European Ocean Research Fleets - uefiscdi

A. Description of existing fleets and their management
es national waters and when it is shipped back to its
home country. The operator has to make plans well in
advance to ensure it is cost effective. Any European
vessel operator should be aware of any other plans
well in advance in order to foster potential synergies
between scheduled plans.
© Ifremer
Facilitate and develop joint procedures (legal and
fi nancial) in order to share the costs of transportation.
A2.5 Conclusions
– Large and exchangeable instruments are unevenly
spread across Europe and the potential for
joint ownership and the use of such instruments
is still very large.
– There is however a number of factors to consider
before setting up such joint ventures to ensure cost
efficient initiatives.
– The trend is clearly towards more capable, autonomous
and sophisticated instruments (higher precision
and multitasking applications) able to collect
huge amounts of data a greater depths with AUVs or
to map the seabed in real time. This equipment will
become heavier (e.g. Lander, ROV, observatory), deployed
precisely at a specifi c location. The vessel will
also require technical adaptation.
AUV AsterX in operation
by EurOcean, Europe already has all the necessary
mechanisms to:
– Collate and disseminate information,
– Provide a trading house,
– Develop and implement a future marine
infrastructure policy.
A concerted and resourced effort is needed to properly
establish and agree their Terms of reference at the
European level. These groups would then be appropriately
empowered to carry out their respective but
interfacing remits.
– There is no doubt that AUVs will also be an important
element for the future. Current technical developments
are aimed at units which can travel to full
ocean depth. The intention is to ultimately have a set
of instruments which are all deployable during any
given cruise, thereby increasing the productivity of
that particular research exercise.
– The adverse trend is also that the use and maintenance
of such equipment imply the need for even
more money and very highly skilled and trained operators
and technicians. Therefore, the European
technical expertise should be mapped and procedures
to facilitate personnel exchange across
Europe should be encouraged and developed.
– The potential for increased science for the same
amount of money is therefore extremely large if the
marine research institutes in Europe are able to
improve the coordination of procurement, use
and maintenance of instruments. With suitable
systems and networks such as OFEG, ERVO and
their inputs to database such as those developed
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