Ocean Technology

‘Black’ and ‘Green’

F. Mary Williams

NRC - Institute for Ocean Technology

Climate changeEnergy suppliesSovereignty & securityRenewable resourcesGlobal food chainSustainable communities

Ocean Technology

Application of advanced technologies

to enable safe and effective operations

in the ocean

NAVAL

DEFENCE MARINE

NAVIGATION

RESOURCE

EXTRACTIONSEAFOOD

HARVESTING

OCEAN

OBSERVATION

And more

Environment

Monitoring

Ocean Observation Market

• Global market $1 trillion/year

• Technologies to

– Oil & gas

– Defence

– Public Sector

– Service providers

• Services to large clients

– Oil & gas

– Defence

– Public Sector

• Newfoundland active supplier

Beagle 1831-1836

• Early ocean

science

• Darwin’s platform

• “Look and see”

science

• Sensors deployed

– Resolution

– Speed

• Regions accessible to observations

– Near surface

– Coastlines

• Data storage

Challenger 1872-1876

Challenger Technology

• 230 km (144 miles) of rope

• Basic transducers: thermometers

• Many ingenious samplers

• Bottom sample time @ 3600 m: 8 hours

Same era (1881):

• Continuous Plankton Recorder

• Automatic sampling

• One sample every 5 nm

Robert Bartlett 1926-1945

Effie Morrissey

Canadian Arctic, Beaufort

Nansen 1893-1896

Fram

Russian Arctic

Greenland

Nansen bottles

Science Cruise 1975

• CTD cast

• Plankton nets

• Nansen bottles

• Bottom cores

• Capture

• Over the side

• One point in surface-time

• Data rates reaching limits of

this paradigm (except

seismic)

Technology Trends

• Sensor development

– Parameters

– Resolution

– Speed

• Reducing the zones of inaccessibility

– Deep ocean

– Arctic, Antarctic

• Rate of data acquisition & storage

– Bytes/day

• COST!

Proxy for development

Historical trend in data rates (bytes/day)

1.00E+00

1.00E+01

1.00E+02

1.00E+03

1.00E+04

1.00E+05

1.00E+06

1.00E+07

1.00E+08

1.00E+09

1.00E+10

1.00E+11

1.00E+12

1.00E+13

1.00E+14

1.00E+15

1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rate = A*exp(b*exp(c*year))

Kurzweil’s double exponential growth

Argo

buoys

Deployment

cost

Argo Buoys

• ~3000 drifters around world

• Autonomous operation

– Regular depth profiles

– Data transmission

• Variety of sensors

• Power limited

• Cost/profile ~ $200

• Other examples of drifters

– Ice stations

– Critter mounted sensors

Argo Buoys

Note gaps

On-shore high level control

• Waypoint list

• Data requests

• Status checksAutonomous Underwater Glider

Glider data

Separation ~ 0.5 km

Ship Data

Separation ~ 15 km

Green and Black

Technology Foresight

• Increasing data rates

• Sensor refinement

• Autonomous vehicles

• Intelligent systems

Increasing spatial resolution (coverage)

Reduction of geographic gaps (Arctic)

Less invasive monitoring

NRC Institute for

Ocean Technology

a.k.a. “the ice tank”

Applied research & technology development

~ 100 people: scientists, engineers, technologists, software

Collaborative projects

9 companies in technology partnership facility