Re:action spring 2023

Marvels of maritime

Exploring

WELCOME TO RE:ACTION

Southampton’s significance as a city is heavily entwined with its maritime geography and history. Therefore, it should be no surprise that the University is particularly well known, world-wide, for its marine and maritime activities across our triple helix of research, knowledge exchange and enterprise and education.

These strengths are increasingly relevant, as 95 per cent of the UK’s trade is transported by sea and the oceans remain key to understanding and possibly countering the effects of climate change.

The Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI) was created a decade ago to foster and further advance the impact of our interdisciplinary work in this area. This edition of Re:action presents some of the exciting activities fostered by SMMI, ranging from evaluating the options for carbon reduction in shipping, looking at how to promote ‘ocean literacy’ and an overview of the current status of the law of the sea.

In addition to the significance of each of these activities in terms of their own contributions, collectively they also contribute to the further strengthening of Southampton and the Solent as an internationally important Maritime Cluster. As a result, they reinforce our status as a Civic University with societal and economic relevance to our region.

I very much hope that you enjoy the articles in this edition. As always, comments and feedback are very welcome.

Best wishes

Professor Mark Spearing Vice-President (Research and Enterprise)

THE OCEAN CHALLENGE

Our oceans are often underestimated and under-credited. However, our oceans connect us. They cover 70 per cent of our planet, join islands and continents, support critical ecosystems, regulate our climate and are of cultural significance to populations globally.

Oceans are the cornerstone of life. But, the oceans are increasingly challenged by ever-pressing human demands for greater resources such as food, materials, energy, and space, and their use as a repository for waste, be it heat and CO2 from burning fossil fuels, chemical and sediment runoff from land, or plastic pollution. These human activities all lead to global warming, climate change, biodiversity loss and irrecoverable damage to environments that will disproportionately impact many fragile societies.

The oceans also provide immense opportunities for a sustainable future, as a source of renewable energy, sustainable biomass (for food or fuel), and a low-carbon means of transporting goods and people. It will be essential to use ocean space more to provide for our increasing, resource-hungry global population.

Professor Damon Teagle, Director of the University’s Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI), said: “Global grand challenges are complex and require multi-disciplinary and full system-scale solutions. The University of Southampton has a rich history of ocean-facing research and knowledge, and the multidisciplinary SMMI pulls together experts from across the spectrum of our organisation to tackle these

growing ocean challenges and responsibly engage with opportunities to develop solutions.”

Fraser Sturt, Professor of Archaeology and Deputy Director of the SMMI, added: “There are globally recognised challenges and opportunities in relation to the oceans. How we reach net zero or work together at a global scale to access resources; how we effectively exchange knowledge with the communities most affected by human activities and global warming; and how we enact concepts of equitability and just transition.

“The ocean is impacted by everything we do, whether we recognise it or not. From transportation of materials, to keeping the Earth’s temperature regulated, to the air we breathe – and it is important to address any part of the solution with a systems approach.”

Thinking differently

To meet these needs, the SMMI supports interdisciplinary studentships, encouraging early career researchers to think creatively, work together and gain contextual knowledge beyond their specific thesis topics.

The Intelligent Oceans Leverhulme Doctoral Programme currently funds researchers

investigating topics such as ocean literacy; computer-vision’s influence on our ocean knowledge; and how ancient Mars can teach us about our oceans’ future. Intelligent Oceans builds on an earlier Leverhulme Doctoral Programme, Understanding Maritime Futures (2015-2022), which supported research into diverse topics including the health impacts of air pollution in port cities; 3D seafloor mapping; the impacts of sea-level rise on cultural heritage; regulation of marine autonomy; and microplastics in coastal systems.

Susan Gourvenec, Professor of Offshore Geotechnical Engineering, Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, and Deputy Director of the SMMI, said:

“The programmes are recognition that funding is required to train future researchers, industry leaders, policymakers and politicians who think holistically.

A sustainable future needs integrated solutions – rather than just asking ‘how do we deliver sufficient offshore wind to support our net zero ambitions?’, we need to also consider how offshore developments in the short and long-term may impact and interface with the living environment and society. We must use evidence and insights to inform decisions, ensure a pathway for progressive and just ocean governance, and promote a culture of ocean literacy globally.”

“The University has a rich history of ocean-facing research and knowledge, and the multidisciplinary SMMI pulls together experts from across the spectrum of our organisation to tackle these growing ocean challenges and responsibly engage with opportunities to develop solutions.”

Professor Damon Teagle

Susan added: “Research across the University addresses local to global marine and maritime grand challenges. How to meet the needs of a 10 million-plus global population for energy, food, and goods, 90 per cent of which come across the oceans, while meeting the needs of the ocean, maintaining a healthy ocean environment and respecting the cultural heritage of the ocean.”

Sea blindness

We tend to take the sea for granted. It conjures up images of summer holidays, water sports, storms, and pirates – but it must be appreciated for much more.

“We are all utterly dependent on the sea, but many of us have very little interaction with it,” explained Fraser. “That lack of presence can mean we don’t appreciate its significance. The concept of sea blindness is real and poses a significant challenge.

“There is a need to remind people that the ocean enables goods to reach us, enables us to breathe and can be a critical part of culture and identity. Joining our expertise together around the University helps us to bridge these gaps.”

Research at Southampton is seeking to raise awareness and appreciation of the ocean.

“It’s quite a romantic space, the sea,” added Fraser. “People think of blue sea holidays and openness. Actually, it’s a busy space, full of shipping lanes, fishing boats, underwater cables, wind turbines and interconnectors. There is a tension between what the sea is, how it serves us and how we intend to use it.”

The University’s role

Our University is in a privileged position on the south coast, in a major port city.

“The Solent is the centre of gravity for marine and maritime research,” outlined Fraser. “What’s remarkable about the University of Southampton is our depth of expertise in marine and maritime. Increasingly, research is calling upon that breadth of expertise.

“In the 18th and 19th centuries, Southampton was a key leisure destination with the sea being a major draw. Now, the port and the shipping industry dominate economically, but activities occur out of sight of much of day-to-day life. Southampton’s deep history as a maritime hub has helped to create a diverse and fascinating city. Its role as a major port has both created opportunities, but also challenges and it is both facets that University looks to address.”

THE SOLENT: A CENTRE OF MARITIME GRAVITY

Water defines Southampton and the surrounding greater Solent, with hundreds of kilometres of coastline and estuaries hosting the major industrial centres of south-central England tightly juxtaposed against bucolic Hampshire.

However, despite the importance of ships, maritime trade and leisure to the local economy and history, these waters subdivide rather than unite our geography. The dominance of the docks and lack of public accessibility to the waterside mean that many residents never appreciate our city’s connection to the oceans. Indeed, before the establishment of the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute, the University of Southampton rarely spoke of its distinctive breadth and depth in ocean-facing research, education, and knowledge exchange.

Our region is the UK’s centre of gravity of maritime trade, research, and innovation. The University of Southampton is the only major research-led Russell Group University in a Freeport.

The deepwater Port of Southampton’s location 22 nautical miles from a global trade maritime superhighway is a distinct geographic advantage, leading to UK’s largest export port and second largest import port. It is the UK’s second largest container port and can accommodate the world’s biggest ships. It is also the UK’s leading port for automotive export and import. Southampton, home to Carnival plc (P&O, Cunard), is the cruise capital of northern Europe, with more than two million passengers embarking annually on increasingly huge, locally provisioned cruise ships. When combined with Portsmouth, the region is the second greatest for ferry operations in the UK. Down Southampton Water on the edge of the New Forest is one of Europe’s largest oil refinery and petrochemical complexes, responsible for 20 per cent of the UK’s energy imports. The Solent is also the leading UK region for leisure marine, hosting Cowes Week and the Southampton International Boat Show,

and being the base for the INEOS Team GB America’s Cup team. Portsmouth, meanwhile, is home to the headquarters of the Royal Navy.

This combination of defence, research, trade, and high-performance sailing has led to an innovation ecosystem with leading maritime developers. These include global majors (such as BAE Systems, Saab Seaeye, and L3Harris) and specialist design and engineering groups (such as BAR Technologies, Houlder, and the University of Southampton’s Wolfson Unit), as well as manufacturers such as Griffon Hoverwork, AMC, and Oyster Yachts. The region hosts international technology disrupters including Ocean Infinity and its growing vision of fleets of lean-crewed remotely controlled geotechnical and small cargo vessels. It is home to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), the Marine Accident Investigation Branch and the UK Ship Register.

A hidden asset of our region is its comprehensive offering of marine and maritime education and training. The worldleading research acumen of the University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre Southampton is complemented by the maritime seafarer training and facilities of the renowned Warsash Maritime School at Solent University, as well as a range of nautically focused further education colleges. Together with the Royal Navy, also a major training provider, Lloyd’s Register and the MCA national regulator, Southampton and the region hosts a globally significant, comprehensive spectrum of ocean knowledge, research capacity and training.

As the leading research institution in our region, we must connect constructively with these partners to coherently present to the world the Solent as a top-class centre for marine and maritime knowledge.

Professor Damon Teagle, Director of the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute, outlines the Solent’s unique position, from its geographical strengths to its marine and maritime training and expertise.

INTRODUCING THE SMMI

Harnessing the multidisciplinary skills of the University of Southampton, in collaboration with strategic partners, the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI) works to deliver safe and sustainable solutions to meet the increasing demands placed on our oceans.

The SMMI was established in 2012, building on the University of Southampton’s strengths in ocean science, engineering, maritime law and archaeology, and other ocean-facing fields. The institute brings together 400 academics from all five faculties.

The institute’s mission is to advance knowledge and understanding of marine and maritime issues, and to develop innovative solutions to challenges in these fields by fostering collaboration between researchers, industry, policymakers, the third sector, and communities.

SMMI research covers topics including climate change, ocean acidification, marine biodiversity, marine pollution, decarbonisation, maritime safety and security, ocean governance, decarbonisation of shipping, ports of the future, offshore energy, sustainable coastal development, coastal communities, and maritime culture and heritage. The SMMI aims to provide real-world solutions for industry, policymakers, and society.

The SMMI also plays a significant role in education and outreach, providing opportunities for students and earlycareer researchers, and raising awareness of marine and maritime issues.

Benefits to academics who are part of the SMMI include opportunities for funding and support, networking and knowledge exchange, and increased impact and visibility.

KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE AND POLICY IMPACT

Addressing the challenges facing the ocean and those who depend on it requires a three-way collaboration between academia, policy and industry. Therefore the University partners with private, public and third-party sector organisations – locally, nationally and internationally – in knowledge exchange activities to ensure that the research conducted here responds to real-world problems and is informed by societal needs.

Dr Wassim Dbouk, SMMI (Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute) Marine and Maritime Policy Research Fellow, creates engagement opportunities between policy and industry stakeholders in the marine and maritime sector and Southampton academics with expertise in our seas and oceans. He supports colleagues in responding to calls for evidence from Parliament and Government; designs and implements tailored policy engagement strategies to increase the impact of research projects, including through producing policy-focused outputs and running policy-focused workshops; matches policy demand with University expertise through regular relationshipbuilding activities; and fosters frameworks for collaboration with policymakers.

One example was the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in January 2023. This resulted from a collaborative relationship, matching expertise at the University with policy priorities in the BVI. The MoU formalises a commitment to a growing research and education collaboration to inform decisionmaking through scientific evidence and raise local capacities to tackle environmental and societal challenges in the BVI.

Wassim has also attended the last two sessions of the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

He said: “These events presented invaluable opportunities to witness the proceedings of global climate change negotiations and stay up-to-date with the key gaps where research could contribute to decisionmaking. Additionally, the Blue Zone is an ideal space for networking and relationship building to scope potential research projects that colleagues across the University could engage in. During COP27, the new Ocean Pavilion in the Blue Zone was vital in facilitating such conversations and bringing key players together around a specific priority: the ocean.”

In January 2023, Wassim joined colleagues from the University and the National Oceanography Centre at a meeting hosted by the UK Parliament’s All-PartyParliamentary-Group for the Ocean, where he shared his reflections on COP27. The session, chaired by Sally-Ann Hart MP, offered an opportunity for direct engagement with MPs and Lords with an interest in ocean policy.

CREATURES OF THE DEEP

Deep-sea mining is contentious for many reasons – economic, political, financial, social, and environmental, to name a few. One research team at Southampton is honing in on the environmental impacts.

Humanity is still a long way from discovering all the habitats in the deepest depths of our planet’s oceans. If we do not know exactly what is there, how can we protect it if deep-sea mining becomes a bigger industry?

It is an area of interest for Jon Copley, Professor of Ocean Exploration and Science Communication, who devotes his work to understanding the environmental impacts of deepsea mining.

Jon outlined the three deep-sea habitats researchers are focusing on – home to the three mineral resources that are of interest: seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits, manganese nodules, and cobalt-rich crusts.

Seafloor massive sulphides (SMS)

These form next to deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Back in 2013, Jon led the first HumanOccupied Vehicle dive to the world’s deepest known hydrothermal vents, becoming the first British person to dive more than 5,000 metres.

“Habitats next to active vents are home to over 400 species of animals that are not found anywhere else on Earth,” said Jon. “They are globally rare habitats, home to creatures such as metre-long tube worms, swarms of blind shrimp, and scaly-footed snails.”

The total known area of active hydrothermal vent deposits is less than 50 square kilometres worldwide. “The idea of strip mining such a small area on land would be a total nonstarter, so a big concern of ours is to get protection for active hydrothermal vents and their active biodiversity, as these systems are extremely vulnerable,” said Jon.

Mining an inactive vent, however, would be a different story. “Vents are active for a period of time – it could be a few decades, it could be thousands of years – but at some point, they shut down and the animals that depend on the mineral-rich fluids die out,” explained Jon. “The impact of mining inactive sulphides is very different and could well be manageable. The big question, however, is at what point does a vent become inactive? They often look inactive but then there is a tiny bit of activity – so the thresholds on inactivity need to be set.”

Manganese nodules

Manganese nodules are prolific in the underwater world. They grow very slowly, forming over thousands of years, on the surface of underwater plains. Manganese nodules have been known about for a very long time, since HMS Challenger dredged them up from the Eastern Pacific in the 1870s.

Jon said: “Manganese nodules are prolific, and are an area of scientific excitement. In some places, they carpet the seafloor.”

In one area within the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, between Hawaii and Mexico, manganese nodules cover the seafloor over an area spanning 1.5 million square kilometres.

The International Seabed Authority has already set aside protected areas where there will be no mining. But Jon said: “Research is required to refine whether these protected areas are in the right places, and are representative of the species populations. Are the same species scattered throughout nodule fields, or are there pockets of rare species? Scientists continue to work to understand the patterns of life.”

Cobalt-rich crusts

Cobalt-rich crusts form on seamounts, which are home to very different marine life from hydrothermal vents because they are rocky.

“They are home to slow-growing corals and sponges,” said Jon. “These are vulnerable if the cobalt crusts are scraped off the sides of seamounts – they will be scraped off too. But, their areas of habitat are much bigger than active hydrothermal vents, so they are potentially more widely distributed, and therefore less vulnerable.”

Current projects

Jon is working on two deep-sea projects, SMARTEX and DEEPEND.

SMARTEX (Seabed Mining And Resilience to EXperimental impact) is investigating the ecological environmental impacts of manganese nodule mining. An expedition to collect samples from the Pacific took place in early 2023, and a second expedition will run in 2024. The project involves nine institutions and is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.

DEEPEND (Deep-ocean resources and biodiscovery – enabling a sustainable and healthy low-carbon future), funded by the DEFRA Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate, is exploring the biotechnological potential of deep-sea biodiversity, including examining manganese nodules.

“This project is about biodiscovery: guiding people to where there might be natural products of interest for the future,” outlined Jon. “DEEPEND is investigating compounds of potential pharmacological interest – things like new treatments to overcome antibiotic resistance – and looking at compounds produced by animals.”

Southampton’s involvement in DEEPEND includes producing a roadmap for biodiscovery, to guide future exploration. It will show where species and compounds live, to inform future research into what is found where in the deep ocean.

1 A hydrothermal vent chimney

2 A deep seastar, found on seamounts

CHEMICAL REACTIONS

Research led by Rachael James, Professor of Geochemistry, is investigating a hydrothermal field of seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits in the Atlantic that is rich in metals.

The project team has completed one expedition to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, to the Semenyov Hydrothermal Field, to drill through the SMS deposits to find out what controls the metal concentrations within them. To do this, they need to understand the chemical processes that occur as the deposits form.

“The interest in this particular site is that the vent fields are located in a peridotite crust, which means that the deposits tend to have higher concentrations of metals including copper, nickel, zinc and cobalt, which are

Image of a seafloor massive sulphide deposit at the Semenyov hydrothermal site on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. These sulphide deposits host large quantities of metals that support the green energy transition.

Image courtesy of Project ULTRA, National Oceanography Centre

required for clean energy technologies – so there is a need to find more resources of them,” said Rachael.

Electric cars contain around three times as much copper as conventional cars, and substantial quantities of cobalt and zinc are needed for the manufacture of wind turbines. Cobalt is crucial for battery performance.

The first expedition focused on drilling and sampling the sulphide, and capping some of

the drill holes. On the second expedition, scheduled over five weeks in October and November 2023, the team will uncap the holes to understand the chemical makeup of the fluid circulating through the sulphide mounds.

Rachael explained: “My interest is in understanding the chemical reactions that are occurring as seawater circulates through the crust and through the hydrothermal sulphide deposits, and understanding the processes that lead to metal enrichment.”

THE DEEP-SEA: WHAT RESOURCES ARE DOWN THERE?

Three mineral resources found in the deep sea are of interest. They are manganese nodules, seafloor massive sulphide deposits, and cobalt-rich crusts.

Manganese nodules:

These are found on underwater plains. They are very rich in manganese, used in steel production, and cobalt, which is required for lithium-ion batteries. They also contain rare earth elements, such as neodymium, which is used in magnets for wind turbines, computers, mobile phones, medical equipment, and toys; lanthanum, which is used in lighting; and gadolinium, which is used in MRI and X-ray.

Cobalt-rich crusts:

These crusts form on seamounts (underwater mountains) and are rich in cobalt and rare earth elements.

Seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits: Deposits primarily of copper, nickel and cobalt that are found by hydrothermal vents in volcanic rifts.

DOSI: SAFEGUARDING OUR OCEAN’S FUTURE

In 2022, Southampton researchers were awarded £3.5 million to provide expert advice on deep-sea matters, from conservation to mining.

The funding was awarded by the Arcadia Fund – a charitable fund founded by Lisbet Rausing and Professor Peter Baldwin – to the DeepOcean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI), a global network of 2,600 experts from more than 100 countries, including colleagues from the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences (SOES).

Dr Maria Baker, DOSI’s Executive Director and Senior Enterprise Fellow in SOES, said: “DOSI’s international ties mean that we are ideally placed to provide the knowledge needed to produce effective policies in both national and international waters. That work is especially important now, as the next decade will be a crucial time for the health of our ocean. With this continued support from Arcadia, we can provide independent science to guide high-level interactions on topics like seabed mining, climate change, biodiversity, and more.”

Find out more dosi-project.org

DEEP-SEA LAW AND ORDER

Deep-sea mining as a matter for international jurisdiction has been discussed, debated, and revisited for decades – requiring fresh consideration every time new discoveries and advances are made. Additionally, determining continental shelf boundaries is at times contentious and tricky to negotiate fairly.

Andrew Serdy, Professor of the Public International Law of the Sea at the University’s Institute of Maritime Law, has followed the legal matters throughout his career.

The Deep Seabed Mining Regime Outlining the Deep Seabed Mining Regime, Andrew said: “It’s a regime that was originally designed about 50 years ago in the expectation that deep-sea mining was imminent – which it turned out not to be. Every few years, it becomes ‘imminent’ once more, and that is happening again now.”

The regime, which was originally drawn up to regulate mining for manganese nodules, relates to international jurisdiction – any mining that occurs more than 200 miles from land, or, alternatively, beyond where the seabed belonging to the continental shelf of a state ends. The International Seabed Authority operates under and oversees the regime.

More recently, the Mining Code has been negotiated, which incorporates three sets of regulations on prospecting and exploration (rules for the production phase are not yet in place) for the three minerals that are of interest to deep-sea miners: seafloor massive sulphides, cobalt crusts, and manganese nodules.

“There are about 30 contracts that various government and private sector bodies have signed with the International Seabed Authority, which governs deep-sea exploration,” said Andrew.

As interest in deep-sea mining grows, the need for an agreement on how profits will be shared is also growing. “Any profits are to be shared between parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but there is not yet an agreement on a formula for sharing,” said Andrew.

Another issue to be addressed is genetic resources.

“Genetic resources are of almost as much interest as mineral resources,” explained Andrew. “But they weren’t yet known when designing the original regime, and so the International Seabed Authority has no power to regulate the exploration and mining of genetic resources. So, about 15 years ago, the process began towards reaching international agreement on what’s called Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction. In 2017 negotiations started, but there remains a lack of agreement between developed countries and the developing world.”

Continental shelf boundary making

When states are neighbours – either opposite or adjacent – and their continental shelf entitlements overlap, under the law of maritime delimitation it is necessary to draw a boundary to separate them.

“If states are adjacent on land, agreement on where to draw the line out to sea is often simple to reach,” explained Andrew. “But it’s harder when opposite states are separated by

water. If they can’t agree a boundary between themselves via a treaty, there is a process by which they can take the matter to an international court or tribunal.”

Since the 1980s, there have been at least a dozen legal cases between pairs of countries deciding their maritime boundaries. Four of these involved continental shelf boundaries going beyond 200 miles from their land territories: Bangladesh and Myanmar; Bangladesh and India; Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire; and Kenya and Somalia.

Andrew added: “There is an interesting case happening at the moment between Nicaragua and Colombia, who are not actually neighbours. Nicaragua has a very long physical continental margin extending to its east, which potentially comes within 200 miles of the Colombian coast – and therefore within Colombia’s exclusive economic zone. The issue is, does the 200-mile entitlement of the nearer state automatically trump the entitlement of the state more than 200 miles away? Arguments on this aspect of their dispute were the subject of a recent hearing before the International Court of Justice, and we eagerly await its ruling.”

Deep-sea mining and defining where state boundaries are drawn at sea are two matters that have kept international lawyers and diplomats busy for decades.

KNOW THE DRILL

Scientific ocean drilling has made major discoveries that allow us to understand how Earth works, how it has changed, and what its future holds. Southampton researcher Dr Rosalind Coggon has her sights set on ocean drilling’s future potential.

Ocean drilling has provided proof for plate tectonics, made it possible to reconstruct past climates, and – by drilling into the crater created by the meteorite that wiped out dinosaurs – understand cataclysmic environmental changes.

Scientific ocean drilling is a huge international collaboration that has been running for more than 50 years, using drilling ships and platforms to recover samples of sediments, rocks, and fluids from beneath the seafloor.

Dr Rosalind (Roz) Coggon, a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the University’s School of Ocean and Earth Science, has worked within ocean drilling for more than 20 years. She explained: “Scientific ocean drilling operates in some of the Earth’s most challenging environments to secure a wide range of otherwise inaccessible samples and observations that are critical to understanding our planet.”

Ocean sediments record tens of millions of years of changing climate, environmental conditions, and evolution, giving us a rare insight into our planet’s past. The underlying

The drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution leaves behind Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa, in April 2022 as she sets sail to drill the South Atlantic Transect during IODP Expedition 390. Image courtesy of Dr Rosalind Coggon

rocks that form the ocean basins reveal how Earth’s great tectonic plates are formed and how they generate natural hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis.

In the past, scientific drilling has been guided by 10-year plans (such as the 20132023 Illuminating Earth). In 2020, however, scientists involved in ocean drilling developed a new 30-year framework, Exploring Earth by Scientific Ocean Drilling. Roz was Colead Editor of the 2050 framework, working alongside Professor Anthony Koppers from Oregon State University.

“It’s an ambitious blueprint for the next 30 years of scientific ocean drilling,” said Roz. “It provides a wide vision of the exciting science that should be pursued over the coming decades. We have only ever worked in 10-year increments before, so looking ahead 30 years allows greater potential.

“The development of new technologies, and our science, over that timeframe presents lots of really exciting opportunities to provide the data we need to address a range of natural and human-caused environmental challenges facing society.”

Roz won two awards for her work on the framework: the sixth ECORD (European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling) Award in October 2020, and the 2021 Asahiko Taira International Scientific Ocean Drilling Research Prize.

Researching past ocean chemistry

Roz’s current research involved two International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) drilling expeditions in 2022 as part of a project to investigate how the Earth’s crust ages as it spreads away from the mid-Atlantic Ridge – supporting scientists’ understanding of long-term global chemical cycles, such as the carbon cycle.

The South Atlantic Transect expeditions (IODP Expeditions 390 and 393) – for which Roz and Damon Teagle, Professor of Geochemistry at Southampton, were Co-Chief Scientists aboard the JOIDES Resolution drilling vessel – involved drilling at seven sites with crustal ages ranging from seven million to 61 million years.

Roz explained: “The strategy was to drill a series of sites from the mid-Atlantic Ridge towards South America on crust of different

1

Dr

Rosalind Coggon

2 JOIDES Resolution Science Operator Marine Technicians Dan Marone, Alyssa Stephens and Fabricio Ferreira curate a newly-retrieved core of 61-million-year-old lavas from the South Atlantic during IODP Expedition 390.

Image courtesy of Dr Rosalind Coggon

3 The sub-seafloor camera system is deployed through the moonpool of the JOIDES Resolution, to be lowered five kilometres to the seafloor and guide re-entry of the drill string into the drill hole.

Image courtesy of Dr Rosalind Coggon

ages. We were revisiting an area that was originally drilled in 1968 on an expedition that provided proof for plate tectonics. We went back to the same area and collected sediment sections, and also drilled up to 350 metres into the lavas that form the underlying ocean crust.

“It was exhilarating to follow the path of the scientific ocean drilling pioneers who explored the South Atlantic over 50 years ago to prove that seafloor spreading along the mid-ocean ridges produces new oceanic crust. That crust forms the basins that hold the oceans – but it is not simply an inert container for seawater.

“Our strategy of drilling crust of increasing age was designed to investigate how seawater and the rocks that hold it interact – both contributing to and recording changes in the long-term evolution of our planet and allowing unique ecosystems to thrive deep beneath the seafloor.”

Find out more about Exploring Earth by Scientific Ocean Drilling iodp.org/2050-science-framework

CARBON STORAGE: IS IT LEAK-PROOF?

The most well-known underwater CO 2 storage site is the Sleipner project in the North Sea, west of Norway. It is the world’s first commercial CO 2 storage project and has been operational since 1996, storing away about one million tonnes of CO 2 each year.

There are CO 2 emissions hotspots in the UK, mostly in the Humber and Teeside, where groups of industries are collaborating to establish how to build the infrastructure and pipework to collectively capture and store their CO 2 beneath the seabed.

But can we be sure the captured CO2 won’t leak? And how would we know about a leak before it is too late?

Rachael James, Professor of Geochemistry, is answering those questions. She outlined: “CO2

that’s captured before it’s emitted, such as from power plants or the cement industry or other big emitters, can be pumped and stored in geological reservoirs beneath the seabed that previously contained oil and gas and are therefore expected to be secure, having stored oil or gas for tens of millions of years.”

Rachael’s work is focused on the surety that CO 2 leaks could be detected and quantified. She uses geochemical fingerprinting techniques to distinguish leaks from natural sources of CO 2

“We did a release experiment in the North Sea,” she said. “We injected CO2 into the sub-seabed sediments, then monitored the CO 2 as it moved through those sediments and out into the water column. We were able to detect it both in seawater and as it moved

through the sub-seabed sediments before it got out into the water. That’s important, because a leak is defined as a leak when it goes out into the water column, so you want to be able to pinpoint where it’s coming out. We were also able to measure the amount of CO 2 coming out.”

Rachael and her colleagues have also worked with Tim Leighton, Professor of Ultrasonics and Underwater Acoustics, and Paul White, Professor of Statistical Signal Processing, on using acoustic techniques to detect the bubbles of a leak.

The Geochemistry team’s research has also demonstrated that pH changes caused by CO 2 dissolving into the seawater are only detectable close to the source of the leak, and they have begun to investigate the effects on sea life.

Rachael explained: “We have looked at potential impacts on the seabed biology. We did an experiment in a Scottish sea loch, and the first sign that CO2 was affecting the biology was lots of sea urchins came scuttling to the surface. We don’t know why –whether it was a reaction to bubbles or to the chemical change. But it was very clear that organisms that can move wanted to move out of the way.

“For microbial organisms that cannot move, we found that there were changes to the microbial biochemistry, but when we stopped the experiment, it returned to normal very quickly – within a few weeks.”

With research such as Rachael’s continuing to add to the picture of the viability of underwater CO 2 storage, she believes it is a strong option for the near future. “With the UK committed to net zero by 2050, I think this has to be a technology in the mix for achieving that,” she concluded.

Leakage of CO2 bubbles across the seabed. The image also shows some of the equipment the researchers used to measure and monitor CO 2 leakage. Image credit: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2022.112670

Undersea carbon storage is undergoing a renaissance. It is an active industry in places, but with the UK’s net zero commitments, there is fresh energy in investigating its large-scale viability.

DEPICTIONS OF THE DEEP

What springs to mind when you think of the deep sea? The unknown? An alien space? Monsters, even?

to see a moratorium on the mining code happen as it may limit funding to explore the seabed.”

As part of her three-year Anniversary Fellowship, Giulia is considering tools and exhibits to encourage engagement with the deep sea.

Southampton researcher Dr Giulia Champion is posing this question about the deep sea as she examines our relationship with it.

Giulia, who joined the University’s English department in September 2022 amongst the first cohort of Anniversary Fellows, is rethinking our deep-sea thoughts.

She explained: “The deep sea is often seen as a frontier, or an alien space, which really separates us from the ocean, despite us having a strong relation with and dependence upon it. My research is exploring different ways to reconnect with the deep sea.”

She added: “I am also interested in the language around deep-sea mining. There is some fascinating and problematic language around how we ‘need’ it for our future because we could gather important minerals and metals for the green automotive industry. Some argue it would be more sustainable and less impactful to human beings than mining on land. But we don’t yet know enough about the impacts –environmental, economic, and social – of large-scale deep-sea mining. So, while some scientists are not ready to see deep-sea mining happening, many would prefer not

“I would love to put together multi-sensory art exhibit that asks people to think through buoyancy and the lack of senses such as smell and the clarity of sight – which could potentially be achieved with virtual or augmented reality,” outlined Giulia. “The aim would be to connect us with the deep-sea though we cannot all reach it.” She is also keen to produce an interactive digital deepsea map, one that challenges mapping as a former colonial tool.

From Shakespeare to the deep sea Giulia, who grew up in Rome and Geneva, came to England in 2015 to study a Master’s in Global Shakespeare at the University of Warwick and Queen Mary University of London.

She then completed her PhD at Warwick in 2020, looking at Caribbean and Latin American cultures and philosophy. “I was especially interested in the environmental context and how this very diverse region has been exploited by its neighbours in the north and Europe for centuries,” she explained.

Giulia looked at extractive practices in the Caribbean and Latin America, particularly around monograph plantation agriculture and oil extraction. She examined how art and literature represent these in relation to legacies of colonialisation and slavery, which has led her to researching similar questions in relation to the deep sea: how is it culturally represented, and how can we unlearn some of these perceptions and identify their development within colonial and imperial histories?

Dr Giulia Champion

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT

There is a common thread, or line, that brings together researchers from across the University in an interesting and quite unexpected way – fish! And there’s a reason for that. In the United Kingdom, the fisheries industry drives nearly £500 billion in profits annually, with recreational fishers in marine and freshwater systems adding a further £3 billion, providing jobs and food for millions of British people.

Given the importance of fish to the economy and society, the University of Southampton prioritised growing its knowledge in fish biology, including fisheries, water quality, infection and more. Since the start of the year, fish biology and fisheries science experts from across the University have joined forces to create a critical mass of shared expertise and experience in this area.

“Connectivity is key with regards to fish, any factor which affects the linkages in our oceans and freshwater ecosystems, can have an impact on fish, which in turn can be detrimental to people’s food sources, employment and culture,” explained Professor Paul Kemp, Director of the International Centre for Ecohydraulics

Research in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. “From discussions and collaborations within the University, it became clear our capacity for work in this area is growing and is very comprehensive.”

In January, this year Paul worked with colleague Lauren Nadler, Lecturer in the School of Ocean and Earth Science, to host the University’s very first FishFest.

“We brought together almost 30 colleagues from not just the School of Ocean and Earth Science but also social sciences, environmental sciences and engineering, to highlight our mutual research interests and discover areas for further collaboration,” said Paul. “Many of these colleagues are new to the University and bring with them a

wealth of expertise that puts Southampton firmly on the map as a leader in this area and gives us the opportunity to respond to major sustainability challenges related to life below water (SDG14) and maximise the impact of our research”.

“This group of experts has an exciting array of skills, from how we can mitigate effects of pollutants and human-made structures in waterways to future impacts like climate change, to enhance fish conservation now and into the future. We are working to pool our respective expertise and resources to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing marine and freshwater fishes in today’s world,” explained Paul.

Meet some of our fish-related experts →

Professor Paul Kemp

“Connectivity is key with regards to fish, any factor which affects the linkages in our oceans and freshwater ecosystems, can have an impact on fish, which in turn can be detrimental to people’s food sources, employment and culture.”

School of thought

PROFESSOR PAUL KEMP

Professor of Ecological Engineering

Paul’s expertise in Ecological Engineering relates to understanding the complex systems linked to integrated natural resource management, and how shocks such as infrastructure development and climate change, can influence those systems.

“Specific applications of the work I do in relation to fish, look at understanding how the behavioural ecology of fish can help solve challenges in sustainable water and energy engineering,” explained Paul. “Particularly I am interested in how the physical environment influences the behaviour and physiological performance of fish, and how manipulation of that environment by engineering means can be used to mitigate for negative impacts of water and energy resource development.”

Paul’s most recent work has been to lead an international team of scientists, to produce new recommendations to help ensure a more sustainable future for UK fisheries in the post-Brexit era.

“Despite many representatives of the UK fishing industry being disappointed with the Brexit deal on fisheries, new UK fisheries legislation provides the opportunity to dramatically improve its future sustainability,” said Paul. “We hope our advice will help policymakers achieve the objectives of the Fisheries Act which is domestic legislation that replaced the Common Fisheries Policy when the UK exited the EU.”

Paul and the team produced a balanced and comprehensive perspective on the history of UK marine fisheries policy and management, and the current status of fish stocks and the fishing industry, to provide recommendations for policy to enhance the overall sustainability of the resource.

Paul explained, “Despite some recent recovery of some stocks on which UK fishers depend, several remain in a precarious state according to the European Environment Agency.

“We provided eight recommendations that, if acted on, could enhance the viability of the industry while simultaneously protecting fish stocks that have suffered a long historic legacy of overfishing.”

Key elements of the recommendations included allowing stocks to reach high levels over and above what is needed to ensure supply, considering the effects of fishing on stocks of marine carbon as fish sequester it and the development of a diverse, low emission and modern fishing fleet. Adequately protecting Marine Protected Areas to promote the regeneration of degraded habitats and the restoration of fish stocks, and for the fishing industry and the Government to work in close partnership with the fisheries and the marine conservation science community to seek to regenerate degraded marine ecosystems, on which sustainable fisheries depend.

“To move forward in a more sustainable way, the ecological foundations on which the UK fishing industry is built are fundamental to its management,” said Paul. “Our recommendations aim to support goals for climate change, biodiversity protection and sustainable development, in collaboration with ensuring fish and their habitats thrive.”

Professor Paul Kemp

“I am interested in how the physical environment influences the behaviour and physiological performance of fish, and how manipulation of that environment by engineering means can be used to mitigate for negative impacts of water and energy resource development.”

Dr Lauren Nadler is a specialist in fish behaviour and physiology. She spends her time asking the question ‘Why do animals behave the way they do?’.

“My research spans both the animal itself, as well as the environment in which the animal lives,” she explained. “My goal is to better understand why animals behave the way that they do and what physiological traits drive these observed behaviours.

“We are still very much learning how behavioural and physiological traits are connected, and to what degree these connections drive individual variation within and among species, ecosystems, and populations.”

Before coming to Southampton, Lauren worked on the coral reefs of Egypt, Australia and Florida and spent time in both Oslo, Norway at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and San Diego, California at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“A key element to my work abroad and here in Southampton has been around how parasites shape the behavioural and physiological traits of their hosts,” Lauren said. “What this means in fish, is that a particular parasite might find a fish host and once in that fish’s brain or elsewhere in their body may start to influence the behaviour of that fish or group of fish for its own benefit. I want to find out how parasites influence their hosts to enhance transmission to other hosts and what impact those changes have on the life of the fish, the parasite, and any other species it interacts with, such as sea birds, other underwater dwellers and so on.”

Lauren’s work as an experimental biologist frequently entails thinking outside of the box to devise new and innovative ways to measure an animal’s characteristics in as realistic a setting as possible. Over the years, this endeavour has required building a whole range of gadgets and learning new skills not typically attributed to marine science, like plumbing, electronics, and programming.

“I am working to understand how different kinds of parasites affect their fish hosts. The marine systems in Southampton are ideal for studying these kinds of questions,” she said. “Here at the university and at institutions in this area, we have access to experts in a range of fields. I am really thrilled to work in the collaborative and supportive environment at the University of Southampton and National Oceanography Centre to test these kinds of new, interdisciplinary research questions.”

DR BINDI SHAH Associate Professor in Sociology

Dr Bindi Shah is a sociologist interested in the role played by social capital – such as resources, information and networks – in overcoming disadvantage in small-scale fishing communities.

“My recent work is based in India, where I am interested in how gender, class, caste, ethnicity and religion influence access to and ability to mobilise social capital to develop resilience,” she explained. “I have been working with a small-scale fishing cooperative in Kerala, where artisanal fishing communities are vulnerable to increasing climate events, declining catches, biodiversity loss, and the lingering effects of COVID-19.”

In Indian artisanal fisheries, as in small-scale fisheries in other parts of the Global South, women play crucial roles in post-harvest processing and marketing of the fish but remain excluded from decision-making and from academic research on adaptation strategies to impacts of climate change among the fisheries. The project Bindi is working on leverages engineering and social science methodologies to create understanding and knowledge of the social and technological solutions that are needed to enhance capacity for adaptation and develop resilience to these multiple shocks or events, particularly among women.

“This project brings together interdisciplinary methodologies: social science methodologies such as statistical analysis of historical fish stock data, and qualitative methods such as in-depth interviews and participatory workshops to understand the local socio-economic, cultural and political contexts within which small-scale fisheries operate; and engineering methodologies such as the application of Internet of Things water sensors to monitor key environmental parameters that indicate ocean ecosystem health,” explained Bindi. “This data, together with publicly available satellite data will contribute to developing longer-term solutions for better management of marine ecosystems for the benefit of biodiversity and the small-scale fisheries and communities that rely on these ecosystems.”

Funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering Frontiers Programme, the project is part of the Jash-Ayurda initiative at the International Centre for Ecohydraulics Research here at Southampton and is in collaboration with Indian project partner, Central Institute of Fisheries Technology.

“Members of the community we worked with have enthusiastically participated in interviews, and workshops and have agreed to trial a mobile phone app that we are developing with additional funding from Public Policy at the University of Southampton,” said Bindi.

DR LAUREN NADLER

Lecturer in the School of Ocean and Earth Science

Dr Nic Bury is working on an innovative approach to toxicological and disease research in fish, affectionately nicknamed ‘fish on a chip’.

The ‘fish on a chip’ approach is the creation of a bespoke platform where fish gill cells are cultivated on membrane supports, forming a barrier separating the external and internal compartments. The platform will allow for water to flow over the cells mimicking the environment of the gill in nature and allow the application of chemicals to the water to monitor uptake and effect.

“There are an estimated 350,000 chemicals on the global market with many having no data on environmental risk, or a basic understanding of their impact on organism health and tissue or cellular responses,” explained Nic. “The ethical issues with using live fish in toxicity tests, plus the cost and the enormous number of compounds to be tested, means that alternative approaches that do not use animals are required and so the ‘fish on a chip’ idea was born.”

So far, the project has identified the chemical descriptors that determine drug uptake into fish, how changes in pH influence this process, and how chemicals are metabolised in the gills.

The project is a collaboration between the University of Southampton, King’s College London and Astra Zeneca and the end goal is to help develop a strategy for acceptance of this technique for future regulatory procedures industry-wide.

A recent Natural Environment Research Council grant aims to develop a computer-based approach to predict individual species’ sensitivity to chemical pollutants. This project is focusing on how chemicals interact with the stress response of fish and more specifically how chemicals interact with the stress receptor proteins. The approach uses bioinformatic tools to predict differences in chemical docking between proteins from different fish species and then confirms our prediction using functional assays. The hope is that this can expand to other proteins and other chemicals to identify which species of fish are vulnerable to which chemicals, thus circumventing the need to perform tests with fish.

DR CLIVE TRUEMAN

Associate Professor, School of Ocean and Earth Science

We’ve all seen tags on birds’ feet and fish fins as a way of keeping a track of their location, numbers, and habits. Dr Clive Trueman’s work with fish focuses on the natural chemistry of the animal as a tracking system of its own.

“It is really important for us to understand where fish go, where they have been and what impact the environments they pass through have on them,” explained Clive. “This is so we can be aware of how numbers of fish, the health of fish and the behaviour of fish are being affected by changing ocean climates and other environmental factors.”

Using a tiny organ in a fish’s ear called the otolith, Clive can measure chemical markers which provide data on where a fish has travelled, what temperatures it has been exposed to and how high its metabolic rate has been, enabling him to establish which waters are too warm and too cold for the species to thrive.

The traceability of the fish we eat is another key element in Clive’s work. “People want to know where the food on their plate has come from, with farm-reared animals or fruit and vegetables this is easy to pinpoint, for fish it becomes somewhat more difficult because of the size of marine fisheries and the nature of fish to travel, can we definitively say where a fish has come from before it’s caught?” explained Clive.

The chemical markers Clive works with can help in that traceability. “Chemical markers mean we can match the chemical composition of fish tissues either to reference collections of fish from known catch locations or to model how the chemical markers vary across the ocean,” said Clive. “In my group, we have worked both on building reference libraries of fish chemistry from major fisheries and on models that predict the chemistry of fish tissues from different regions.

“This ties into our work indicating the value of fish in terms of a resource to eat or as a means to reduce carbon by looking at the chemical amounts of it,” said Clive. “This is vital information to both fisheries and environmental organisations.”

DR NIC BURY

Associate Professor of Natural Science, School of Ocean and Earth Sciences

DR RYAN REISINGER

Dr Ryan Reisinger has a particular interest in krill as a vital source of food for whales – the marine mammals he has spent his career tracking and researching.

In Antarctica, there are huge numbers of consumers that feed and rely on krill, like penguins and seals. Krill is a small, swimming crustacean that lives in large schools or swarms.

“Krill feed many animals in the ocean, but they are also themselves the subject of commercial fisheries in Antarctica,” explained Ryan. “My colleagues and I identified that one of these fisheries, particularly, overlaps in time and space with the foraging areas of whales, meaning potential competition between krill fisheries and krill consumers is a major management concern.”

Ryan worked with colleagues to understand how the ecosystem-based management approach of the fishery, by which fishing should not interfere with either the population growth of krill or krill-dependent consumers, was working.

“We analysed the space and time distribution of two major krill consumers – humpback and minke whales – and that of krill fishing, off the Western Antarctic Peninsula,” explained Ryan. “We used whale tracking data for 58 humpback whales and 19 minke whales, to develop machine learning models that predict the monthly distribution of whale foraging areas, for six months.

“Using these predictions, we were able to estimate the monthly overlap between whales and fisheries, identifying times and places when and where competition was likely most intense.”

The results demonstrated a mismatch between the space and time scale at which krill fisheries are currently managed, and that at which fisheries operate and consumers forage.

“We found that krill catches had become increasingly spatially concentrated in a small number of hotspots, raising concerns about how local depletion of krill impacts the whales,” said Ryan. “And the information we collated on their foraging behaviour is fundamental to future precautionary management of the krill fishery, particularly the need for the fishery to more closely align the space and time scale of likely predator-fishery interactions.” With the current management approach, the fishery might appear sustainable overall, but it may in fact be overfishing krill in small areas, at times of the year when whales, seals and penguins most need to eat enough krill to survive.

Ryan and colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey, Scottish Association for Marine Science, and University of California Santa Cruz will tackle this issue in a new project funded by the UK Government through Darwin Plus. They will collect new fine-scale data on the simultaneous distribution and behaviour of krill and whales along the Western Antarctic Peninsula, to understand interactions among krill, whales and fisheries. This information will be used to improve krill fishery management and conserve krill-based Antarctic marine ecosystems. Overall, this project has the potential to make significant contributions towards the sustainable management of the Antarctic ecosystem.

Ryan brought his krill-related research with him to Southampton from the University of California Santa Cruz in America, in 2021. “In addition to the krill project I plan to continue my interest in how we use information about predators for marine conservation and management and to understand broader ecosystem patterns, processes and status,” said Ryan.

Lecturer, School of Ocean and Earth Science

DR MARTINA STIASNY

Lecturer, School of Ocean and Earth Science

Dr Martina Staisny is a marine biologist working in fish ecology, evolutionary ecology, and interdisciplinary fisheries science. She is interested in questions related to striking the balance between food security and sustainability in fisheries management and the effects of climate change on fish populations.

She is from Germany, and has also worked in Brussels and Scandinavia before coming to Southampton, both in research but also on the policy side for a regional German Government and the European Commission.

“I am interested in science that can be applied to marine and fisheries policy and solution-driven research,” said Dr Martina Stiasny.

“My keenness for ‘useful’ science comes from my work in policy implementation, I have seen from the other side in terms of using the research, what is needed, what works and what makes the biggest policy impact,” she explained.

“I started working on how climate change affects fish and fisheries because climate change is obviously the biggest challenge my generation faces; how do we mitigate climate change, adapt to changes that are happening, and still feed our children in a healthy way?”

An example of Martina’s work at the National Oceanography Centre, involves looking at how cod and herring eggs and larval fish react to different temperatures as well as other factors like ocean acidification or reduced oxygen concentrations to simulate climate change.

“The crux of the issue for fisheries management is how to ensure as many young fish as possible survive and remain healthy so we can feed a growing population, yet preserve the oceans,” said Martina. “I work mostly with early life stages of fish because they are the most affected by climate changes yet might also be at the core of potential adaptation, plus they are beautiful and great to work with.”

Having spent the past 17 years in Australia, it is little wonder Dr Chris Goatley’s area of expertise is coral reefs. Specifically, the tiny fish, referred to by scientists as cryptobenthic reef fishes, or simply “cryptos,” which seemingly help to keep coral reefs alive.

“Southampton may not have a coral reef on its doorstep, but it does have a wide range of expertise and incredible facilities for studying the evolution and ecology of tiny fish” explained Chris. “With cryptos being so small, we need to use high-tech methods such as DNA barcoding and micro-CT scanning to study how they feed and what feeds on them.”

Coral reefs support a huge wealth of life, but they grow in what are essentially ‘marine deserts’ because they thrive in clear, warm water which has very little plankton and very few nutrients. So how come their populations don’t collapse?

“The tiny crypto fish help keep the reef alive by recycling nutrients,” explained Chris. “They are highly abundant on coral reefs but only live for a few months before they are eaten by predators. They can reproduce within a month of being born and feed on reef waste (called detritus) that would otherwise be lost to waves and currents. By eating detritus, then being eaten themselves, they efficiently recycle the nutrients which sustain reef life. We need to understand how reefs survive, and essentially recycle their own material and matter so that we can ensure their preservation and existence. These crypto fish seem to be highly significant in that process and as such, there needs to be a clear understanding of how they survive and thrive.

“These crypto fish communities exist in ecosystems around the world, on reefs but also in almost every other marine ecosystem. The UK has a wide variety of cryptobenthic fishes” explained Chris. “My work at the moment is looking at them in the field and understanding how they change in different water types and what their role is in UK waters and how we can ensure their role for the future.”

DR CHRIS GOATLEY

Lecturer in the School of Ocean and Earth Science

COMMERCIAL FISHING: THE MOST DANGEROUS PEACETIME OCCUPATION

In 2021 Southampton engineers and public policy professionals were instrumental in a change to the UK fishing vessel safety policy intended to reduce the high rate of fatalities in the fishing industry, which is approximately 100 times higher than that of the UK general workforce.

“The Wolfson Method is so named because it was originally devised in 2006 by Barry Deakin, a Wolfson Unit engineer. The method enables small-scale fishers to assess whether their own vessels are at risk of capsizing in real operating conditions and to mitigate that risk,” said Matteo. “Funds awarded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation and the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI) enabled us to conduct research and produce evidence against the use of the roll period test (a simplified stability test for small craft) for appraising the stability of typical UK fishing vessels and advocated the use of the Wolfson Method in conjunction with other techniques such as the heel test.”

The Wolfson team took their research to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) and fishing industry stakeholders with the help of Dr Wassim Dbouk, a marine and maritime policy Research Fellow with Public Policy|Southampton (PPS)

“We made our evidence-based recommendations which ultimately resulted in the policy change and enabled the redraft of Marine Guidance Note 503(F) which I contributed to,” explained Matteo. “Our ability within the Unit to undertake the physical testing needed and the analysis required, coupled with our access to policy experts from across the University put us in a unique and highly qualified position to affect this safety guidance change.”

“The new Code of Practice for the Safety of Small Fishing Vessels came into force on 6th September 2021, and with regard to vessel stability and freeboard (distance between the deck and the waterline), key recommendations included all existing vessels under 15 metres length to be marked using the Wolfson Method or assessed by use of another acceptable method,” explained Dr Matteo Scarponi, Senior Research Engineer in the Wolfson Unit

The Wolfson Unit for Marine Technology and Industrial Aerodynamics (WUMTIA) provides expert naval architectural consultancy services to vessel designers, yacht owners and regulatory bodies worldwide. This commercial consultancy outfit within the University specialises in power craft and sailing yachts, experimental hydrodynamic and aerodynamic testing, computation fluid dynamics and marine design software.

Dr Matteo Scarponi

CUTTING CARBON

The University of Southampton is at the forefront of research into cleaner, smarter, and safer maritime practices.

The shipping industry is essential to the world economy as 90% of globally traded goods are transported by sea. Currently, this vital activity produces over 1,000 million tonnes of CO 2 every year, which amounts to around three per cent of all greenhouse emissions produced by human activity.

The United Nations International Maritime Organisation’s goal to reduce greenhouse emissions from international shipping by 50 per cent by 2050 presents a real and urgent challenge. At the COP26 climate conference, states declared their ambition and intent to support the establishment of green shipping corridors – zero-emission shipping routes between two ports – by signing the Clydebank Declaration. This demonstrates that a coalition of countries, including the UK, intend to be more ambitious in striving towards net-zero shipping.

The University of Southampton has longstanding research interests in how to make ships more efficient and the best approaches to zero-carbon shipping. Southampton has received grants and contracts in this area from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation (an independent global charity), European Commission, UK Ministry of Defence, and Government and Research Councils, totalling £7.4 million between 2000 and 2020.

The University’s capacity in this area continues to grow. Professor Stephen Turnock, Head of Department, Civil, Maritime and Environmental Engineering explained: “Our investment in facilities like the 138-metre

Boldrewood tank, expertise in system modelling, electrochemistry, cryogenic fuels, and materials science amongst others, as well as those of our wider Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute community, are allowing Southampton to support the urgent transition process required in ship design and port infrastructure.”

Centre for Maritime Futures

The Centre for Maritime Futures (CMF) sits at the heart of Southampton’s work in decarbonisation and related areas, and brings together three key University institutes: the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI), the Centre for Machine Intelligence and The Alan Turing Institute.

The CMF is a collective of people, facilities and external stakeholders in maritime and digital technologies. The result of a gift from Shell Shipping and Maritime of £1.5 million to the University in 2019, the Centre brings together university and industry partners to transform the energy shipping industry to be safer, cleaner, and more efficient.

Professor Dominic Hudson, Shell Professor in Ship Efficiency, said “Our experts at the University, with collaborators at Shell, have been working together to develop groundbreaking digital and technological advances to significantly reduce the carbon footprint for future international shipping. As our work has powered forward, so has the global drive to improve carbon emissions and, in the long-term, become a net zero emissions industry.”

Clean Maritime Demonstrator Competition

Led by the SMMI, in partnership with the Centre for Maritime Futures, a multidisciplinary team of Southampton researchers worked on three rounds of projects from the Department of Transport’s first Clean Maritime Demonstrator Competition (CMDC) to accelerate the decarbonisation of the maritime industries.

That competition, managed by Innovate UK, is investing £20 million in projects across the UK, to address the urgent need to decarbonise the global maritime network. It is part of the government’s Ten Point Plan to position the UK at the forefront of green technologies. The programme supports 55 projects across the UK, all working on the research, design, and development of zero-emission technology and infrastructure solutions to accelerate decarbonisation in the maritime sector.

“Our involvement in many of the Clean Maritime Demonstrator Competition projects is a testament to Southampton’s contribution to the global push for a greener maritime industry,” said Dominic. “In total, we have now been involved with projects worth £1.8 million to the University.”

Cutting carbon

Zero-carbon base load power for large ships

Cruise ships are floating cities with major basepower requirements at sea and in-port. Known as the ‘hotel-load’, this vital function produces electricity for all the ships’ non-propulsion needs. These include heating, ventilation, airconditioning, and waste processing. However, powering these demands emits pollutants, particularly over port towns and cities when the ships are docked.

The challenge is to replace the hydrocarbonfuelled generators that typically perform this function on large cruise ships. To address this the Southampton-based cruise ship owner, Carnival UK, and trading company, Lloyd’s Register, joined forces with Shell, Ceres Power, an innovative fuel-cell company, and the SMMI, teamed up to establish the feasibility of using a cleaner alternative through the first round of CMDC funding.

The team looked at innovative clean technology that could replace the old generators with new solid-oxide fuel cells and batteries in future ship designs and builds. The study successfully demonstrated a reduction in carbon emissions of up to 36% at sea, while substantially reducing pollutant oxides of Nitrogen and eliminating particle pollution.

Ammonia marine propulsion system

The SMMI has partnered with marine robotics company Ocean Infinity (OI), in Southampton, along with Shell the University of Oxford, and the University of Oxford spin-out, Oxford Green Innotech.

This consortium is developing a fully electric, zero-emissions system for use on OI’s growing fleet of uncrewed ships.

The Southampton team’s contribution has been to develop a fully instrumented, modelscale, container ship to assess the ships’ power demand when operating in waves. They then completed a programme of tests in the towing tank. They also used the Institute of Sound and Vibrations Research’s (ISVR) large, six degrees of freedom, motion platform.

The Ammonia-Marine-Propulsion technology coming out of this collaboration has the potential to be part of a zero-carbon coastal highway for the UK.

Feasibility of ultra-long-endurance hydrogen-powered uncrewed surface vessels

The Southampton team is also collaborating with start-up Acua Ocean, whose Chief Operating Officer, Mike Tinmouth, is a Southampton alumnus, to develop autonomous Unmanned Surface Vehicles. They are long-endurance, liquid-hydrogen-powered,

uncrewed, guard vessels that monitor and protect the marine environment. These offer a cost-effective means of protecting and managing oceans and waterways.

Acua is testing the feasibility of their patentpending technology designs with scaled models in the University’s towing tank.

The SMMI’s work with Acua Ocean (AO) continues through the second round of CMDC projects. Together they aim to demonstrate the capability of a commercial Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) system which could undertake maintenance and decrease downtime on offshore infrastructure.

This includes a feasibility study, in the form of a wave tank test, of the small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) hydrogen-powered vessel designed in the first project. This would demonstrate the capability of AO’s vessels and enable them and their end customers to accelerate the development of an ROV deployment system from these small waterplanes.

Further work with Acua Ocean is ongoing through the third round of CMDC funding. This will involve creating a safe port-side hydrogen supply system for the hydrogen-powered vessel and looking more widely at the feasibility of moving freight from land to sea and creating zero-carbon coastal highways.

Concept design of a novel liquid Hydrogen carrier being tested in the Boldrewood towing tank

Powering ships of the future with wind

Ships of the future could once again be powered by wind if a project funded in CMDC3, which retrofits large vessels with ultramodern wing-sails, wind assisted sail technology, is successful..

The research team intends to create new software tools which accurately predict how modern vessels perform on the ocean when fitted with FastRig wing-sails, developed by UK company Smart Green Shipping.

The Lead scientist Dr Joseph Banks, from SMMI, explained, “Ships powered by wind are obviously nothing new – but almost every large vessel operating today is powered by fossil fuels, leaving a lasting mark on the environment. While new wind-assist technologies are being developed, many are not ready for market and their predicted fuel savings have not been independently verified at sea, which is why research projects like this are so important.”

As part of the programme, scientists will test the impact of a retractable 20-metrehigh FastRig wing-sail retrofitted on the commercial ship the Pacific Grebe – a British 105-metre vessel. Researchers will investigate the interactions between the wing-sails and the ship hydrodynamics enabling accurate predictions of vessel performance. This will require innovative numerical simulations backed up by experiments conducted in Southampton’s 138-metre Boldrewood towing tank and RJ Mitchell wind tunnel.

Looking ahead

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the United Nations Agency with responsibility for marine and maritime policy, is likely to increase its ambition for greater and faster cuts in shipping emissions at its Marine Environment Protection Committee meeting (MEPC) in July this year. This will add further urgency for the shipping industry to reduce its emissions and seek innovative solutions and technology to improve efficiency and switch to new fuels.

The CMDC projects are feasibility projects. Dominic explained: “We are now working on the next steps, publishing the results of the trials and exploring potential largerscale projects that optimise the learning achieved and look at integrating the tested technologies as a closer step to net zero.”

The University is looking to build on its critical mass of expertise and facilities to address some of the critical challenges facing the sector, especially those requiring a wholesystems approach. With the development of major initiatives in the area such as the Solent Freeport, and the Solent Cluster – there is a unique opportunity to position the region as the future of clean, green maritime.

Find out more www.southampton.ac.uk/ engineering/research/centres/ centre-for-maritime-futures.page

Cutting carbon

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE OF MARITIME RESEARCH

Southampton’s institutes, partnerships and project successes are fuelling the future of maritime research by attracting and supporting the next generation of researchers into marine decarbonisation.

Investigation of novel powertrains for zero-emissions shipping fuels

The SMMI and CMF welcomed a new PhD student and researcher, Panos Manias, at the end of 2022. Having completed his degree in Mechanical Engineering at Southampton, including an internship working on an innovative liquid Hydrogen carrier that was supported by Shell, Panos worked on the first round of Clean Maritime Demonstrator projects before registering for a PhD.

Panos will continue to develop technical modelling capability for future fuel, machinery and propulsion options for large vessels.

Dynamic Energy System Modelling to Assess Viable Zero-Emission Shipping Solutions

Shell is progressing with three large-scale demonstrations of fuel cell technologies onboard ships, after the potential indicated in the first three Clean Maritime Demonstrator Competition projects and their investigations. The dynamic energy model for shipboard power consumption developed by Southampton PhD student Charlie McKinlay, supported by the CMF, helped underpin these CMDC projects.

Charlie’s research has developed dynamic energy models using data gathered during a ship’s operation to explore decarbonisation strategies for long-distance merchant shipping. The model predicts the size of key propulsion components, such as fuel cells, battery storage and fuel tanks for different future fuels and scenarios, in this case for one of Shell’s large Liquefied Natural Gas Carriers.

Methane capture using Metal Organic Frameworks

Supported by the Centre for Maritime Futures, the University will also be starting a new PhD project in 2023 looking at the potential for Methane capture using Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) in a collaboration between the Schools of Chemistry and Engineering.

Methane has a much higher global warming potential than Carbon Dioxide, so it is important to look at innovative ways to reduce the small Methane ‘slip’, unburnt Methane passing through the engine, from gas-powered engines used in some ships.

THE SOLENT CLUSTER

In late 2022 the University of Southampton alongside the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership and ExxonMobil, became founding partners in The Solent Cluster The Cluster will be the first major decarbonisation initiative that would substantially reduce CO 2 emissions from industry, transport and households across the Solent and Southern England.

The Cluster is a cross-sector collaboration of international organisations, including manufacturers and engineering companies, regional businesses and industries, leading logistics and infrastructure operators and academic institutions, to bring together proven expertise in carbon capture and storage and hydrogen technology.

Dr Lindsay-Marie Armstrong, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Academic Cluster Lead for the Solent Industrial Decarbonisation Cluster at the University of Southampton, said: “This effort could position the Solent at the centre of low carbon fuel production in the UK and make a major contribution to the country’s Net Zero ambitions by 2050. The project could capture approximately three million metric tons of CO 2 every year.

“The Solent is recognised as one of the leading contributors of CO2 emissions with approximately 3.2 million metric tons of CO2 emissions released from energy-intensive manufacturing processes every year so to form a decarbonisation cluster that spans the public, private and higher education sectors is a monumental step forward for the region.”

In March this year, 11 partners of the Solent Cluster Governing committee attended the House of Commons, sponsored by Steve Brine MP, Conservative Member of Parliament for Winchester. Attendees included Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt MP, Conservative Member of Parliament for Portsmouth North; Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons; and Dr Alan Whitehead MP, Labour Member of Parliament for Southampton Test.

The Cluster’s highlighted key messages throughout the discussion:

• It is the biggest and most diverse cluster in the country, with 56 members, including local authorities, global and local businesses, universities and colleges and other community and representative bodies. A notable strength of the cluster is that an academic institution, the University of Southampton, has been embedded from the outset.

• The Cluster is backed by companies with the technical know-how and global track record in delivering effective low carbon solutions, including international energy producers with proven expertise.

• An anchor project is the development of a hydrogen production facility at Fawley, with carbon capture and storage. It will produce low carbon fuel at scale to power industry and homes, local transport, as well as sustainable fuels for the maritime and aviation sectors, delivering positive impacts far beyond the Solent region.

• By developing the ability to produce and deliver lower carbon fuels and energy, through reliable supplies of hydrogen, the cluster will help UK businesses remain competitive within the global market while supporting energy resilience, fuel security and affordability.

“This discussion was key to ensuring embedded support for the Cluster from the MPs across the region, as we embark on this once-in-a-generation opportunity. The aim is to drive forward the development of a low carbon economy for the Solent region and beyond while creating new high-skill jobs in the technologies of low-carbon,” concluded Lindsay-Marie.

Dr Lindsay-Marie Armstrong

FROM SMALL STATE TO MARITIME EMPIRE: UNLOCKING THE DATA

By the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Britain was on its way from being a peripheral player in European trade to becoming a maritime superpower. Research at Southampton is challenging pre-existing notions of how and why this happened.

Comings and goings at the country’s ports have been meticulously recorded since ‘port books’ were introduced in 1565. In each county head-port, the customs officials recorded the name and home port of every ship that entered or left the harbour, the name of the shipmaster, the cargo carried, and the names of the merchants freighting the goods. The port books largely exist in an unbroken sequence, meaning that developments in shipping capacity, trade, and seafarers’ careers can be measured precisely.

Historians at the University of Southampton are examining these records in detail –contained in some 20,000 books – for the first time. The three-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council that started in 2022 – ‘English Merchant Shipping, Trade, and Maritime Communities from the Spanish Armada to the Seven Years’ War’ – aims to uncover the full story behind Britain’s rise to become a global maritime power.

Dr Craig Lambert, Associate Professor of Maritime History, and lead researcher on the project, said: “There were huge changes in the volume and pattern of the country’s trade between the Spanish Armada and the Seven Years’ War. Through this project, we’re hoping to add more granular detail to our understanding of what exactly changed, why, and how.”

The project features three strands:

• Merchant shipping: enumerating the ships in the fleet and how this changed over the course of two centuries

• Maritime trade: mapping trade routes and how these evolved and expanded

• Maritime communities: understanding the ways in which maritime trade and commerce affected the lives of people in port towns and beyond.

Dr John McAleer, Associate Professor of History and co-investigator on the project,

outlined: “The maritime community stretched far beyond a ship’s crew. A whole host of people and communities were involved in supplying, repairing, and facilitating the merchant fleet. The impact of Britain’s maritime activities stretched far inland and touched many lives and livelihoods.”

Old meets new

The research team is fusing history with stateof-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve its aims.

Research fellow Dr Gary Baker is spending four months photographing the pages of the 20,000 port books, held at The National Archives (TNA) in Kew. The result will be about 500,000 photographs.

Working with Jason Sadler, Principal Research Fellow in the University’s GeoData Institute, and machine learning company Osiris-AI, the team will produce a database of hundreds of

thousands of voyages, which will be publicly available via the project website.

Craig said: “We’re applying some real science to this. Using AI, we’ll be able to see not just where British ships went but to map when they were sailing, who was on board, and what these vessels were carrying.”

But the historic records have already thrown up some unexpected and unusual challenges. Some of the books have been found to contain mould and must be quarantined and checked by conservation specialists at TNA before they can be photographed. Others are faded and almost impossible to read. Perhaps counterintuitively, the older records are easier to decipher, as Craig explained: “Before 1620, the records were written on vellum [animal skin], a high-quality material that survives well. These records are extremely well preserved. After 1620, however, the records were kept on paper and some have faded a lot.”

Trade tales

The detail of trade movements that the records contain will give the team a clearer picture of how Britain’s maritime trade changed.

“One of the most interesting aspects of the story will be the change in consumption patterns,” said John. “British consumers developed a taste for luxury items, such as tea and spices from Asia, as well as tobacco and cotton from America, and sugar from the Caribbean. That affected maritime trade. Historians have known this for a long time, but this project should provide much more detail.”

Finding stories

The project is also set to throw up fascinating human stories.

“We hope our research will help us to understand a lot more about the people from the time and overturn some myths about the maritime community in the process,”

1 The Golden Hinde, in London. Image courtesy of Jose L. Marin

2 The SS Great Britain, in Bristol. Image courtesy of National Historic Ships UK

3 British and Dutch merchant vessels at Barbados, oil on canvas painting by Isaac Sailmaker, 1694. From the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art

4 Inside one of the port books held at The National Archives

5 One of the 20,000 port books being examined by Southampton researchers

explained John. “We’ve already found a great deal of variety in the ages and backgrounds of crew on board ships, as well as plenty of evidence of women acting as ship owners and merchants. Maritime communities were much more diverse than the stereotypical image of the salty old sea dog with a wooden leg.”

The team will produce three enriched case studies to bring some of these historical stories to life, working with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, the SS Great Britain in Bristol, the Golden Hinde in London, and a range of groups in Southampton, including the Sarah Siddons Fan Club theatre group.

Find out more maritimebritain.org

CONFRONTING COASTAL COMMUNITIES’ CHALLENGES

Coastal erosion, sea-level rise, infrastructure difficulties, port-related issues and social deprivation are all common challenges in communities on the coast.

The iPACT (Infrastructure for Port Cities and Coastal Towns) network has been set up to address these issues, bringing together a multidisciplinary academic community. The group is focusing on three case study locations: Southampton, Morecambe and North Norfolk.

William Powrie, Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Southampton, who leads iPACT, said: “The three sites encapsulate many problems of coastal areas, from eroding coastlines, to social deprivation,

to loss of livelihoods, to port-related issues, to tourism opportunities.

“Coastal towns and cities get a raw deal. Even with a busy bustling port, such as Southampton, there is a question as to how much it really benefits the local community. Goods come in and need to be distributed, but how do we provide these transport links without severing communities?

“In places like Morecambe, which used to be a thriving holiday town, a lot of guest accommodation is now used as temporary housing, resulting in a transient population that does not have a huge amount of money to spend. On the other hand, there is a huge

regeneration opportunity in the Eden Project Morecambe – how do we maximise the benefit of this for the local community? North Norfolk has an ageing population, and the area faces the threat of coastal erosion – how do some communities decide that they may need to relocate inland, and how do we provide the infrastructure to enable this?”

Rethinking infrastructure

iPACT is focusing on infrastructure to tackle these challenges.

“There are benefits to being on the coast, but there are problems too,” said William. “The layout of coastal towns and cities is often one. For example, in the Solent, everything is spread

A new network is bringing together academics from coastal locations around the UK to tackle challenges inherent to being by the sea.

Artist’s impression of Eden Project Morecambe, which was granted planning permission in January 2022. Image courtesy of Eden Project.

out like a ribbon, rather than the conventional radial set-up of a city such as Birmingham or London. There can also be disbenefits of ports. Southampton, for example, is a waterfront city with no public waterfront. And the transport links to ports cause problems, cutting off communities.

“So, infrastructure is what we’re interested in. How can it work for people to help give them a better deal? It must be sustainable and low carbon, resilient to the impacts of climate change, and contribute to levelling up.”

The network started with a series of community consultations to understand how the communities feel.

“One of the interesting things to come out of these consultations is that there is a lot of pride in the local communities,” explained William. “We thought, for example, that Morecambe could benefit from better links to Lancaster, but, in fact, the community told us they want their own identity in Morecambe.”

A series of pilot studies focusing on themes from the consultations and a series of development sandpits – one in each of the three case study locations – will begin in April 2023 and run for 10 months.

iPACT was established in 2022 and is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences

Research Council. The network brings together Investigators from the University of Southampton, the University of Strathclyde, Queen’s University Belfast, Lancaster University, the University of East Anglia, and the University of Brighton, and researchers from these universities and elsewhere. Southampton’s involvement includes representatives from the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute, Arts and Humanities, and Engineering. Find out more futuretowns.soton.ac.uk/ipact/

Understanding and appreciating the importance of our oceans is key to safeguarding their – and our – future. Ocean literacy sits at the heart of this.

AIMING FOR A SEA CHANGE

TESTING THE WATERS

Diving into ocean-themed narratives on social media was at the heart of a multidisciplinary pilot study in 2022.

The project, which came about following a University-wide sandpit on Narrative and Storytelling, involved social media mining to identify narratives that are not present or are muffled on social media.

The project team included Professor Susan Gourvenec (Engineering), Dr Stephanie Jones (English), Dr Bindi Shah (Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology), Dr Dina Lupin (Law), and Professor Les Carr (Electronics and Computer Science).

Stephanie outlined: “The discussions we found through the digital mining and scraping work are those we expected –the ocean as an economic zone, a war zone, a leisure zone and as a visual aesthetic are at the surface, and the ocean as an ecology, a scene of inequality, a multisensory experience, and a site of protest are submerged. But it’s perhaps even starker and less edifying than we thought it would be.”

The team compared two community projects – testimonies about the role of

the ocean from Kerala in India, and from South Africa. “These projects brought emotion and attachment to the ocean – in terms of economic livelihood, heritage and religion – into focus,” said Stephanie.

The study will inform social media search terms for future work, added Stephanie: “This project deliberately worked with broad terms to yield a snapshot. In critical combination with the reports on the community projects, this will allow us to select and combine a more subtle range and scale of search terms in future work.”

‘Ocean literacy’ is defined as the understanding of our individual and collective impact and influence on the ocean, and the ocean’s impact and influence on us.

Here, we outline three current research projects at Southampton that are engaging directly with ocean literacy – and seeking to improve it.

Creative writing

Southampton researchers are working with creative writing facilitators ArtfulScribe to address waste along the south coast of England.

The pilot project is being conducted by Dr Stephanie Jones, Associate Professor in English and a Director of the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities (SIAH), and Dr Katie Holdway, Research Fellow at SIAH.

Stephanie outlined: “The Creative Writing Against Coastal Waste project is working with ArtfulScribe to design and deliver creative writing in the community projects. The focus is coastal waste, which, in our region, is a massive issue.

“The project started after we saw images postlockdown of staggering amounts of waste on our beaches, and heard that local councils are struggling to fund beach cleaning. This is about using creative methods to try to influence behaviour change and inform policy.”

The project’s ultimate aim is to create a toolkit to support local creative practitioners in developing events that engage the public with coastal sustainability and ocean literacy.

Katie said: “The project is giving local creatives access to cutting-edge resources about ocean literacy and coastal waste management, including podcasts, blog posts and carefully curated interviews with experts in the field.”

Matt West, Director of ArtfulScribe, added: “Processing challenges associated with climate change is a collective responsibility

– we need to do what we can to cultivate an environment in which positive change is possible. As a writer development agency, it’s incumbent upon us to use our skills and knowledge of language to help communicate, raise awareness of, and encourage behaviour change towards the prospect of a brighter future for all species.”

Changing behaviour

A separate ocean literacy project is looking to shift people’s perception of the ocean via policy.

Dr Wassim Dbouk, Marine and Maritime Policy Research Fellow, is seeking to produce evidence to demonstrate the need for future policies and guidelines to focus on changing people’s perception of the ocean, from thinking of it as a separate entity, to seeing it as something they are intrinsically linked to.

Wassim said: “I started thinking about it when I came across a Parliamentary report on behaviour change, which was critical of the approach adopted thus far to achieve behaviour change for climate action.

“This shift in perception would lead people to adopt healthier behaviours around the ocean since they would equate it with adopting healthier behaviours towards themselves.”

The project is running throughout 2023, funded by Public Policy Southampton’s New Things Fund, a programme created to provide the impetus to start a journey towards policy engagement.

Public perceptions

Boosting ocean literacy – especially in relation to the deep sea – via film and art is the focal point of PhD student Fiona Middleton’s current work.

Fiona, a student on the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute’s Intelligent Oceans Leverhulme Doctoral Programme, is working with Brighton-based artist and filmmaker Emma Critchley. Emma is currently researching her next film on deep-sea mining.

Fiona said: “Emma and I are holding two events to explore public perceptions of the deep sea, and people’s experiences and feelings about it – as well as how different modes of literacy and art mediate those perceptions. We are looking to experiment with what ‘deep ocean literacy’ might be.”

The events will feature Emma’s last film about deep-sea mining, Common Heritage, as well as a panel talk followed by open discussion and a creative workshop where participants will have the opportunity to handle specimens from the deep seabed. The workshops will take place on Saturday 29 April 2023 at the Quay Arts Centre, Newport, Isle of Wight, and on Saturday 13 May 2023 at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton.

For more information

www.quayarts.org

www.jhg.art/whats-on

Above Stills from the film Common Heritage, by Emma Critchley, 2019

Dr Stephanie Jones

“The Creative Writing Against Coastal Waste project is working with ArtfulScribe to design and deliver creative writing in the community projects. The focus is coastal waste, which, in our region, is a massive issue.”

UNDERWATER CULTURE

With a surge in global recognition of the importance of ocean preservation and sustainability, there is a timeliness to Southampton’s significant work in this area.

“In 2017, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission was tasked with developing a focused approach to addressing the many factors affecting global marine systems and to manage them sustainably through ocean observations and research,” explained Dr Helen Farr, Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton.

“The result was the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021–2030, which is a large-scale UN initiative that promotes a common framework for supporting ocean stakeholders in studying and assessing the health of the world’s oceans and implementing change to deliver ‘the ocean we need for the future we want’,” Helen explained.

The Decade of Ocean Science complements the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 14 – “Life below Water”. Which, when created in 2016, identified the need to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.

“The Ocean Decade recognises the need for innovation, research and policy in implementing the sustainable development goals; environmental concerns are forefront, but how these relate to society, for example, cultural heritage is still less developed,” said Helen. “To work on improving the visibility of maritime cultural heritage within the Decade, we have been working directly with UNESCO and the Ocean Decade Heritage Network, we now have a Cultural Heritage Framework Programme within the

Decade. Through this we hope to improve interdisciplinary communication between coastal, often Indigenous, communities, cultural heritage management, and marine science and industry. This is vital for marine management.”

Preservation in action

Maritime cultural heritage is important, not only because it works to preserve and document the past, including past environmental changes across a variety of scales, but because it can help in improving the future of an ever-changing and at-risk, ocean and coastal landscape.

“The variety of research projects we work on with colleagues here at the University and in organisations around the world, really

does demonstrate the large scope of activity in this area,” said Helen. “With our oceans at such a critical point environmentally, it is key we look to the past to answer questions about what to do in the future. We can start by understanding the value of our coastal and maritime heritage, its importance to current communities, the value of traditional knowledge, and how these landscapes and seascapes have been changing through human history. Through this, we can better understand the societal effects of climate change, sea-level rise and flash floods, offshore development, policy and planning. Through increasing ocean literacy, community engagement and interdisciplinary projects, we can work to protect this heritage.”

Dr Helen Farr

“With our oceans at such a critical point environmentally, it is key we look to the past to answer questions about what to do in the future.”

ORIGINS OF SEAFARING

Helen is heading up an interdisciplinary ERC project which is researching some of the earliest seafaring in human history, to answer questions of When, Where, Who and How in relation to the earliest ocean crossings in world history.

The ACROSS project is focused on the geographical region between the Sunda shelf, Island South East Asia, and Sahul, Australia and New Guinea,” she explained. “The chronology and notion of ‘arrival’ of people in Sahul is debated, with the accepted ontology of many Aboriginal peoples being that they have been on country since the Creation, from ‘time immemorial’.

“Meanwhile the nature and timing of the peopling of Australia within western science, places this dispersal within the wider context of global ‘colonisation’, potentially between 65,000-50,000 years ago. This represents some of the earliest evidence of modern human occupation outside Africa. Yet, even at the greatest sea-level lowstand, the peopling of Sahul would have involved seafaring.”

The project is looking into the maritime nature of this dispersal, which is what makes it important to questions of technological, cognitive and social human development.

Helen said: “These issues have traditionally been the preserve of archaeologists but with a multidisciplinary approach that embraces a unique combination of marine geoarchaeology, oceanography and archaeogenetics, we have the opportunity to bring together and examine different data sources.”

The ACROSS project has three distinct elements to it: land, sea, and people. Each element brings together interdisciplinary research methods to feed the overall picture of early seafaring and its effects on people and place.

Helen explained the elements: “Land is where we look at the changing coastline, paleoenvironment and now-submerged landscape of southern Sunda and northern Sahul. Changes in sea level associated with glacial cycles have led to significant changes in coastal configurations, understanding the location and geomorphology of the palaeocoast is a first step in understanding seafaring, population movement and human activity on the coast in the deep past.

“Coasts are active zones, so in addition to an understanding of the sea level, an analysis of coastal geomorphology through time includes calculations of sedimentation and erosion rates, uplift and palaeoenvironmental change. By understanding the nature of a changing coast through time, we can understand coastal productivity and the availability of different raw materials or resources.”

For the ‘sea element’, research into early seafaring must consider the active maritime landscape.

“ACROSS studies the marine environment, including modelling ancient tides, and the oceanic currents, and includes research into climate change, studying the effects of seasonality and monsoon through time,” said Helen. “We use the palaeogeographic data to map boundaries for palaeohydrodynamic modelling, to investigate the changing ocean currents and tidal regimes through the region in the past. With these data sets, we can run a variety of seafaring models to investigate routes and the likeliness of undirected drift versus simple forms of directed propulsion.”

The ‘people’ element of ACROSS aims to add to the understanding of the movement of people through Sunda and into Sahul by combining a detailed study of past land and seascapes with a study of archaeogenetics to map population history and movement. It also has worked to collate oral traditions of seafaring and maritime activity.

Helen concluded: “Overall the project has already given us incredible insight into the peopling of Australia in deep time and the role of seafaring within this. Rather than narratives of early colonisation by accidental drift, our results suggest a higher level of complexity in maritime technology and planning was achieved by our ancestors 65,0000 years ago. More than this though, it has demonstrated the deep connection Indigenous people have with Sea Country within the region and the long durée of their maritime heritage.”

Dr Helen Farr

ENDANGERED ARCHAEOLOGY

The Maritime Endangered Archaeology project, MarEA, headed up by Dr Lucy Blue from the University of Southampton’s Centre for Maritime Archaeology, aims to rapidly and comprehensively document and assess threats to the maritime and coastal archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

“Maritime heritage sites in this particular region face many threats, particularly from conflict, rising sea levels and urban, agricultural and industrial development,” explained Lucy. “The protection and preservation of these sites is vital for increasing our understanding of maritime cultural heritage and for the potential benefits which heritage could bring to economic prosperity in the region. However, existing research is fragmented, essential baseline data on-site location, condition and threats limited, and local agencies often lack the specialist expertise to deal with both maritime heritage sites and coastal and marine processes.”

Partnering with Ulster University, Lucy’s team received a grant of £2 million from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, to support the MarEA project over five years (2019-2024).

“I am leading a team with Dr Colin Breen from Ulster University’s School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, to study satellite imagery, published data and archival information from coastal and nearshore zones across the MENA region,” said Lucy. “The collected data and the condition assessments for all analysed sites will be added to the Arches-based open access database platform of the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project hosted by the University of Oxford.”

The EAMENA project Lucy refers to was established to respond to the increasing threats to archaeological sites in the Middle East and North Africa. This project uses satellite imagery to rapidly record and make available information about archaeological sites and landscapes which are under threat.

EAMENA’s spatial database provides the fundamental information for each site, including an assessment of its condition and level of risk and archaeological detail pertaining to each site. It is accessible to all heritage professionals and academic institutions with an interest in the archaeological heritage of the Middle East and North Africa.

“These two projects complement each other, MarEA enhancing the data collated with a focus on the sea, forging a very effective collaboration,” explained Lucy. “The work the projects are undertaking in this region has led to much communication with organisations and Governments in the countries, which has, in turn, led to sharing of expertise, training, and upskilling of local experts and teams. That has been wonderful to see.”

MarEA in Gaza

However, archaeological research in the area has been limited in the past 20 years due to several factors, largely political unrest in the region. As a result, knowledge of the Gaza Strip, a place often referred to as a historical landmark between Egypt and different empires in the Near East, is outdated.

As part of the MarEA project, Lucy’s team undertook a remote assessment of the area which demonstrated the widespread impact of coastal erosion, building development and conflict on Gaza’s archaeological sites.

“The lack of preservation of these important cultural sites in the Gaza Strip such as Anthedon Harbour, Rafah and Tell el Ajjul, is exacerbated by lack of funds, restricted access to sites, systematic damage and destruction, limited capacity and expertise, and limited public awareness,” explained Dr Georgia Andreou, research associate on the project. “All these factors are impeding the documentation, monitoring, and management of Gaza’s rich maritime cultural heritage and we wanted to assist in remedying that if at all possible.”

“We worked closely with the Department of Antiquities and Ministry of Tourism in Gaza,” said Georgia. “Who were very supportive of this and future maritime archaeological projects, creating important opportunities to establish partnerships, build capacity and develop longer-term maritime archaeological projects in the region.

“The Ministry indicated two sites as exceptionally vulnerable and at imminent risk of coastal erosion, illicit digging, which is typically for sand mining, looting and building development. And our team responded to the urgent need for the documentation and assessment of the two sites.”

A team of Archaeology and GIS students from the Islamic University of Gaza received training from MarEA to undertake a detailed topographical survey of the tells (aerial and terrestrial survey of the tell, the scarp and the beach; snorkel survey in front of the sites) to document the actively eroding, partly built on, and vulnerable to looting, archaeological sites. Tells are ancient settlements that were made up largely of mudbrick architecture, that over time were eroded and repeatedly built over, forming a hill of archaeological remains that stretches back in time, essentially getting older the deeper you dig.

In addition, the team created the first-ever maritime archaeological field school in Gaza, which trained students from the Islamic University of Gaza on the methods and theories of maritime archaeology, building much-needed capacity in the Gaza Strip with respect to maritime archaeology.

“We are hoping to provide skills that will enable archaeologists based in Gaza to monitor other maritime archaeological sites in the region,” said Georgia. “If we can enhance existing skillsets and create networks of stakeholders with different interests in the maritime landscape such as archaeologists, coastal engineers and geologists in Gaza, we can create more targeted training programmes on coastal monitoring and heritage management within the wider framework of Integrated Coastal Zone Management process, that can in the future attract funding from multiple resources to undertake more of these preservation projects in this historically rich and important area.”

Underwater culture THE BLACK SEA

The Black Sea Maritime Archaeological Project (BSMAP), led by Professor Jon Adams from the University of Southampton, is one of the largest of its type ever undertaken. Working with an international team, funded by the Expedition and Education Foundation, a charitable foundation established to support marine research, the team surveyed the Bulgarian shelf of the Black Sea where thousands of years ago large areas of land were inundated as the sea level rose after the last Ice Age.

Dr Helen Farr, a co-I on the project, explained: “The project investigated Holocene sea-level rise in the region, as sea levels began to rise, the once isolated Black Sea was reconnected to the Mediterranean, much research and speculation has surrounded this process of reconnection and whether this led to a great flood event’.

The team carried out geophysical surveys to understand the sedimentation of the basin and took core samples to characterize and date the various formation facies.

“During these surveys, the team found and inspected 65 shipwrecks, many of which were of types known from historical sources but never before seen,” said Helen. “Their preservation was so good due to the anoxic, or low oxygen, conditions of the Black Sea below 200 metres. The ships we discovered were beautifully preserved, in some cases with masts and rigging still intact, including the incredible 2500-year-old sailed galley from the Ancient Greek period discovered in 2000 metres of water. The other shipwrecks spanned the Roman, Ottoman and Byzantine Empires, as well as Medieval and other historical ships. Alongside the changing environmental histories that this project documented, these ships provided new data on the

maritime interconnectivity of Black Sea coastal communities and manifest ways of life and seafaring that stretch back through the cultural history of the region.”

This deep-water research was enabled using state-of-the-art offshore survey vessels equipped with the most advanced geophysics and underwater survey systems. The project used two Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs): the ‘Supporter’ a Work Class ROV is optimised for high-resolution 3D photogrammetry and video and equipped with robotic arms for excavation or retrieval of artefacts and the ROV ‘Surveyor Interceptor’, a revolutionary high-speed survey vehicle developed by the survey companies MMT and Reach Subsea. The ROV interceptor could fly at three times the speed of conventional ROVs and carried an entire suite of geophysical instrumentation as well as lights, high-definition cameras and a laser scanner. This technology revolutionizes how we can undertake accurate work at great depths.

Black Sea MAP’s team established a formal partnership with the Bulgarian Institute of Archaeology, the Bulgarian Museum, and the Bulgarian Centre for Underwater Archaeology. The project operated under permits from the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Foreign Affairs in strict adherence to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001). From its outset, engagement and education were written into this project, as well as providing training for multiple STEM scholars, the project has been disseminated to schools nationwide, used for STEM learning, created an award-winning roadshow, documentary films and worked with the Digital Humanities team within the University to create an IMAX immersive experience.

“The ships we discovered were beautifully preserved, in some cases with masts and rigging still intact, including the incredible 2500-year-old sailed galley from the Ancient Greek period discovered in 2000 metres of water.”

Dr Helen Farr

3D Image of Ancient Greek shipwreck. Courtesy of Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz

Underwater culture

RISING FROM THE DEPTHS –BAHARI YETU, URITHI WETU (OUR OCEAN, OUR HERITAGE)

The coast around Bagamoyo, Tanzania, is alive with a sight rarely seen elsewhere in the world today: locally-built wooden watercraft, powered by sail, and engaged in economic activity.

The sight of these traditional boats is often used as a representation of Tanzania’s coastal beauty and monetized to attract tourists. However, for the Bagamoyo communities who build and use these craft, economic development, urban expansion, the planned Bagamoyo Special Economic Zone (or Mega Port) and tourism development—are pressuring ‘traditional’ ways of life and threatening the practices that build these iconic craft.

Dr Lucy Blue, in collaboration with maritime and heritage academics from the Universities of Exeter and Dar es Salaam, have been working with maritime communities in Bagamoyo to explore, through co-created, collaborative engagement, the value of maritime heritage as perceived by the communities of the region, and to document endangered material culture, craft and fishing practice.

“This community faces displacement and loss of access to traditional fish landings, markets and construction areas, while coping with overfishing and disruption to traditional timber supplies unless visibility is brought to these important heritage assets,” said Lucy. “Besides ongoing documentation of the living maritime heritage, the project has already successfully conducted a series of co-created workshops, engaging local communities of boat-builders and fishers, as well as regional and national policymakers.

“We commissioned master boat-carver, Mr Alalae Mohamed, to build a double-outrigger ngalawa logboat, the region’s most common fishing vessel, which we recorded from start to finish and created a Swahililanguage documentary film, with English subtitles, entitled ‘Ngalawa Making Film’.

Lucy went on to reveal other outputs of the project included: “The creation of a three-day community exhibition which showcased the lives and work of the maritime community, including boatbuilders, mangrove-whelk collectors and fishermen, who were all on hand to explain their craft.

“However, our most impactful achievement to date is the establishment of a formal organisation to represent the interests of maritime practitioners in Bagamoyo, an officially registered nongovernmental organisation named CHAMABOMA-Bagamoyo – the Association of Boatbuilders and Vocational Training-Bagamoyo.”

CHAMABOMA-Bagamoyo brings together boatbuilders to advance their collective objectives and provides training opportunities for the next generation. And it provides members with the opportunity to diversify their economic activities, bringing much-needed income whilst at the same time preserving and promoting traditional practices

The ultimate goal of the project is to formulate a coastal heritage strategy briefing for municipal planning, tourism and heritage agencies in Tanzania, to secure sustainable continuity of valuable maritime heritage practice and knowledge.

THE BUSINESS OF ARCHAEOLOGY

With extensive capacity and expertise in marine archaeology, alongside the world-leading research undertaken in this area, the University also has the commercially driven enterprise Coastal and Offshore Archaeological Research Services (COARS), based at The National Oceanography Centre.

Headed up by Dr Michael Grant, for over a decade COARS has provided a solution for businesses and industry seeking advice and access to technical specialists in marine archaeology.

“As the University’s reputation has grown, so has the demand for our services” explains Michael. “Our experts are recognised leaders in their respective fields, all well-published, and are best known for their unique specialisms in marine geophysics, geoarchaeology and the study of maritime material culture. We are routinely requested to provide these services to a wide range of archaeological consultants, professional service firms and developers.

“We work primarily with offshore developers who need to consider any impact upon maritime archaeology and the submerged palaeolandscape. Key sectors we routinely work with include Offshore Windfarms, High Voltage Interconnectors, Fibre Optic Cables, Nuclear, Carbon Capture Storage and Marine Aggregate extraction.”

In addition to this enterprise activity, delivering a valuable source of funding to the University, many of our industry partners have permitted access to the large datasets that they generate for use in applied research, providing a unique resource for university researchers and students to usethat would otherwise be unattainable due to research budget constraints. “The scale of the datasets we access to undertake our work for clients, are well beyond anything our research budgets could attain. This means we can address current research agendas and questions through developer-funded projects and data,” explained Michael.

Much of the demand for COARS work lies within the planning process, with assessments of the cultural heritage forming a key part of any large infrastructure or proposed development’s Environmental Impact Assessment.

Assessment of the historic environment is one key part of the planning process, sitting alongside other disciplines, such as landscape, hydrology, geomorphology, ecology and noise. Coastal change has also been a prominent area of focus in recent years, in light of evolving shoreline management and climate change demands.

“Evaluation of coastal heritage vulnerabilities is very important, and through the national Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey programme we have undertaken extensive surveys and assessments on behalf of Historic England, for North Devon, Cornwall and the Inner Humber Estuary,” said Michael.

LOOKING BACK TO LOOK AHEAD

Helen concludes: “We know that an increase in offshore development worldwide will form a key component in our attempts to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to reach net zero by 2050. Maritime archaeologists, trained to undertake environmental impact assessments and recognise the heritage resources that already exist in the offshore zone will therefore be in high demand. The teaching we do here within the Centre for Maritime Archaeology, our research, collaborations, and our interdisciplinary work is central to addressing this, implementing the actions of the Ocean Decade and working together to get the ocean we want for our future.”

Acknowledgement of Country

ACROSS acknowledges the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the seas and lands on which we undertake our Australian research. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

Dr Helen Farr, credit Martin Hartley.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming how we use our planet’s oceans. When it comes to boats and shipping, the advances being made at Southampton feature bubbles, big data and behaviour influence.

AI FOR SHIPPING

BRING OUT THE BUBBLES

Southampton is London-based air lubrication technology company Silverstream Technologies’ longest-standing University partner, having worked together since 2014. The company’s technology works by injecting a layer of tiny air bubbles underneath ships to reduce frictional resistance between the hull and the water.

Adam Sobey, Professor of Data-Centric Engineering, and his colleagues in Maritime Engineering have been developing artificial intelligence capabilities for Silverstream for the last three years. The work is focused on applying machine learning to the bubble technology, to improve Silverstream’s current efficiency savings of five to 10 per cent.

Adam said: “We have been working on using machine learning to interpret the bubbles’ behaviour and use that to optimise the control system.”

The work has been the subject of a two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), led by Southampton alumnus Dr Josef Camilleri, focusing on using data and machine learning techniques to characterise the behaviour of air lubrication systems in realistic conditions and to optimise their performance. Through the KTP, a system has also been developed to automate the controls to collect better data.

Adam added: “At the moment, Silverstream uses a single power for the bubbles, so we have been working on how to efficiently collect more data to optimise the performance according to where and how fast the ship is going.”

VOYAGE OPTIMISATION

Southampton colleagues and students work with Met-Ocean data company Theyr on voyage optimisation software.

“It’s like Garmin for ships,” explained Adam. “Ships can go pretty much anywhere, so if you are trying to calculate a route from Shanghai to Rotterdam over 30 days, for example, there are countless potential routes you could sail. We have created an algorithm that finds the most optimal route, taking into consideration weather forecasts, wind speed and direction, wave speed, current, the trim and draught of the vessel, and speed of the vessel.

“Our system out-performs other voyage optimisation software by five per cent in terms of fuel savings, seven per cent in terms of arrival time, and eight per cent improvement in Time Charter Equivalent, a proxy for profit.”

The system is installed on hundreds of ships.

“We’re currently working on improving it so it can tell you why it’s selected certain routes – providing an element of explanation and justification to ships’ captains,” added Adam.

Przemyslaw Grudniewski, a former Southampton PhD student who worked on this project, now works as lead AI Scientist Applied for Theyr.

PREDICTING VESSEL PERFORMANCE OPTIMISING YACHT DESIGN

Researchers at Southampton have developed an app that has been rolled out internationally to improve shipping efficiency by optimising the amount of fuel and power needed at any given moment. The app, called Just Add Water (JAWS), has been licensed to Kongsberg Maritime, which uses it on 42 liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers around the world.

“JAWS uses machine learning to better understand ship behaviour, and to predict how to enable a vessel to perform most efficiently,” explained Adam. “Data is taken from ships, cleaned up, and neural networks are used to predict outcomes.”

Dr Amy Parkes developed the software during her PhD, supervised by Adam and Professor Dominic Hudson. Shell Shipping and Maritime supported the research, through the Centre for Maritime Futures.

Artificial intelligence is also being employed in yacht design, via software developed by former Engineering student Thomas Savasta.

Adam said: “Yachts are very awkward spaces, so optimising the limited space available is very important. The algorithm developed at the University configures where the rooms should be, and places furniture in the most optimal positions to make use of the space.

“We use the same algorithm as in the voyage optimisation software, but rather than searching space in the ocean to work out routes, it searches potential layouts on a ship to determine how to best use the space.”

Yacht design company Olesinski, where Thomas now works as a Research and Development Engineer, continues to develop software which utilises this algorithm to inform its yacht layouts. This has taken the design times from two weeks to two days.

1 & 2 Voyage optimisation software developed by the University and Theyr. The screenshot shows which routes to take for, for example, the best fuel efficiency or the quickest time

3 A large Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) carrier. Image courtesy of Shell

4 A yacht floorplan, developed by Olesinski using University AI expertise

BLACKING OUT

Locating shipwrecks is important for many reasons – historical, archaeological, environmental and ecological, to name a few.

Dr Alexandra Karamitrou, Research Fellow in Archaeology, has developed artificial intelligence techniques to locate so-called ‘black reefs’, as these give away the locations of hidden shipwrecks.

She outlined: “The fuel and corroded iron that can be released from shipwrecks creates discolouration in the reef, changing it to a dark brown and black colour, hence the term ‘black reef’. This is visible from satellite imagery such the ones used from Google Earth.”

Alexandra and her team explored all known locations of black reefs to develop an algorithm to identify other possible locations. Identifying a black reef identifies a shipwreck, as this is the cause.

UNESCO estimates there are three million shipwrecks around the world. Alexandra said: “It’s important to know where shipwrecks are located for historical and archaeological reasons, but also to be able to monitor them from an environmental point-of-view because they can be potential sources of pollution. It’s also important to monitor them from a

biological point of view to understand how these black reefs affect their surrounding areas. It’s important for ecology and marine ecosystems, for human life, local economies, and societies.”

To test the algorithm, the team used it to compare Google Earth images from 2005 and 2022 of a site in Japan that was used as a naval training base and is known to be home to many shipwrecks. “Putting the Google Earth shots into the algorithm resulted in two totally different images – one without any black reef, and the second picking up a black reef,” said Alexandra. “In those 17 years, a vessel that is visible in the first image has broken into parts and spread around the area and turned parts of the coral reef black.”

Detecting crannogs

Alexandra is also working with Fraser Sturt, Professor of Archaeology, and Dr Stephanie Blankshein, Research Fellow in Archaeology, to apply artificial intelligence to enable the auto-detection of crannogs in Scottish lochs.

Crannogs are islands made by humans in lakes in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. They were built from the Neolithic period (circa 3,700 BC) through to the early 18th century, with new sites still being found.

Alexandra said: “We would like to identify all the potential crannogs in Scotland. We searched all lochs and developed an algorithm that can identify all islets in lochs, resulting in a catalogue of all Scottish islets, and their sizes and shapes.

“Then, we trained a deep learning model to identify which islets are likely to be crannogs. Crannogs vary in size and shape, so our goal, as we get more information, is to feed the algorithm to be able to identify a crannog itself. There are around 500 known sites, but through this method, we have already found and proved new locations.”

There are millions of shipwrecks around the world, but the whereabouts of only about 10 per cent of them are known. Artificial intelligence developed at Southampton is helping to find the missing millions.

1 Aerial view of a crannog at Loch Bhorgastail on the Isle of Lewis. Image courtesy of Fraser Sturt. 2 & 3 Aerial view of the Kenn Reef, in Queensland, Australia, showing 11 shipwreck locations (fig 1). Figure 2 shows the artificial intelligence algorithm correctly identifying the developed black reefs (khaki colour)

LOOKING BACK TO THE FUTURE

Historic data is being used to inform the future in a ground-breaking simulator that could fast-track the shipping industry to net zero.

A team from the School of Electronics and Computer Science has built a powerful simulator – a ‘digital twin’ – to select optimal shipping routes for the future, and to show how and when to upgrade ships to achieve emission goals.

The digital twin is designed to enable the most effective ways for shipping to reach net zero.

The project, led by Professor Enrico Gerding, is funded by Shell, and is conducted through the University’s Centre for Maritime Futures.

Enrico explained: “Our simulator calculates which ships should take which routes for day-to-day shipping for the next 20 years, and figures out which ships should be replaced, when and how.

“The first role of the simulator is route optimisation. We have used five years’ worth of historic data to inform the future. You can also adjust the future, taking into account predictions for where trade might increase or decrease – you can play out different scenarios.

“The second element to the simulator is calculating which ships should be upgraded first, and how, to optimally reach emission goals.”

Jan Buermann, Post-doctoral Research Fellow on the project, added: “When comparing the business case of a shipping company using only its fleet’s past operation and emissions to that of our digital twin, we find that our digital twin can find a ship upgrade schedule with similar reductions at about two-thirds of the cost.”

The simulator is based on real data from historic routes and trades. A lot of historic trade data is confidential, so the team has collected ships’ GPS data, combined with data on how deep into the water the ships were sitting and at which times and locations. This has enabled them to infer what the trade data would be.

The project, which began in 2020, is continuing to advance. PhD student Hugo Webber is now developing a sister simulator to deduce which tax policies will provide the best incentives for shipping companies to adopt the simulator’s recommendations.

SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE RESEARCH

As the drive for green maritime accelerates, oceanographic methods are advancing to enable sustainable research of our oceans.

One key aspect to net zero oceanography will be replacing some of the capabilities of highemission research ships with autonomous marine vehicles – and designing automated sensor systems for these platforms.

Two Southampton research groups have recently developed sensor systems to go on autonomous submarines for deep-sea imaging and biogeochemical analyses, as part of a collaborative research programme called OCEANIDS.

The researchers tested their developments in 2022, taking them on two research expeditions into the Atlantic and launching them into the sea on the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) famously named Boaty McBoatface.

A team led by Mark Moore, Professor of Biogeochemistry and Head of the School of Ocean and Earth Science, developed a new sensor for measuring primary production (the rate of photosynthesis in the ocean). This work was part of a project called STAFESAPP (Single Turnover Active Fluorescence of Enclosed Samples for Aquatic Primary Production).

Left & above Launching the AUV Autosub Long Range (ALR), aka ‘Boaty McBoatface,’ into the ocean with automatic sensors developed at Southampton on board

“The AUV was trialled

Mark said: “The AUV was trialled down to depths of 600 metres with a suite of 11 new biogeochemical sensors on board, including ours and others developed by our colleagues within the National Oceanography Centre [NOC]. The validation testing we did was a great success, demonstrating the potential of these new systems. Our sensor is now being further developed by our commercial partner Chelsea Technologies within the EU-funded TechOceanS project, led by NOC.”

In a separate project, a team led by Blair Thornton, Professor of Marine Autonomy, developed an automated deep sea imaging system comprising cameras, lights and machine learning techniques. The imaging system, called BioCam, was sent down to a shallower depth at the edge of the continental shelf to capture images.

Professor Mark Moore

The two projects were part of the £16 million OCEANIDS programme, led by the National Oceanography Centre. OCEANIDS was set up in 2016 to support the drive for net zero oceanography. It was funded by UK Research and Innovation’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, through the Natural Environment Research Council.

down to depths of 600 metres with a suite of 11 new biogeochemical sensors on board, including ours and others developed by our colleagues within the National Oceanography Centre.”

The race against climate change relies on the energy transition, to create and sustain renewable energy sources, and offshore energy has a significant part to play. Researchers from the University of Southampton are forging ahead, developing integrated and informed solutions that aim to deliver on offshore energy targets.

OFFSHORE ENERGY

The UN General Assembly’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), include a dedicated and stand-alone goal on energy, SDG 7, calling to ‘ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all’.

“SDG 7 calls for action in five key areas,” explained Susan Gourvenec, Professor of Offshore Geotechnical Engineering. “Closing the energy access gap, transitioning to decarbonised energy systems, mobilising adequate and predictable finance, leaving no one behind on the path to a netzero future and harnessing innovation, technology and data.”

The challenge to deliver the ambitions for offshore energy are immense. Global forecasts indicate the requirement for 2000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity globally by 2050 to meet net-zero targets, a 35-fold-increase in installed capacity compared to current levels, requiring around 5000 new turbines to be installed each year between now and the mid-century.

Considering just the UK, an established leader in offshore wind capacity, around four times the current capacity needs to be installed in the next seven years to reach the Government targets of 50 GW by 2030; an installation rate of three to four times that achieved in the last few years and equivalent to the installation of one offshore wind turbine per day between now and the end of the decade.

Southampton capabilities

The University of Southampton has expertise across all SDG7 action areas, and in particular immense breadth and depth of capability in harnessing the innovation, technology and data required to deliver the offshore renewable energy needed to achieve decarbonisation targets.

“Our technical expertise ranges across engineering disciplines, from mapping the seabed and characterisation of seabed sediments, design of foundations, anchors and mooring systems, and working with the network of cables that are founded on or in the seabed,” said Susan. “We have engineering researchers working in hydrodynamics and fluid-structure interaction of fixed and floating offshore wind infrastructure, aero interactions of turbine blades with the atmosphere, composite blade manufacture and performance, corrosion, sensing, noise, battery storage, and sea water electrolysis to produce hydrogen, not to mention robotics, autonomy, and AI.”

The University of Southampton also has immense offshore energy capability across a wide range of other disciplines.

“In life sciences, colleagues are working to understand the effect of offshore energy on marine ecology. In social sciences, expertise spans the regulatory and policy seascape, logistics for optimisation of inspection, maintenance and repair of offshore

infrastructure, and the social and political tensions and considerations around offshore wind developments,” Susan outlined.

“Within arts and humanities, expertise covers cultural and heritage aspects of interventions in the oceans, as well as literature, music and art as media for communicating, sharing and evolving knowledge of our oceans and our interventions within them.”

Through the Southampton Marine & Maritime Institute (SMMI), the University has a unique mechanism for harnessing the interdisciplinary expertise of its academics alongside external stakeholders to develop an integrated response to offshore energy ambitions.

Chair in Emerging Technologies

The Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme aims to identify and provide long-term support to global research visionaries, developing emerging technology areas that have potential to deliver economic and social benefit to the UK. Susan was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies for Intelligent & Resilient Ocean Engineering (IROE) in 2019.

“The activities of my Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies centre around addressing technology gaps at each stage of the engineered life cycle of ocean structures, from forecasting ocean and seafloor behaviour to designing and

operating novel platforms for ocean facilities,” explained Susan. “By harnessing the potential of sensors, robotics, and AI, a next generation of resilient, engineered systems will unlock ocean resources more efficiently and more sustainably, with less risk to life.”

The Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme aims to identify and provide long-term support to global research visionaries, developing emerging technology areas that have potential to deliver economic and social benefit to the UK.

The Centre of Excellence for Intelligent and Resilient Ocean Engineering (IROE) at the University of Southampton, supported by Susan’s Chair in Emerging Technologies, drives activities to create a step-change in ocean engineering design to support responsible and economic use of ocean resources. “Although at the core we develop engineering solutions, our activities reach beyond engineering through engaging across disciplines, and working with the public and policy makers to raise awareness of ocean engineering and guide policy for future use of our oceans.” said Susan.

IROE works with over 30 external partners and, together with academics across multiple schools and faculties including engineering, computer science, ocean and earth science, biological sciences, law, policy, sociology, English, art, and archaeology, undertakes activities to drive forward the development of safe, efficient and responsible offshore energy.

The elements which need to come together to create practical and sustainable offshore energy solutions are varying and complex. Susan and her colleagues from across the university have detailed some of the challenges and solutions below, along with projects they are currently undertaking.

Professor Susan Gourvenec

Offshore energy

SEABED CHARACTERISATION

Offshore energy facilities, whether fixed wind turbines, floating wind turbines, tidal or wave energy devices, need to be secured to the seabed by foundations or anchoring systems to keep them in place and sufficiently stable, whilst other infrastructure such as cables between turbines are trenched into the seabed. As such, the engineering design of foundations, anchors and cables to facilitate offshore energy relies on accurate characterisation of seabed properties.

Characterising seabed properties sufficient for engineering design at a large scale for offshore wind turbines is a key challenge in the energy transition sector.

Susan explained: “The move from a single offshore hydrocarbon platform to an offshore wind farm of tens or hundreds of turbines, requires characterisation of an area of seabed far greater than that of a single platform.

“A second key challenge is characterising engineering properties of the seabed over a meaningful time scale. As seabed properties change, they evolve in response to the loading applied to the seabed from the installed infrastructure, such as turbines.”

The Centre of Excellence for Intelligent and Resilient Ocean Engineering is home to one of the largest groups in offshore geotechnical engineering in the country and is working on several solutions in this area, using micro-finite element analysis to develop machine learning methods that derive geotechnical properties from geophysical data.

“The benefit of geophysical site data is that it is continuous, either in 2D or 3D, whilst geotechnical site investigation data provides at best

a 1D depth profile at discrete and usually sparse locations. However, geophysical data does not provide the engineering properties needed for design,” outlined Susan.

“Some initial work exists on deriving geotechnical properties from the seismic data of a geophysical survey, but the range of properties that can be extracted, and the accuracy, is limited,” notes Dr Jared Charles, an early career researcher in the IROE Centre of Excellence, working on this research.

To address this issue researchers in the School of Engineering and the School of Ocean and Earth Science, in collaboration with industry partner SAND Geophysics, are developing relationships between the fundamental geophysical and geotechnical parameters to enable sufficient accuracy and resolution for engineering design and derivation of a wider range of geotechnical properties.

A second project is developing a theoretical framework for ‘Whole-life geotechnical design’, such that the characterisation of evolving seabed properties can be routinely incorporated into engineering design.

“Experimental and numerical protocols are being used to characterise the changing seabed properties with loading and time. This maps onto a design framework and can be applied to the geotechnical design of foundations and anchors for offshore wind,” said Dr Katherine Kwa, RAEng Research Fellow within the IROE Centre of Excellence, working on this topic.

“The whole-life geotechnical design project is being pursued in collaboration industry partners NGI and Lloyd’s Register, ensuring the research remains relevant and has a pathway for uptake in engineering practice.” said Susan.

FOUNDATIONS, ANCHORS AND MOORINGS

To meet global and national targets for offshore wind at the pace required, foundations for fixed wind turbines and anchors and mooring lines for floating offshore wind need to become more efficient in their design and performance.

Currently, the supply chain is struggling to meet the challenging demand for materials and manufacture involved in delivering offshore wind farms. This is due to a combination of insufficient engineering resource/expertise along with the high costs involved using current technology and approaches.

The University of Southampton is addressing these challenges with a range of expertise and facilities housed within the National Infrastructure Laboratory on UoS’ Boldrewood Innovation Campus.

Geotechnical engineering researchers are working on a range of solutions for next generation foundation and anchoring systems to support offshore wind.

These include:

• Whole-life geotechnical design methods, that take advantage of evolving soil properties to optimise foundation and anchor designs

• Shared anchors – such that several floating wind turbines are attached to a single anchor, therefore reducing the number of anchors required

• Silent anchor solutions, such as ‘screw piles’ and ‘suction caissons’ that minimize impact on marine mammals during installation

• Extensible mooring systems to reduce peak load with extra but controlled compliance, such that smaller anchors can be used

• Integrating hydrodynamic, mooring line and geotechnical foundation or anchor design.

Dr Katherine Kwa is developing integrated station-keeping solutions to enable floating offshore renewable energy: “By integrating floatermooring line and geotechnical response, our research has shown that anchors can carry up to two-times more load compared to that predicted with current design methods, whilst retaining the same reliability.”

In combination with new design approaches that enable more efficient anchor designs, additional efficiency can be achieved by using fewer anchors to secure the floating wind turbines to the seabed.

“The total number of anchors required for large offshore wind farms can be reduced three-fold by utilising shared anchors, for example by attaching three mooring lines belonging to three different floating wind turbines to a single shared anchor,” explained Dr Benjamin Cerfontaine, lecturer in Geotechnical Engineering. “This reduces seabed disturbance in installing the anchors, as well as reducing the raw material used and the installation time, thus reducing the carbon footprint of the turbine, and pressure on the supply chain for anchors.”

Many of the design solutions being developed harness the potential of big data and machine learning to provide optimised outcomes that were previously unachievable for routine design.

This work to develop the next generation of offshore foundations, anchors and mooring systems, particularly to unlock offshore floating wind, is being carried out within the IROE. It is supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, a RAEng Early Career Fellowship, and the ORE Supergen Hub, in collaboration with various external partners including NGI, Lloyd’s Register, Equinor, Corpower Ocean, ORE Catapult Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence and The Alan Turing Institute.

Offshore energy

ENERGY STORAGE AND GREEN HYDROGEN

TYING IN TIDAL AND WAVE

The source and cost of energy are among the biggest challenges in today’s industrial society, together with environmental pollution, climate change and sustainability.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the investment in renewable energy sources attracted 43% and 35% for solar and wind offshore power respectively, from the total investment in 2020 while the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) generated from solar and wind, decreased by 85% and 56%, respectively from 2010 to 2020, demonstrating the increasing importance of renewable systems development.

Carlos Ponce De Leon Albarran, Professor of Electrochemical Engineering, is working to address the challenge that the intermittent nature of solar and wind power presents. A key area of focus is the energy storage system, which needs to harvest energy efficiently during periods of high energy generation, and subsequently be able to deploy energy when there is no wind, or at night.

He explained, “Energy can be stored in various forms: chemical, electrical, electrochemical, mechanical, and geothermal. Among these different energy storage systems, the electrochemical method can be used to store the energy in two ways: by generating green hydrogen via seawater electrolysis and by using redox flow batteries.”

The first system, seawater electrolysis, is a challenging process because it can generate toxic oxychloride intermediates and chlorine gas, which are harmful to organisms and very corrosive. At the Electrochemical Engineering Laboratory in the Mechanical Engineering Department, Carlos and his colleagues work on alternative catalysts to suppress the formation of chlorine and oxychloride compounds during seawater electrolysis, helping to generate green hydrogen with no harmful waste.

“The second option, to store energy in Redox Flow Batteries, is typically used for large amounts of electricity,” said Carlos. “At the Electrochemical Engineering Laboratory, we work on Redox Flow Batteries systems such as zin-cerium, vanadium, and soluble lead acid batteries. A current project, Reclaimed Electrolyte Low Cost Flow Battery, is being funded by the Faraday Institution. We’re also working in collaboration with stakeholders in the UK and Africa on a system that provides grid stability and an efficient energy supply which also includes a techno-economic assessment.”

Tidal and wave energy could supply a significant proportion of the UK’s electrical power and that of many other countries in the world.

“The environment is challenging with significant forces to consider such as corrosive seawater, and the obvious complication of working both offshore and underwater,” explained Dr Luke Myers, Associate Professor, Energy and Climate Change Division in Civil, Maritime and Environmental Engineering & Science. “Until recently, high costs and high risks for new technology severely restricted development as companies struggled to raise funding for devices to be installed.”

The increase in wholesale electricity prices in recent months has meant the cost issue has been somewhat removed, however the technical challenges and risk remain at this emerging stage of development.

“Tidal energy offers completely predictable, renewable energy generation,” said Luke. “Devices appear and operate in a similar manner to wind turbines but marinized. They are designed to use, and survive in, harsh, corrosive saltwater conditions, extracting the kinetic energy of the fast-moving waters.”

Work within the University’s Energy & Climate Change Division has covered many areas of this technology including blade design, resource assessment and operation within arrays or farms.

Luke outlined, “Our strength lies in our experimental work. Here we design and operate models that we test in large hydraulic facilities across Europe. These turbines are fully instrumented to measure power, forces and other operational parameters which we can then scale up to predict performance of larger turbines.”

Most recently, Luke and his colleagues measured the increase in performance offered by using blade winglets (see image) similar to those we see on commercial aeroplanes. Working within the University of Southampton’s towing tank facility, located on the Boldrewood Innovation Campus, they were able to quantify significant increases in power, results of which can help further reduce the costs and decrease risks.

Dr Luke Myers

ECOSYSTEM EFFECTS

The ecological implications of the structural changes to offshore electricity generation are not well understood. They are further complicated by the need to balance growth of the renewable energy sector with competing policy demands, such as biodiversity protection, achieving net environmental gain and restoration, sustainable fisheries and UK Marine Strategy targets.

“Ecosystem-level impacts of offshore renewable development cannot be fully understood without understanding the impact of a range of pressures on the diverse array of species and habitats affected,” explained Martin Solan, Professor of Marine Ecology in Ocean and Earth Sciences. “Coastal and marine waters host a disproportionately large fraction of productivity, maintain high levels of biodiversity, and are of significant importance in regulating major nutrient cycles and greenhouse gas exchange.”

A key challenge is understanding the effects of a multitude of pressures that are associated with renewable energy, such as noise, vibration, electromagnetism and physical disturbance; and then distinguishing their effects from natural variability in the system, other human caused activities and the expression of climate change.

“We have found that previous work in this area has focused on the presence of species, with the assumption that if a species is present then there is no negative impact,” said Martin. “However, this approach lacks information on species-environment interactions and their role in mediating important ecosystem processes within the context of a busy and crowded shelf sea.”

Martin and colleagues are working to understand how a large increase in deployment of offshore wind, combined with other man-made and climate change related pressures, will affect species-environment interactions that underpin the functioning of UK marine ecosystems.

“Our team includes expertise in physics, engineering, ocean and earth science, fish and invertebrate ecophysiology and ecology, marine observation technology, computational modelling and socioeconomics,” outlined Martin. “Our experience and multi-disciplinary expertise are strengthened by early career scientists that bring leadingedge expertise in computation and machine learning, behavioural ecology, physiology, the development of marine technology and seabed-offshore wind infrastructure interactions, including high voltage cables, noise and vibration.”

Together, Southampton researchers and academics are enabling a stepchange in marine observations by combining autonomous underwater vehicle derived datasets with innovative, high-level machine learning techniques to quantify ecological dynamics and test ecosystem outcomes for a range of representative seascapes.

“The research taking place in Southampton is providing understanding of the balance between positive and negative changes for both habitats and species caused by offshore renewable development. Hence, our research outputs offer industry, regulators and policy makers tasked with implementing robust approaches to marine environmental recovery, biodiversity and net environmental gain, the evidence base required to judge the feasibility and sustainability, including feedbacks and trade-offs, of different future scenarios,” concluded Martin.

Professor Martin Solan

CULTURAL AND HERITAGE CHALLENGES

ROBOTICS AND SENSING

The ever-increasing amounts of offshore wind turbines are connected via hundreds of thousands of kilometres of subsea cables, operating robustly and reliably to fulfil UK energy demands.

University of Southampton researchers have been working on automated methods to inspect and maintain the hundreds of thousands of kilometres of subsea cables that connect offshore wind turbines. These cables are essential to keep wind turbines operating robustly and reliably to fulfil UK energy demands.

Blair Thornton, Associate Professor of Oceanic Engineering, explained, “Underwater robots equipped with high-resolution cameras, laser scanners, and manipulators could perform the inspection and maintenance needed to support offshore renewable operations if they could be deployed at sufficient scale. The challenge is decoupling their operation from crewed ships currently needed to manage robotic operations. Ships account for the vast proportion of present-day operational costs and carbon emissions, and so limit the scalability of robotic operations.”

To decouple submersible robot operations from crewed ships, it is necessary to improve their endurance, reliability and intelligence. Southampton expertise in energy harvesting, risk modelling, sensing, data interpretation and mission planning forms key parts of the puzzle to advance marine autonomy.

“The sea is a complex place, home to remnants of our shared past in the form of submerged landscapes, sites of habitation and shipwrecks. It holds a critical sedimentary archive charting our changing climate and environment, as well a crucial contemporary part of culture – a place people work, visit and imagine,” said Fraser Sturt, Professor of Archaeology. “Each cable or turbine installation has a potential impact on that physical, cultural and environmental archive as well as shaping intangible heritage. The challenge is to identify, quantify and help mitigate those impacts whilst also ensuring a route to sustainability.”

Southampton’s expertise in this area lies in cutting edge data collection and analysis, of both quantitative and qualitative forms.

“Working with colleagues in Electronics and Computer Science, and in collaboration with all national heritage agencies, we are pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to leverage disparate but highly informative existing archives to transform understanding of UK waters, through a project called Unpath’d Waters.” explained Fraser. “This, matched to work on data collection and identification of cultural and heritage assets, also using AI, forms a critical part of the consenting process for offshore development. We are one of only a few institutions in the UK able to field researchers capable to physically work underwater as well on land, engaging with the material record as well as contemporary communities.”

The research Fraser and colleagues are working on is changing data availability and understanding in terms of how cultural and heritage assets are identified, both in terms of quantitative and qualitative data, and from this how the impact from sustainable development can be mitigated.

“Our research develops the high-resolution sensing and data processing capabilities needed for robots to observe and interpret their surroundings, and understand their own condition,” explained Blair. “This allows robots to make independent decisions that support high-level mission objectives and summarise information so that it can be communicated over low bandwidth and intermittent communication windows for the attention of human experts and operators located anywhere in the world. They can then monitor mission progress and update robot tasks without the need for physical human presence on nearby ships.”

Professor Blair Thornton deploying an underwater robot

OCEAN SPATIAL PLANNING

David White, Co-Director of the EPSRC Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy Hub, and Professor in Infrastructure Geotechnics, is asking the question: ‘Where in the ocean should new offshore energy infrastructure be placed?’

“Ocean space is already under pressure. Large areas are already set aside for human related uses including fishing, shipping and cable routes,” he explained. “Meanwhile, the ocean hosts a range of ecosystems in the water column, the airspace and the seafloor. There are also hazards beneath the waves that hamper the engineering of infrastructure. UK waters are particularly congested, and new offshore wind sites are already moving over the horizon into deeper water, further from shore, as the most convenient sites for wind farms have already been utilised.”

SMMI has expertise across the range of ocean uses, as well as the breadth of environmental conditions. Drawing on this expertise, David and colleagues have been able to assemble digital models of the ocean, quantifying the overlapping constraints and interactions.

David outlined, “The Supergen Hub scenario modelling allows us to assess the ocean space needed to meet net zero and can simulate the regional distribution of future wind farms, and their interaction with existing ocean activity.”

This future ocean scenario modelling provides a platform for all ocean stakeholders to communicate and collaborate on strategy for offshore wind deployment. Dr Hugo Putuhena, Research Fellow in Offshore Renewable Energy, explains, “Meeting net zero is essential to mitigate climate change, but this must be achieved with minimal negative impact on other human and natural activity”.

Some of the net zero scenarios that Dr Putuhena has analysed would involve more than 50 per cent of the UK’s available ocean space being used for offshore wind by 2050. Much of this growth would be accommodated in the Celtic Sea to the southwest of the UK.

The UK sea space, highlighting existing wind farms and the areas set aside for human use, for example aggregate mining, military ranges, shipping routes and oil and gas facilities

SAFE AND SECURE CABLE CONNECTIONS

Each offshore wind farm has a network of cables that connect the wind turbines to a local sub-station, and an export cable that transmits the power back to shore. These cables are usually buried in a trench to avoid damage from fishing activity or ship’s anchors. This burial provides unwanted thermal insulation that can cause the cables to heat up, limiting their maximum power transmission to avoid damage.

The cable thermal behaviour is controlled by a multitude of factors, ranging from the changing ocean temperature, the geology and seabed conditions, the material properties of the cable components, and the operation of the electrical system. SMMI has experts across all of these disciplines who have been working together for the past decade to support cable designers and wind farm developers. “By better understanding the environment around the cables, we’re able to optimise their design and operation and reduce costs significantly,” said Professor Justin Dix, of the School of Ocean and Earth Science.

Recent work has focused on improving the assessment of seabed properties during cable design. New methods for assessing seabed properties have been evaluated, and guidance has been written for a consortium of wind farm operators.

“We’ve worked with industry to interpret their evidence of the seabed conditions around cable trenches. This has helped us to better predict the insulation effect on operating cables,” said Professor David White.

Meanwhile, laser-based monitoring systems are providing valuable new evidence of the temperature in operating cables. Dr George Callender, of the School of Electronics and Computer Science explained, “We have developed new, efficient computer codes that allow these temperature measurements to be used to assist real-time cable rating and burial-depth prediction. All of these technologies help to connect us more securely to our offshore renewable energy.”

RESEARCH AWARD HIGHLIGHTS

FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES

Dr Kai Yang; Winchester School of Art

Reliable and accessible electronic textile for stroke rehabilitation

Innovate UK; £12,250 over 12 months

Dr Kai Yang; Winchester School of Art

Whole garment knitting equipment for e-textile wearable healthcare applications

MRC; £151,200 over 6 months

Dr James Baker; School of Humanities

Legacies of curatorial voice in the descriptions of incunabula collections at the British Library and their future reuse Research Libraries UK; £803 over 12 months

FACULTY OF MEDICINE

Prof Issy Reading; Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education

Salurate – Validation of salivary uric monitoring for early prediction of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy

Innovate UK; £21,186 over 36 months

Dr William Tapper; Human Development and Health

Developing a polygenic risk score for early onset breast cancer and tumour infiltrating lymphocytes

Prevent Breast Cancer Limited; £39,871 over 24 months

Dr Kristin Veighey; Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education

Understanding Risk Stratification of Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) In Primary Care.

National Institute of Health Research; £52,160 over 24 months

Prof Richard Holt; Human Development and Health

Reducing risk of cardiovascular disease in people with severe mental illness: co-production, feasibility testing and trial of a peer supported group clinic intervention (PEGASUS)

National Institute of Health Research; £36,328 over 60 months

Dr Hans Michael Haitchi; Clinical and Experimental Sciences

Preclinical efficacy and safety studies of ADAM33 oligonucleotides as new disease-modifying asthma therapy

Medical Research Council (MRC) Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme (DPFS); £1,149,319 over 24 months

Prof Andrew Lotery; Clinical and Experimental Sciences

UCL/Moorfields BRC Vascular Theme Bid Stage 2

National Institute of Health Research; £72,354 over 36 months

Prof Graham Roberts; Human Development and Health

Children’s Anti-Inflammatory Reliever Study

National Institute of Health Research; £71,741 over 48 months

Dr Rebecca Moon; Human Development and Health

Does pregnancy vitamin D supplementation alter trajectories of body composition and bone mineralisation from early childhood to adolescence? Follow-up of a randomised placebo-controlled trial. Action Research; £187,294 over 36 months

Prof Tom Wilkinson; Clinical and Experimental Sciences

Exploring and grouping repurposed COVID-19 Pharmaceutical interventions to determine mechanisms of action and endotypes of response.

National Institute of Health Research; £164,577 over 24 months

Prof Andy Davies; Cancer Sciences

Experimental Cancer Medicines Centre (ECMC) 2022 QQR

National Institute of Health Research; £877,538 over 60 months

Prof Andy Davies; Cancer Sciences

Experimental Cancer Medicines Centre (ECMC) 2022 QQR Cancer Research UK; £872,461 over 60 months

Prof Andy Davies; Cancer Sciences

Trials Acceleration Programme 2023-2026

ACCELERATING CLINICAL TRIALS LTD; £161,133 over 36 months

Dr Alexander I.R. Jackson; Medicine: Faculty Office

Recovery trajectories after major surgery and patient centred postoperative outcomes: from description to prediction National Institute of Health Research; £382,301 over 36 months

Dr Sean Lim; Cancer Sciences

Stratification of Clinically Vulnerable People for COVID-19 Risk Using Serological Testing National Institute of Health Research; £322,923 over 24 months

Prof Brigitte Vollmer; Clinical and Experimental Sciences and Dr Rina Cianfaglione; ECS, in partnership with Prof Baldwin, Dr Jana Kreppner, Dr Nicola Crockett

Parents’ experience and perception of hypothermia treatment (HT) for Neonatal hypoxia ischaemic encephalophy (HIE). Emotional wellbeing and coping strategies.

Southampton Hospital Charity; £43,379 over 24 months

Prof Nick Evans; Human Development and Health

Ultrasound-responsive agents for non-invasive fracture healing

MRC; £970,969 over 36 months

Dr Elizabeth Curtis; Associate Professor in Rheumatology, MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, Human Development and Health

Cognitive loss and fracture risk: mechanism and risk prediction in UK Biobank

American Society for Bone and Mineral Research Career-Life Balance Award; £13,050 over 12 months

Dr Sara Morgan; Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education

Improving management of post-traumatic stress in orphans and vulnerable children in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda Worldwide Universities Network; £9,967 over 12 months

Dr Jay R Laver; Clinical and Experimental Sciences

Safety and immunogenicity of nasal inoculation with recombinant Neisseria lactamica expressing Factor H binding protein and Neisseria Adhesin A; The GM-Nlac Study MRC; £2,441,738 over 60 months

Dr James Ashton; Human Development and Health

Comprehensive Long-range sequencing of NOD2 and related regions to predict disease outcome in paediatric Crohn’s disease

European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition; £81,800 over 24 months

Dr Sarah Fearn; Human Development and Health

Optimising Outpatients

Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust; £35,552 over 24 months

Dr Chrissie Jones; Clinical and Experimental Sciences

Immunising pregnant women and infants network MRC; £35,385 over 12 months

Dr Lareb Dean; Clinical and Experimental Sciences

The impact of rising temperatures on lung health in the face of particulate matter air pollution

AXA; £102,459 over 24 months. Additional year of salary funded by the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute

Prof Gareth Griffiths; Cancer Sciences

Study evaluating TIRagolumab+ Atezolizumab in Gastrooesophagealadenocarcinoma ctDNA positive patients in the Adjuvant setting and standard treatment in ctDNA negative patients Unicancer; £1,180,997 over 84 months

Dr Sarah El-Heis; Human Development and Health

Microbial derived metabolites in mothers and offpsring and their relation to offsping atopic eczema

Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust; £47,621 over 12 months

Dr Xiao-Yang Hu; Primary Care Research Centre, Population Sciences and Medical Education

Fenugreek for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A systematic review

National Institute of Health Research; £43,084 over 12 months

Dr Hajira Dambha-Miller; Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education

Which combinations of Multiple Long-Term Conditions (MLTC) are associated with the greatest risk of hospital admission over the winter seasons, and to what extent does COVID-19 or influenza vaccination modify this risk?

National Institute of Health Research; £50,945 over 12 months

Dr Hajira Dambha-Miller; Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education

Integrating health and social care for people with multiple long-term conditions (MLTC-M):Development of a digital platform to support data-driven, tailored communication among care providers. National Institute of Health Research; £63,468 over 12 months

Dr Kinda Ibrahim and Dr Sara McKelvie; Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education

Stakeholders’ views about the role of social prescribers in the structured medication review and deprescribing process in primary care: a qualitative study

Short title: Social Prescribers in Deprescribing Roles (SPiDeR)

National Institute of Health Research; £27,334 over 18 months

Dr Danielle Schoenaker; Human Development and Health

Building the case for preconception care in primary care to support women to prepare for pregnancy

National Institute for Health and Care Research; £912,873 over 60 months

Dr Samantha Hornsey and Dr Ingrid Muller; Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education

Exploring health visitors’ views and experiences of managing excessive infant crying and other common infant symptoms: a qualitative interview study

National Institute of Health Research School for Primary Care Research; £51,868 over 12 months

Research award highlights

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES

Prof AbuBakr Bahaj; School of Engineering

Enhancing mini grid sustainability through e-cooking

Foreign & Commonwealth Office; £49,970 over 12 months

Prof AbuBakr Bahaj; School of Engineering

Pioneering Net Zero Delivery in Southampton City

Innovate UK; £36,431 over 12 months

Prof Richard Whitby; School of Chemistry

Taming The Radicals: Highly Reactive Species Incarcerated In Carbon Cages

Leverhulme Trust; £124,455 over 24 months

Prof Lajos Hanzo and Dr Chao XU; School of Electronics and Computer Science

Pervasive Wireless Intelligence Beyond the Generations European Commission; £257,109 over 36 months

Prof Stephen Turnock; School of Engineering

Hydrogen Innovation, Future Infrastructure & Vessel Evaluation & Demonstration

Innovate UK; £316,317 over 24 months

Prof Dominic Hudson; School of Engineering

Examine the feasibility and investment required for ports to act as decarbonisation hubs

EPSRC; £6,755 over 12 months

Prof Periklis Petropoulos; Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics

Realising Enabling Architectures and Solutions for Open Networks (REASON)

Department Of Culture Media & Sport; £849,981 over 24 months

Prof Periklis Petropoulos; Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics

An ultra-fast ultra-broadband photonic measurement facility

EPSRC; £2,407,782 over 12 months

Prof Periklis Petropoulos; Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics

Future communications hub in all-spectrum connectivity

EPSRC; £141,126 over 36 months

Dr Iris Nandhakumar; School of Chemistry

Heat Transport in Novel 3D Patterned Nanostructures

EPSRC; £426,380 over 36 months

Prof Neil Sandham; School of Engineering

UK Turbulence Consortium

EPSRC; £24,683 over 48 months

Prof Simon Coles; School of Chemistry

Core Equipment to leverage world class National Crystallography Service facilities

EPSRC; £429,990 over 24 months

Prof Michael Boniface; School of Electronics and Computer Science

Synthetic generation of haematological data over federated computing frameworks (SYNTHEMA)

Research England (Horizon Europe); £388,891 over 36 months

Prof Michael Boniface; School of Electronics and Computer Science

Data Science Informing Complex Discharge Winter Policy

National Institute of Health Research; £47,035 over 12 months

Institutional award; School of Engineering

EPSRC Core Equipment Award 2022/23

EPSRC; £865,000 over 24 months

Prof Chris Skylaris; School of Chemistry

The UK Car-Parrinello HEC Consortium

EPSRC; £28,294 over 48 months

Prof Sumeet Mahajan and Dr Niall Hanrahan; School of Chemistry

Raman-on-a-chip for label-free and culture-free identification of VBNC bacteria

Wessex Medical Research; £17,917 over 24 months

Prof Hendrik Ulbricht; School of Physics and Astronomy

Nonclassicality of the harmonic oscillator persisting up to the macroscopic domain

EPSRC; £651,208 over 36 months

Dr Lindsay-Marie Armstrong; School of Engineering

Accelerating the Scale-up of Next-Generation Fuels from CO2

EPSRC; £188,238 over 12 months

Dr Simon Blainey; School of Engineering

An Open Source Rail Network Dataset for Africa Phase 2 Foreign & Commonwealth Office; £34,454 over 12 months

Dr Joseph Banks; School of Engineering

Winds of Change

Innovate UK; £773,020 over 24 months

Dr Prateek Jaiswal; School of Engineering

2020 MSCA IF Research England (Horizon Europe); £182,193 over 24 months

Dr Russell Minns; School of Chemistry

Next Generation Experiment and Theory for Photoelectron Spectroscopy

EPSRC; £797,558 over 48 months

Dr Katy Rankin & Dr Meisam Jalalvand; School of Engineering

Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Magma Global Innovate UK; £101,072 over 27 months

Magma Global; £101,072 over 27 months

Dr Jack Denny; School of Engineering

Building capacity to understand and improve urban resilience to blast threats: A comparative analysis of the 2020 Beirut explosion Worldwide Universities Network; £9,977 over 12 months

Dr Minkwan Kim; School of Engineering

Plasma Air Sterilisation and Treatment Apparatus (PASTA) European Space Agency; £224,026 over 24 months

Prof Diego Altamirano; School of Physics and Astronomy

A High-Speed Multi-beam Camera for Time-Domain Astrophysics Science And Technology Facilities Council; £161,992 over 4 months

Prof Ralf Deiterding; School of Engineering

Fundamental understanding of turbulent flow over fluid-saturated complex porous media

EPSRC; £344,938 over 36 months

Prof Alec Wilson; School of Engineering

PULSAR (Propelling eUropean Leadership through Synergizing Aviation Research)

Research England (Horizon Europe); £224,607 over 48 months

Dr Dan Burns; School of Electronics and Computer Science

Predicting Hospital Length of Stay in Acute Respiratory Infections

Patients

Health Data Research UK (working with NIHR); £16,653 over 12 months

Dr Manda Banerji-Wright; School of Physics and Astronomy

LSST:UK Phase C: Southampton Component Science And Technology Facilities Council; £773,020 over 48 months

Prof Yannis Ieropoulos; School of Engineering

Urine-tricity: next phase

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; £193,217 over 18 months

Dr Dikai Guan; School of Engineering

In-situ Formation of Ultrahigh Electrical Conductivity of MetalGraphene Particles for Developing Liquid Metal Composites Conductors

Royal Society; £19,730 over 12 months

Dr George Williams; School of Chemistry

Boronic acid smart hydrogels (BASH): Reducing the side effects of neoadjuvant chemotherapy to ensure resection

Pancreatic Cancer UK; £189,511 over 24 months

Dr Mohammed El-Hajjar, Prof Lajos Hanzo and Prof Periklis Petropoulos; School of Electronics and Computer Science

plaTform drIving The ultImAte coNnectivity

EPSRC; £359,894 over 36 months

FACULTY OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND LIFE SCIENCES

Prof Pete Langdon; School of Geography & Environmental Science

Recovery pathways for lake ecosystems

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); £799,814 over 36 months

Prof Alberto Naveira Garabato; School of Ocean and Earth Science

The Gulf Stream control of the North Atlantic carbon sink (C-Streams) Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); £399,418 over 48 months

Prof Tom Bibby; School of Ocean and Earth Science

New Perspectives on Ocean Photosynthesis (N-POP) Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); £649,535 over 36 months

Dr Phil Williamson; School of Biological Sciences

NMR at 1.2 GHz: A World-Leading UK Facility to Deliver Advances in Biology, Chemistry, and Materials Science

BBSRC; £74,115 over 60 months

Dr Lindsey Cherry; Associate Professor & Clinical Academic Podiatrist, School of Health Sciences

Development of a decision aid for offloading device selection for people with diabetic foot ulceration

Great Foundations, c/o Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust; £81,612 over 24 months

Dr David Evans; School of Ocean and Earth Science

Accurate reconstruction of past global temperatures and carbon cycle dynamics via a novel mechanistic proxy framework Royal Society; £924,190 over 60 months

Prof Peter Griffiths; School of Health Sciences

SEISMIC 2: Safe staffing in ICU National Institute of Health Research; £464,950 over 24 months

Dr Ruth Bartlett; School of Health Sciences

Examining Access to Social Farms for People with Dementia: A mixed methods study

National Institute for Health and Care Research; £167,563 over 15 months

Miss Sarah McGinley; School of Health Sciences

Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) student experiences of the UK undergraduate Occupational Therapy admissions process: What’s the story?

Elizabeth Casson Trust; £9,126 over 24 months

Dr Attila Lazar; School of Geography & Environmental Science

GRID3 – Phase 2 Seed and Bridge Funding

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; £233,440 over 5 months

Research award highlights

Dr Carla Pezzulo; WorldPop, School of Geography & Environmental Science

Subnational mapping and developing a subnational impact portal to support CIFF’s investments

Children’s Investment Fund Foundation; £711,762 over 36 months

Dr Sarchil Qader, Senior Research Fellow; School of Geography & Environmental Science

Exploring the automatic pre-Enumeration Areas Tool for surveys on forced displacement (Refugees)

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; £60,606 over 12 months

Dr Phyllis Lam; School of Ocean and Earth Science

In Situ Incubation and Filtration System for the Pelagic Ocean (InSIncFS)

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); £749,223 over 24 months

Dr Phillip Fenberg; School of Ocean and Earth Science

CryptoBioVision: Applying Computer Vision for Cryptic Species Discovery

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); £80,594 over 18 months

Dr Danielle Lambrick; School of Health Sciences

Quality of Urban Environments with Nature-Connectedness and Health (QUENCH) Network: Quality Inequalities

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); £5,000 (£45,000) over 6 months

Dr Danielle Lambrick; School of Health Sciences

Quality of Urban Environments with Nature-Connectedness and Health (QUENCH) Network: Making Space for Young People

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); £5,229 (£45,000) over 6 months

Prof Justin Sheffield; School of Geography & Environmental Science

EO-Africa multi-scale smart agricultural water management (AFRISMART)

European Space Agency; £120,971 over 24 months

Prof Andrew Tatem; School of Geography & Environmental Science

Population and SDG indicators by Degree of Urbanisation European Commission; £412,709 over 24 months

Prof Max Crispin; School of Biological Sciences

Dissecting the mechanisms of HIV resistance in vivo to broadly neutralizing antibodies

National Institutes of Health – USA; £910,821 over 60 months

Miss Cherish Boxall; School of Psychology

NIHR Doctoral Fellowship

National Institute for Health and Care Research; £314,615 over 48 months

Dr Davide Filingeri; School of Health Sciences

Temperature modulation of skin tolerance to applied mechanical loading and shear

Medical Research Council (Experimental Medicine); £502,912 over 36 months

Dr Ryan Reisinger; School of Ocean and Earth Science

Safeguarding Antarctic Krill Stocks for Baleen Whales

Darwin Plus Main; £630,031 over 36 months

Dr Dhritiraj Sengupta; School of Geography & Environmental Science

Early Career Researcher Grants; Quantifying recent subsidence of reclaimed land and related risk in three major coastal cities: Tokyo, Osaka & Kobe, Japan British Society for Geomorphology; £6,814 over 12 months

Dr Jayne Morriss; School of Psychology

EPS small grant

Experimental Psychology Society; £7,215 over 12 months

Dr Nic Bury; School of Ocean and Earth Science

PROTECT: Predicting teleost fish species’ sensitivity at molecular initiating events

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); £287,640 over 24 months

Dr Nic Bury; School of Ocean and Earth Science

FishTox22

University of Gothenburg; £10,426 over 24 months

Dr Emily Gwyer Findlay; School of Biological Sciences

Deciphering cathelicidin-induced IL-17F production in the intestine MRC; £553,494 over 36 months

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Prof Christine Currie; School of Mathematical Sciences

Dial-a-Ride: a flexible eco-friendly public transport system

EPSRC; £92,600 over 36 months

Dr David Clifford; School of Economic, Social and Political Sciences

Improving access to and use of organisational-level data on the third sector and civil society

ESRC; £56,237 over 36 months

Prof Rosalind Edwards; School of Economic, Social and Political Sciences

The Tipuna Project: Participatory Action Research, Ancesters and Paekeha Accountability in Aotearoa

AHRC; £50,605 over 36 months

Dr Jason Hilton; School of Economic, Social and Political Sciences

Improving UNHCR’s refugee estimates, including demographics, in Europe

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; £16,733 over 12 months

Dr Chiara Forlati; School of Economic, Social and Political Sciences

Designing Credible Leakage Border Adjustments to Promote Compliance. Theory and Empirics

ESRC; £31,972 over 12 months

Dr Ajit Nayak; Southampton Business School

Knowledge Transfer Partnership IUK (with Griffon Hoverwork)

Innovate UK; £120,496 over 25 months

Dr Bismark Singh; School of Mathematical Sciences

Optimal decision making during pandemics

DFG (German Research Foundation); £71,924 over 36 months

Prof Mina Beigi; Southampton Business School

Promoting gender equality in Pakistan HE: How to break the ceiling while having caring responsibilities

British Council; £24,380 over 12 months

This list encompasses a selection of awards logged with University of Southampton Finance from November 2022 to February 2023 that are not considered commercially sensitive.

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