The ecosystem approach to marine resource management is now established by many international agreements and is recognised as a future standard for global ocean management. Although there are many national and international research projects supporting the ecosystem approach, there has been limited activity of this kind in Ireland, and there is a need to add value to the considerable data assets currently available.
Bathymetric map of Lough Derg, taken during lake trials
The work will focus on the Biologically Sensitive Area (BSA) that was established by the EU off the south west of Ireland. Data gathered by a range of acoustic instruments from multiple sources is a major component of modern marine data acquisition. Data sets, from multiple acoustic sources, inherently have different data formats, image resolutions and positional accuracies. A key component of this project is to identify methodologies to optimise data acquisition from these multiple sources and to integrate and interpret this hydro acoustic data, with the established operational protocols, into the BSA management plan.
Student: Edward Thurman
Supervisor: Daniel Toal
Host Institution: University of Limerick
Deploying survey equipment
This project (Grant-aid Agreement No. PhD/05/004) is being carried out with the support of the Marine Institute and the Marine RTDI Measure, Productive Sector Operational Programme, National Development Plan 2000-2006.
This project is also funded by IRCSET.