NOC News Round Up - 3 November 2017

Meet our Vampire squid... Since it is the season for all things creepy, NOC scientist Dr Tammy Horton has had a rummage through the Discovery Collections to find some suitably ghoulish marine specimens to share with you. Click here to read about these creatures on our website, including a Vampire squid, a Spookfish, a Fangtooth fish and a Giant Sea-Spider. For those of you not afraid of spiders you can watch a YouTube playlist of Tammy talking through these specimens. Investigating ocean acidification in Fiji The NOC was in Fiji this week contributing to a workshop that provides hands-on training around investigating ocean acidification, as part of the Commonwealth Marine Economies (CME) programme. The workshop was co-ordinated by The Ocean Foundation and hosted by the University of the South Pacific. The CME Programme is helping to overcome some of the toughest challenges affecting all island states which look to the ocean for prosperity or are directly affected by changes in the ocean which threaten a way of life. Sensor technology developed at the NOC is playing an important role in delivering this project. Also as part of the CME programme, this week NOC engineers Dave Jones and Jeff Pugh have been at the Port of Belize helping the Belize Met Service to install a tide gauge for coastal hazard warning purposes (photo below). The installation is proceeding well and the gauge is already transmitting data to the IOC's Sea Level Monitoring Facility. Our engineers have also surveyed an offshore reef at Half Moon Caye for a further tide gauge installation which will be implemented by the Met Service under NOC guidance. Extra RAPID data The NOC has just extended the time series of data on the Atlantic Meridional Overturing Circulation (AMOC). The AMOC is part of the great ocean 'conveyor belt' that circulates sea water, heat and nutrients around the globe.  Long-term changes in the AMOC are thought to have a number of important climate impacts, including the frequency of hurricanes, rainfall in the African Sahel and the climate of western Europe. To monitor the AMOC measurements have been made since 2004 using instruments on an array of tall moorings between the Bahamas and Africa at 26°N in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean. This work is funded by NERC, NOAA and NSF. The data are available from: http://www.rapid.ac.uk/rapidmoc/  The SOLSTICE-WIO project kicks off This week the SOLSTICE-WIO project held its regional kick-off meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. SOLSTICE-WIO aims to strengthen the ability of the nine Western Indian Ocean nations to address the challenges of sustainable management of marine resources using robotics, modelling, remote sensing, field observations and socio-economic studies. The meeting brought together the consortium partners from the UK, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa to discuss implementation plans for the project over the next four years. The meeting also involved a field trip to introduce international project partners to the socio-economic landscape of the Tanzanian case study area, which is dedicated to small pelagic fisheries of the Pemba Channel (Pictured). NOC contributes to Oceanology International, China Adam Schink, NOC's Manager Strategy and Innovation, was in Qingdao in China this week to speak at Oceanology International about the our pioneering developments to date in marine autonomy. He'll also be presenting tomorrow (Saturday 4 November) at the World Ocean Congress in Shenzhen. Altereco project heads out to sea NOC Scientists and engineers have this week headed off to start a 14 month campaign in the North Sea to understand marine ecosystems, using a fleet of gliders.  You can follow the first deployments on Twitter @_Altereco. More news of this exciting project to come over the coming months. NOC represented at UK-India roundtable talks The NOC's Associate Director of Innovation and Enterprise, Kevin Forshaw, was in Delhi this week to talk about the UK government's Industrial Strategy with a roundtable panel of global experts. Heads of UK and Indian innovation campuses gathered on Wednesday 1 November to share good practice in the development of innovation campuses, science parks and incubators, and to explore further opportunities for enhancing UK-India collaboration. Both nations are keen to learn from each other, both in terms of the operations of individual campuses and at the level of funders and decision makers. UK Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, Jo Johnson, also joined the panel to hear the conclusions. Kevin said: "It was really to good to share thinking around best-practice and differing perspectives on stimulating innovation, both between the UK representatives present and also our Indian counterparts.  India has a high percentage of very highly skilled, entrepreneurial University students, that have clear pathways to support start-up ideas they may have.  We in the UK can learn from this, and there are many opportunities for UK, India collaboration in this space going forward." The NOC at Marine Measurement Forum The 60th Marine Measurement Forum was hosted on 31 October by IxBlue at the fantastic location of Land Rover BAR in Portsmouth. The event saw a number of talks from our Innovation Centre partners that highlighted how the NOC is supporting and working with industry and Dr Alex Beaton of our Ocean Technology and Engineering Group presented 'Lab-on-chip chemical sensors for autonomous ocean science'.   This email was sent using GovDelivery Communications Cloud on behalf of: National Oceanography Centre · Waterfront Campus · European Way · Southampton · SO14 3ZH · United Kingdom