Nov. 5, 2002 -- Ulysses, one of the ferries which ploughs back and forth across the Irish Sea is to be used by scientists from Wales and Ireland to monitor water quality in the Irish Sea.
Thanks to European Funding under the Interreg program, scientists from the University's Centre for Applied Oceanography, part of the world renowned School of Ocean Sciences, at the University of Wales, Bangor, and the National University of Ireland, in Galway are able to team up with Irish Ferries to introduce a practical solution to environmental monitoring of the Irish Sea.
The team will be placing optical sensors on the Irish ferry which regularly crosses the Irish Sea in order to collect a continuous color time series of the surface of color information about the surface of the Irish Sea throughout the year.
"The information from the sensors on board the ferry will provide us with a unique record of the water quality of the central Irish Sea, which we just wouldn't be able to collect in any other way," explains Dr Gay Mitchelson-Jacob of the University of Wales, Bangor.
"Over the years we will be able to detect any changes that occur. We would expect the water to be browner and carrying more sediment during the winter months, to appear greener in spring as the plankton or algae in the water blooms and to appear blue as the waters clear during the summer months. This new information will give us a longer time scale of the health of the Irish Sea. The detectors will also pick up any immediate changes due to pollutants such as oil. Detecting oil spills may, for example, enable us to predict where the oil slick would reach the shore and provide a head start in any coastal protection measures," explains Dr Dave Bowers from the University of Wales, Bangor.
"As well as managing the environmental protection of this ecologically vulnerable area, the data we collect will contribute to a greater understanding of the area from a range of perspectives from managing fisheries to ecological conservation to understanding climate change," said Dr peter Bowyer of the National University of Ireland, Galway.
