersea mountains, canyons and caverns, but also the physical, chemical and biological features of the seabed. Among its discoveries so far have been a series of previously unknown coldwater coral reefs.
Years of work
Under Ireland’s National Development Plan, the project has an annual budget until 2013, but it will take until 2026 to map every bay and inlet around the coast. The first seven-year phase – the €32million Irish National Seabed Survey – began in 1999, when the country’s deep-water territory stretching out to the edge of the continental shelf, covering some 432,000 square kilometres, was mapped using high-resolution sonar.
Since 2006, the €12million Infomar (Integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Marine Resource) phase has been in progress, focusing on the 125,000 square kilometres of inshore coastal areas. Specially equipped Marine Institute research vessels will do the bulk of the multi-beam sonar work, while airborne laser systems are also being used.
‘The reason we started doing it was to establish our offshore territory. You can’t establish it if you don’t map it,’ says Verbruggen. ‘And it has paid dividends. We’ve already had an increased share of offshore territory awarded to Ireland.’ (Last year, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf awarded Ireland control of an area of more than 30,000 square kilometres south of the Porcupine Trough.)
Rather than having people ‘throwing darts at a wall’, Verbruggen says, the maps will enable focused research, as well as sustainable commercial exploitation of the seabed, for wind and other offshore energy projects, fish farms, undersea cables and pipelines, and more efficient fishing practices, for example. ‘There is also huge potential for offshore sand and gravel extraction,’ says Verbruggen.
But the maps, available for free as they are produced, will also have a valuable ecological function. ‘One of our main stakeholders is the National Parks and Wildlife Service because, in order to protect areas offshore, you need to know what is there,’ Verbruggen says. ‘We provide a physical map that tells you the type of habitat present on the seabed.’
This has sparked huge interest among oceanographers, marine biologists and climatologists seeking to carry out research into changes in biodiversity and ecosystems based on the enormous amounts of new data being produced. To date, more than 200 research projects have used the data, according to Conor Lenihan, Ireland’s minister for natural resources.
Wrecks ahoy
The project is also expected to spark renewed interest among scuba divers as ancient wrecks are precisely located and new ones come to light. Ireland’s National Monuments Service (NMS) is updating its database of shipwrecks based on the new information. In the past, many wrecks were marked inaccurately but still found their way onto sea charts. ‘We have 300 wrecks that we came up with so far, including 120 new ones that aren’t on any database,’ Verbruggen says. ‘In a lot of cases, we now have a precise location but no idea of the origin of these wrecks.’
In the first instance, identifying the wrecks will be a fascinating project. Even the remains of Spanish and British galleons and other wooden wrecks going back centuries can be identified from the data when a likely location is already known. ‘We would hope to find more galleons,’ says Karl Brady of the NMS’s underwater archaeology unit. ‘It’s a great data set for archaeologists to look at in the future and use as a baseline survey.’
One wreck that has aroused a lot of interest in Canada is a Royal Canadian Air Force Halifax bomber that ditched off County Donegal during the Second World War. Other wrecks in the area include eight German U-boats scuttled by the British Navy as part of Operation Deadlight at the end of the war, which still have to be individually identified. ‘We have rough locations for a lot of these wrecks, but they might be 500 metres or three kilometres this way or that from their supposed location,’ says Brady. ‘Infomar is clarifying those locations, while also giving us new, unidentified wrecks.’
Over time, feedback from divers and exploratory work from Brady’s own unit will fill in these gaps, greatly adding to the rich legacy of Ireland’s maritime history. ‘We’re compiling an inventory of shipwrecks,’ Brady says. ‘We have more than 10,000 wrecks on the database, but as we extend our research, we expect to have more than 15,000 listed off our shores.’
For more information on the project and to view the completed maps, visit www.infomar.ie
‘It’s the modern version of what he did,’ says Koen Verbruggen, principal geologist at the GSI. ‘Some of the charts we’re updating were only ever produced once before, and that was by Captain Bligh.’
But the contrast between these 18th-century maps – painstakingly compiled using a plumb line to record depth every few miles – and those being produced by the national marine mapping programme couldn’t be greater. Multi-beam sonar and airborne laser technology are being used to create high-resolution hydrographic, sedimentary and biological maps that will eventually cover more than half a million square kilometres of marine territory.
At the vanguard
The challenges facing the scientists were put into focus when Google Ocean was added to the popular Google Earth program last year. Users hoping to glide along the seabed would have been disappointed – the new program is a spatial framework for others to add information to, with just a few undersea areas mapped to date.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California estimates that it will take about 100 years before high-resolution maps of all of the Earth’s seabed will be produced, and the Irish programme is at the forefront of this last great Earth-bound mapping project. The country aims to be the first to have its entire national marine territory mapped when the project finishes in 2026. ‘Only ten per cent of the world’s seabed has been mapped,’ says Verbruggen. ‘Ireland is unusual in that more than 85 per cent of the total marine area that we claim has now been mapped. Most of the EU countries with a coastline are now trying to follow the Irish lead.’
The Irish data will be included with the next release of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, which forms the basis of the Google Ocean seabed map. ‘In addition, we produce all of our Irish surveys in Google Ocean format free on our Infomar website to allow users to combine them with Google Ocean.’
The project is using multi-beam sonar to build up a three-dimensional picture of the world beneath the waves, providing a detailed insight into not just the physical shape of undersea mountains, canyons and caverns, but also the physical, chemical and biological features of the seabed. Among its discoveries so far have been a series of previously unknown coldwater coral reefs.
Years of work
Under Ireland’s National Development Plan, the project has an annual budget until 2013, but it will take until 2026 to map every bay and inlet around the coast. The first seven-year phase – the €32million Irish National Seabed Survey – began in 1999, when the country’s deep-water territory stretching out to the edge of the continental shelf, covering some 432,000 square kilometres, was mapped using high-resolution sonar.
Since 2006, the €12million Infomar (Integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Marine Resource) phase has been in progress, focusing on the 125,000 square kilometres of inshore coastal areas. Specially equipped Marine Institute research vessels will do the bulk of the multi-beam sonar work, while airborne laser systems are also being used.
‘The reason we started doing it was to establish our offshore territory. You can’t establish it if you don’t map it,’ says Verbruggen. ‘And it has paid dividends. We’ve already had an increased share of offshore territory awarded to Ireland.’ (Last year, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf awarded Ireland control of an area of more than 30,000 square kilometres south of the Porcupine Trough.)
Rather than having people ‘throwing darts at a wall’, Verbruggen says, the maps will enable focused research, as well as sustainable commercial exploitation of the seabed, for wind and other offshore energy projects, fish farms, undersea cables and pipelines, and more efficient fishing practices, for example. ‘There is also huge potential for offshore sand and gravel extraction,’ says Verbruggen.
But the maps, available for free as they are produced, will also have a valuable ecological function. ‘One of our main stakeholders is the National Parks and Wildlife Service because, in order to protect areas offshore, you need to know what is there,’ Verbruggen says. ‘We provide a physical map that tells you the type of habitat present on the seabed.’
This has sparked huge interest among oceanographers, marine biologists and climatologists seeking to carry out research into changes in biodiversity and ecosystems based on the enormous amounts of new data being produced. To date, more than 200 research projects have used the data, according to Conor Lenihan, Ireland’s minister for natural resources.
Wrecks ahoy
The project is also expected to spark renewed interest among scuba divers as ancient wrecks are precisely located and new ones come to light. Ireland’s National Monuments Service (NMS) is updating its database of shipwrecks based on the new information. In the past, many wrecks were marked inaccurately but still found their way onto sea charts. ‘We have 300 wrecks that we came up with so far, including 120 new ones that aren’t on any database,’ Verbruggen says. ‘In a lot of cases, we now have a precise location but no idea of the origin of these wrecks.’
In the first instance, identifying the wrecks will be a fascinating project. Even the remains of Spanish and British galleons and other wooden wrecks going back centuries can be identified from the data when a likely location is already known. ‘We would hope to find more galleons,’ says Karl Brady of the NMS’s underwater archaeology unit. ‘It’s a great data set for archaeologists to look at in the future and use as a baseline survey.’
One wreck that has aroused a lot of interest in Canada is a Royal Canadian Air Force Halifax bomber that ditched off County Donegal during the Second World War. Other wrecks in the area include eight German U-boats scuttled by the British Navy as part of Operation Deadlight at the end of the war, which still have to be individually identified. ‘We have rough locations for a lot of these wrecks, but they might be 500 metres or three kilometres this way or that from their supposed location,’ says Brady. ‘Infomar is clarifying those locations, while also giving us new, unidentified wrecks.’
Over time, feedback from divers and exploratory work from Brady’s own unit will fill in these gaps, greatly adding to the rich legacy of Ireland’s maritime history. ‘We’re compiling an inventory of shipwrecks,’ Brady says. ‘We have more than 10,000 wrecks on the database, but as we extend our research, we expect to have more than 15,000 listed off our shores.’
For more information on the project and to view the completed maps, visit www.infomar.ie
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