Almost half of tankers not ready for new July 2015 SOLAS Regs

More than 4,000 tankers are not yet using an ENC service ahead of July 1, 2015 ECDIS mandate

From MarineLink

SOLAS regulations on the mandatory carriage of Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) for all tankers of 3,000 gross metric tons or more come into force July 1, 2015.
     Of the more than 8,750 tankers in the global fleet that are required to comply with these regulations by their first survey following this date, 54 percent are now using ENCs (Electronic Nautical Charts) on ECDIS, according to United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO).

Progress has been made in recent months, with the global ECDIS readiness figure having risen from 42 percent in September 2014 to the current figure of 54 percent, yet more than 4,000 tankers representing the remaining 46 percent of the global tanker fleet are not yet using an ENC service.

UKHO’s data also reveals a number of disparities in the adoption of ECDIS between different elements of the global tanker fleet: 83 percent of LNG tankers are currently using an ENC service, compared to 70 percent of crude oil tankers and 36 percent of product tankers.
All three categories have shown a substantial improvement in ECDIS readiness since September 2014.

Thomas Mellor, Head of OEM Technical Support and Digital Standards, UKHO, commented, “The international tanker community has made significant progress towards ensuring that it is ready for the SOLAS regulations on ECDIS carriage that come into force in July. However, we also recognize that a large proportion of the fleet, comprising over 4,000 tankers, is not yet using an ENC service and therefore not yet ready to comply with the mandatory carriage of ECDIS. Even allowing for exemptions and the grace period until their first survey after July 1, 2015, which could be up to 12 months later, this is a considerable undertaking and the ECDIS supply chain can expect to come under considerable pressure in the coming months.”

“Tanker owners and operators that have not yet planned for the adoption of ECDIS should address this immediately in order to make the transition in a safe, timely manner and avoid the risks of non-compliance. From an operational, commercial and reputational perspective, the consequences of failing to comply with the ECDIS regulations – and therefore the SOLAS Convention – can be severe.”
“The UKHO will continue to support the industry, as it adopts digital navigation, through the free ‘Living with ECDIS’ global seminar program and ECDIS-specific ADMIRALTY Publications. Further information on both is available from any ADMIRALTY Chart Agent.”

 GeoGarage ENC catalog : more than 13,800 ENCs

The amendments to the SOLAS Convention requiring the mandatory carriage of ECDIS for ships engaged on international voyages were adopted in 2009, putting in place a rolling timetable of deadlines for different vessel sizes and classes, including the requirement for all existing tankers of 3,000 gross metric tons or more to be fitted with ECDIS not later than their first survey on or after July 1, 2015.
However, ships that will be taken permanently out of service within two years of this implementation date may be exempted.

The ECDIS transition process consists of a number of stages that go considerably further than the physical installation of ECDIS on board.
Tanker owners and operators must also manage the delivery of generic and type-specific ECDIS training for their crew, the necessary revisions to bridge policies and procedures, the requirement for class approval, and more.
This process will put pressure on all elements of the ECDIS supply chain, including OEMs, shipyards, crew, training providers, crewing companies, class societies and Flag States, and requires considerable advance planning by tanker companies.

Links :

• Lloyds : Aronnax: Tanker operators risk detentions due to slow adoption of ecdis

15 facts about sea level rise that should scare the s^*# out of you

2 degrees Celsius: A critical number for climate change

From CNN by John D. Sutter

I'm recently back from the Marshall Islands -- one of the low-lying Pacific island nations that literally could be wiped off the map by climate change and rising seas.

Climate change gets couched, especially by skeptics, as an intangible, far-off issue.
But meet people who are terrified their country -- everything they know -- will be drowned beneath the waves, and you can see that this is a crisis, and one that must be addressed immediately.

I'll write more soon about my time on the islands -- and about the surprising U.S. community where some Marshallese people already are taking refuge from floods.
These are topics, by the way, you voted for me to explore as part of my "2 degrees" series on climate change.
For now, here's a look at some of the scariest data about how much ocean levels could rise, and when.

We're talking about the future here, so estimates vary by source, but the bottom line is this: Our actions today will create the world future generations will have to inhabit.

I hope that's a world that includes the Marshall Islands and Miami, Bangladesh and London.

Take a look at these facts, and please let me know what you think in the comments.

1. Seas already are rising because of climate change.


2. It's happening faster than scientists expected, and the collapse of the enormous West Antarctic Ice Sheet now "appears unstoppable," according to NASA.

3. By the end of the century, scientists expect seas to rise 0.4 to 1.2 meters (1.3 to 3.9 feet), depending on how much we humans keep warming the atmosphere.

4. Maybe that doesn't sound like much -- but 147 million to 216 million people worldwide can expect to see their homes submerged or put at risk for regular flooding by 2100.

5. In Bangladesh, for example, 15 million people would be at risk for displacement if sea levels rose just 1 meter, or 3 feet. And more than 10% of the country would be underwater.



6. Some remote, island nations also would start disappearing -- since many, including Kiribati, the Maldives and the Marshall Islands, sit just above sea level.



7. Some "climate refugees" from these countries won't have anywhere to go. International laws don't protect them, so industrialized countries -- those contributing to climate change -- won't have to let them cross their borders to seek asylum.



8. This is a financial concern as well. Rising seas pose a serious economic threat to the millions living in at-risk coastal cities. 

9. In terms of dollars at risk, Guangzhou, China, in the Pearl River Delta, is more vulnerable to sea-level rise than any other city in the world, according to the World Bank. Many of the most vulnerable cities should look familiar, especially to Americans. After Guangzhou, Miami, New York and New Orleans are next. 

10. Miami is in serious trouble. To imagine its possible futures, play with this map from Climate Central.


11. New York doesn't look good, either.


12. And here's the possible future of Houston, another low-lying city.


13. Sea levels are slow to respond to the warming climate -- so the most troublesome effects may not be seen for centuries. Even if warming is limited to 2 degrees, which is the international goal, seas could be expected to rise nearly 3 meters (9.8 feet) by 2300, according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

14. And crossing certain "tipping points" -- such as the melting of Greenland's ice sheet -- could cause seas to rise much more dramatically in the long term.


15. If Greenland melts completely, which could happen in 140 years, according to "Six Degrees," by science writer Mark Lynas, then "Miami would disappear entirely, as would most of Manhattan." "Central London would be flooded. Bangkok, Bombay and Shanghai would also lose most of their area," he writes in that book. "In all, half of humanity would have to move to higher ground."



But here's the good news: All of these risks are lessened -- or eliminated -- if we stop burning fossil fuels and chopping down carbon-gulping forests. It's possible to address this crisis.

There are signs of hope.
This week, Germany's Angela Merkel, for example, pressed world leaders to boost their pledges to cut carbon emissions ahead of international negotiations.
The so-called "climate chancellor" wants industrialized countries to end fossil fuel use by 2100, according to The Guardian.

Future generations will judge our action, or lack thereof, harshly.
They'll have every right to do so.
Because we will help determine what the coasts -- and the world -- look like for centuries.

Map that misplaced Isles of Scilly and caused major maritime disaster to go on sale

The map that misplaced the Isles of Scilly

zoom -courtesy of MapSeeker-

From The Sunday Times by Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

A first-edition marine atlas from the late 17th century containing a map blamed for one of Britain’s worst maritime disasters is to go on sale.

The atlas was published by a naval captain and surveyor called Greenville Collins in 1693.

 An 18th-century engraving of the disaster, with HMS Association in the centre

Tragically, cartographers had wrongly positioned the Isles of Scilly, off the Cornish coast, by eight nautical miles, an error that contributed to the wrecking of four warships in October 1707, with the loss of more than 1,400 lives.

 A 18th century Chart (1750) of the Isles of Scilly and Land's End

from The British Coasting Pilot dedicated to Captain Greenville Collins.

 Scilly islands (UKHO chart) with the GeoGarage platform

The problem was compounded by the difficulty of finding positions at sea.
The disastrous wrecking of a Royal Navy fleet in home waters brought great consternation to the nation.
The main cause of the catastrophe has often been portrayed as the navigators' inability to accurately calculate their longitude.
Clearly, something better than dead reckoning was needed to find the way in dangerous waters. As transoceanic travel grew in significance, so did the importance of reliable navigation.
This eventually led to the Longitude Act in 1714, which established the Board of Longitude and offered large financial rewards for anyone who could find a method of determining longitude accurately at sea.
After many years, the consequence of the Act was that accurate marine chronometers were produced and the lunar distance method was developed, both of which became used throughout the world for navigation at sea.
However, it is not certain that the navigational error leading to the wrecking of Admiral Shovell's fleet was purely one of longitude, and no contemporary discussions are known that appear to have related the disaster to either navigation or longitude.
The Royal Navy conducted a court-martial of the officers of the Firebrand, who were acquitted, but no officers survived from the four lost ships, so no other courts-martial took place.
The Navy also conducted a survey of compasses from the surviving ships and of those at Chatham and Portsmouth dockyards, following comments from Sir William Jumper, captain of the Lenox, that errors in the compasses had caused the navigational error.
This showed what a poor state many were in; at Portmsouth, for example, only four of the 112 wooden cased compasses from nine of the returning vessels were found to be serviceable.
Some have argued that the disaster was in fact caused more by an error in latitude than in longitude.
According to contemporary reports, Shovell initially attempted to determine the fleet's position by astronomical observations and depth soundings before also consulting the sailing masters of his other ships.
Shovell's navigation officers believed that the fleet was at a position west of Ushant (48°27′29″N 5°05′44″W), except the sailing master of HMS Lenox who judged that they were nearer to the Isles of Scilly (49°56′10″N 6°19′22″W).
William May points out that the position of the Isles of Scilly themselves was not known accurately in either longitude or latitude.
In addition, his analysis of the 40 extant logbooks from the 21 ships in the fleet do not show the error in longitude to be a significant factor compared to latitude.

Such was the public outcry that the Longitude Act was passed in 1714, offering a huge reward to anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship’s longitude.
The problem was eventually solved by John Harrison, a self-educated carpenter and clockmaker, whose marine chronometer was able to calculate the longitude — or east-west position — of a ship at sea.

Marine Chronometer number 3 
John "Longitude" Harrison sea clockmaker

The story of Harrison, whose invention extended the possibility of safe long- distance sea travel, was told in Longitude, a bestselling book by Dava Sobel.

The atlas, which is being sold by map dealer Philip Burden at the London Map Fair this week, was originally owned by Edward Rigby, a naval captain forced to move to France after being jailed for propositioning a 19-year-old man for sex.
Burden bought it from the family of the late Lord Wardington, a bibliophile whose predecessors made money from banking.
Despite its historical value, the price tag is only £18,000 because the maps are in black and white.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Navigating 18th-century science: Board of Longitude archive digitised  / Opinion: How the Prime Meridian changed the world

After crash in Volvo Ocean Race, a team shifts its focus and an event changes its rules

Team Vestas Wind grounding on the Cargados Shoals

From NYTimes by Chris Museler

Even though Chris Nicholson entered the Volvo Ocean Race only two months before the start last October, his four races’ worth of experience made him a favorite in the around-the-world event.

He believed he could win.

 

 

 Team Vestas Wind is back in the race.

This is the movie that has been shown exclusively at our cinema in the Race Villages around the world, the full story from when Team Vestas Wind were shipwrecked in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

 

Nicholson, a champion sailor from Australia, had to recalibrate his aspirations after his Team Vestas Wind VOR 65 race boat crashed into a wave-swept reef in the Indian Ocean on the second leg of the race.

The crash tore off the back of the boat.

The team rebuilt the boat in four months and rejoined the fleet last weekend in Lisbon for the final two legs of the 39,000-nautical-mile race.

Chris Nicholson. Team Vestas Wind Skipper 
credit Brian Carlin

Nicholson’s second-place finish in Lorient, France, this week behind the all-women crew of Team SCA confirmed his high hopes for Team Vestas Wind’s return, although he said last week that two podium finishes would be bittersweet.

“Everyone on our team has a lot of pride,” Nicholson said the day before the start of this week’s race from Lisbon to Lorient.

“If we do show our potential, it will probably hurt even more, knowing we could have done well and had a chance to win the event.”

 Team Vestas Wind boat recovery

Team Abu Dhabi finished third in Lorient behind Team Vestas Wind, extending its overall lead in the race.

Lessons learned from the Vestas team’s accident have been put into effect in the race, and navigational improvements will probably make their way to the average boater in the future.

On Nov. 29, the boat was reaching nearly 20 miles per hour when it drove into the Cargados Carajos Shoals, an atoll 200 miles from Mauritius.

The crew of nine was unhurt and left stranded on the reef.

The stranded members were assisted by Team Alvimedica and were rescued after a harrowing night in breaking waves and razor-sharp coral.

It took a month for Vestas, the sponsor, to commit to rejoining the race.

The decision was made to painstakingly remove the mangled boat from the reef and rebuild it in half the original build time at Persico Marine in Genoa, Italy.

“We knew that our story could not end on that reef,” Morten Kamp Jorgensen, the team’s communications director, said in an interview this week.

“We reshuffled our budgets and organization. This was a race to ensure that Vestas will be remembered as a team that overcame challenges.”

Unbreakable : Team Vestas Wind navigator Wouter Verbraak has done a lot of soul-searching since the Indian Ocean grounding that changed his life, and he’s spent most of that time writing a book about it.  Cleverly scheduled for release just before the end of the VOR, the book promises to “inspire, provoke thought and entertain.” 

The book (pre-order here) details the disaster, the lessons learned with the benefit of hindsight; and the overlap with a commercial setting where the level of critical thinking mirrors that of an ocean racing navigator – the major decisions made and the subsequent decisions to ensure they stay the course.

The individual skill set, the importance of psychology and a strong mental edge in a team setting are fundamental to Wouter’s personal development; the ascent to the summit of ocean racing.

An equal among the world’s most sought after circumnavigators and strategists.

- courtesy of Sail Anarchy -

An inquiry into the accident revealed that the navigator, Wouter Verbraak, had not zoomed in enough on the boat’s navigation system to see the exposed reef.

Investigators found that “at different times the navigator zoomed in on the electronic chart and came to the same incorrect conclusion.”

World Map Coverage in C-Map of Cargados Carajos Shoals – what was presented on Adrena and Expedition software without the detailed C-Map dongle – 

the presentation the navigator had on his personal computer

Southern tip of Cargados Carajos Shoals – showing the chart by chart display on CMap/Expedition at Level C/0 Scale1: 328,066 and displaying a small segment of the larger scale chart

Since the inquiry, small changes have been made to the race’s rules.

Officials have said there will be more.

“We became more aware of the zoom levels, for sure,” the race’s director, Jack Lloyd, said in a phone interview from Lorient this week.

 The B&G Zeus 7 MFD chartplotter default world-coverage map does include a depiction of the Cargados Carajos Shoals.

When the navigator awoke after the grounding he went to the nav station and could clearly see the reef on the MFD and the boat next to it.

“We have recommended strongly that teams install different charting systems with more information. Each chart has what the manufacturer wants, but there are differences.”

Lloyd said that all navigators chose their own navigation software but that all the boats were provided with C-Map digital charts.

According to the inquiry, the Cargados Carajos Shoals were not seen at the most zoomed-out display level.

The race recommends that digital maps show reefs and islands at all levels of display, and Lloyd said the race was working with C-Map on such changes, which may eventually affect the average sailor.

Expedition/C-Map presentation of Cargados Carajos Shoals at Level B/0 (1:1.1million)

displaying the ‘Chart Bounds’ of the reef and dangers and the ‘Cautionary Areas’ marking the Territorial Sea

 Part of the large scale chart available on Expedition/C-Map – 

but was not available on the weather routing laptop with the Adrena software,

so the dangers of the Cargados Carajos Shoals would not have been visible 

on this second navigation system.

“We are also reassessing the level of competency on each boat,” said Lloyd, who has been the race director since 2008.

The accident highlighted the heavy reliance on electronic navigation, he said, although the race provides paper charts for all the seas the boats will be racing.

“But they’re stopping printing of paper charts, and some are quite old,” Lloyd said.

“Some say they are not accurate, but digital charts have problems, too.”

 A comparison between the detail shown on Expedition/C-Map Level A/0 1:3.3 million

and UKHO Chart 4702 Chagos to Madagascar 1: 3.5 million

Paper charts and the race-provided sextant are age-old navigation tools that are good backups, Lloyd said — if the sailors know how to use them.

“It’s funny; it’s a new way forward,” he said.

“We have to make sure the skills are there. There’s something useful about being able to spread out a whole chart of the Pacific and see every island.”

The ENC data quality feature.

An ECDIS screen shot of French ENC FR274880

Zoomed in on Cargados Carajos Shoals – with ZOC switched on displaying 4 stars ZOC B

at the reef and 2 stars ZOC D in surrounding ocean

 GeoGarage animation
with official ENCs (courtesy of 7SCs)

Nicholson is no stranger to high-seas calamity.

In the 2005-6 race, he tried to connect power to underwater bilge pumps before abandoning the sinking Spanish entry Movistar in the North Atlantic.

Nicholson said there were obvious technological changes to be made to help prevent the human error that had led to the grounding of Team Vestas Wind.

“There has to also be an impact on the boating community purely from the story of the accident,” he said.

“The sheer example of it will help prevent these accidents.”

Nicholson said he still felt pressure in the race, even though a top-three finish was out of reach.

“But that goes with the territory,” he said.

“I don’t think we can have more pressure during the race than we had getting the boat here.”

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : Independent report into the stranding of Vestas Wind / Questions asked about Volvo Ocean Race boat grounding / Questions about electronic charts in a twenty-first century ship grounding

Helicopter lands on ship in ridiculously rough weather

This helicopter landing will have you at the edge of your seat.

The ship itself is bobbing in the water like a cork, but the expert crew doesn’t even flinch.

Meanwhile in Guadalupe Island Mexico... Largest great white shark ever videotaped underwater?

From Grindtv

Mexico’s Guadalupe Island is seasonal home to dozens of adult great white sharks, but as far as anyone knows, none is as large as a monstrous female nicknamed Deep Blue.

The massive predator, measuring 20-plus feet and boasting the girth of a fat hippo, was featured last year by the Discovery network, which aired part of a tagging effort that involved local researcher Mauricio Hoyos Padilla.

The shark, perhaps 50 years old, was said to be one of the largest white sharks ever tagged and videotaped, and on Tuesday Hoyos posted newly released footage of the same shark on Facebook, under the title, “I give you the biggest white shark ever seen in front of the cages in Guadalupe Island… DEEP BLUE!!!”

 Guadalupe island with the GeoGarage

The footage reveals how small the divers in the cage appear to be, compared to the seemingly pregnant shark, which can be seen investigating objects around and attached to the cage, but ignoring the divers in a roof-less submerged steel cage.

Hoyos, reached Tuesday via email, said he discovered the 50-second clip this week in his computer. He could not remember who was behind the camera, only that the footage was obtained about the same time as when the Discovery crew was on site, in the fall of 2013.

That’s prime time for shark sightings at Guadalupe, which is located 165 miles west of Ensenada, in Baja California.

Divers and shark enthusiasts travel from all over the world to view white sharks in the gin-clear water beyond the island, which boasts an elephant seal colony, which is attractive to the sharks.

The clip was viewed more than 800,000 times and shared more than 16,000 times in the first 20 hours since it was posted on Hoyos’ Facebook page.
Comments, mostly in Spanish, contained terms such as amazing, wow, and beautiful.

After all, who wouldn’t want to check out one of the largest white sharks ever videotaped, and the largest ever to grace curious cage divers at picturesque Guadalupe Island?

Links :

• Newsweek : Video: Scientist High-Fives One of Biggest Great White Sharks Ever Filmed

Smartboard turns any surfer into an amateur ocean conservationist

Below the surface, the ocean offers researchers a wealth of information on climate change.

From Wired by Issie Lapowsky

Benjamin Thompson is a surfer.
You would know it even if I hadn’t told you, and even if you hadn’t seen the photo of Thompson where he’s barefoot on the sidewalk, holding a surfboard. 
You’d know it because he says stuff like this: “Most technology is pretty rad, like it does this cool thing to make my life easier, but at the end of the day, we’re just growing more and more disconnected from nature and our birthright as engaged humans and animals in our environment.”

So, yes, Thompson is a surfer, but what’s equally important to know is that he’s also an engineer.
And now, Thompson is using this rare combination of skills to build a new product that could radically expand our understanding of the world’s oceans.

It’s called Smart Phin, and it’s the product of a partnership between Thompson’s consulting startup, Board Formula, and a small environmental non-profit called the Lost Bird Project.
Smart Phin is a surfboard fin equipped with a special sensor that not only tracks a surfer’s location, but also measures the temperature, salinity, and acidity of the water to give researchers insight on the impact of climate change over time.

 Watch University of California, San Diego mechanical engineering undergraduates give a tour of the surfboard they outfitted with a computer and sensors -- one step toward structural engineering Ph.D. student Benjamin Thompson's quest to develop the science of surfboards (2010)

Thompson has been developing the fin for about two years, and it’s still very much in the testing phase, but this fall, he got a major vote of confidence from the industry when he was selected as one of 18 teams competing for the $2 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE.
Now, Thompson must prove that the device can withstand the harshest—or dare we say gnarliest—waves the world’s oceans have to offer and still deliver accurate results.
If it works, Board Formula could help turn surfers around the globe into a fleet of citizen scientists, crowdsourcing information on what is, perhaps, Earth’s most opaque natural resource.

In a world that grows more “Big Data”-obsessed by the day, the amount of information we have on the world’s oceans remains curiously small.
In fact, according to the National Ocean Service, less than 5 percent of the world’s oceans have been explored.
There’s good reason for that.
“You put anything in the ocean, and it gets pounded to death, critters grow on them, the temperature changes, and ions corode the metal,” says Paul Bunje, senior director of oceans at the XPRIZE Foundation.
“Stick something in the ocean, and it wants to get destroyed very quickly.”

It’s particularly tough to collect information near the shore, where waves are crashing.
An innovation like Smart Phin could change that.
“Surfers are going in the water everyday. They’re in the most critical, hostile zone, and they’re doing it willingly, and they’re doing it for free,” Thompson says.
“We’re chopping of a whole section of the cost of research, and that could be a real paradigm shift in the way data is collected.”

Thompson didn’t set out with this mission when he first founded Board Formula back in 2010. Initially, he was simply trying to convince the surfing industry that their boards could be greatly enhanced by a little engineering.
But no one was buying it.
What Thompson needed, he realized, was proof.
So he started designing a sensor that would monitor how surfboards change shape in water.
“The intention was to collect as much information as possible on surfboards, so I’d be able to say: ‘See? You should pay me to engineer things,'” Thompson says.

 A close-up of the smart chip

Instead, this novel sensor caught the attention of Andy Stern, executive director of the Lost Bird Project.
Stern is all too familiar with the challenges of tracking the changing oceans, particularly near the shore, where waves are always crashing.
“I thought: ‘We could be sticking these fins on boards all over the world,'” Stern says.

Since then, Lost Bird Project has been the sole backer of the Smart Phin, and will have distribution rights once the product is complete.
But it could take some time to get to a commercial product.
In addition to the rigorous testing being done through the XPRIZE Foundation, the sensor is also being vetted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD.

Once it’s complete, Thompson says the plan is to sell the fins in stores, but open source the data so that other developers can build their own consumer apps on top of it.
Thompson, for one, is pretty “stoked” about the possibilities.
“Ultimately, it comes down to making surfers stakeholders, making them part of the process,” he explains.
“We’re saying: ‘Here’s the information. You’re part of collecting it, and you have the capacity to make a difference in people’s relationship to the ocean.'”

Links :

• Good Mag :  Smartboard Turns Any Surfer Into an Amateur Ocean Conservationist
• Outside : This Smart, Data-Collecting, Wave-Predicting Surfboard Will Save Our Oceans
• Wired : One surf scientist's quest for a better wave of boards

Team led by Marine Institure mapping Atlantic sea bed

 Nearly three quarters of the earth's surface is covered by ocean, but just one tenth of it is mapped

From RTE by Will Goodbod

A team of international scientists, led by the Marine Institute, has completed a transatlantic sea bed mapping exercise, which has revealed previously uncharted seabed features including mountains and ridges taller than Carrauntoohil.
The project is one of the first to be carried out by the Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance, set up two years ago, on foot of the signing of the Galway Statement on Atlantic Ocean Cooperation.
It aims to use the marine research resources of Europe, Canada and the US to better understand the North Atlantic Ocean and promote sustainable management of its resources, particularly in the face of climate change.

Ocean life provides half of the world's oxygen and there is rising concern about the impact that sea warming and acidification will have on the marine ecosystem.
The Marine Institute vessel, the MV Celtic Explorer, departed Newfoundland in Canada bound for Galway on 1 June.
During the seven-day crossing it deployed its recently fitted multi-beam sonar, which is capable of mapping the seabed to a width of six times the water's depth.

Image of a 3D animation of a 3.7km high underwater mountain, which is more than 140km long, on the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Photograph: Marine Institute

Among the features uncovered by the team of scientists on board was a 235 square kilometre area of seabed that had been scarred by icebergs.
They also found ancient glacial moraines and buried channels of sediment on the Newfoundland and Labrador shelf.
The survey also uncovered a 15km long down-slope channel, most likely formed by melt water coming from a grounded ice cap during the ice age 20,000 years ago.
The team of international researchers were surprised to discover a 140km long asymmetric ridge, which peaked at 1,108m high, taller than Ireland's highest mountain, Carrauntoohil.
They also charted in 3D a 3.7km high underwater mountain on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone.
An area of cold water coral and sponges was also imaged, as well as the OSPAR designated Marine Protected Area.
The area where the first transatlantic telecoms cable, which was laid in 1857, was also targeted.
The project will now move on to map other areas of the Atlantic, with vessels from the US and Norway due to assist over the coming years.

peaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland earlier, Peter Heffernan, CEO of the Marine Institute, said every time we breathe, one half of the oxygen we consume has been produced by microscopic plants in the ocean and if we want to help this life support system and address the risk of acidification from climate change, then we must map, observe and generate a fit for purpose ability to predict change that are occurring here.
He said this expedition is an incredibly important first start in this process.