Cruise & Ferry Review - Autumn/Winter 2020

7 0 INTERV IEW Capturing ocean data Cruise lines and ferry operators provide important support for the World Ocean Council’s efforts to understand the ocean, weather and climate. CFR speaks with Paul Holthus to find out more W ith tens of thousands of vessels roaming the seas, cruise lines and ferry operators play an important role in our understanding of the ocean. Crucial information is captured through the World Ocean Council’s Smart Ocean- Smart Industries (SO-SI) programme, which sees ships hosting or deploying instruments to collect valuable data. “The data contributes to describing the status, trends and variability of ocean, weather and climate; and improves the understanding, modelling, forecasting, and monitoring of ocean ecosystems and resources, as well as weather and climate patterns and trends,” says Paul Holthus, founding president and CEO of the World Ocean Council (WCO). SO-SI is one of the WOC’s major programmes, and Holthus says the information gathered can be used in support of safe, responsible ocean economic activity and reducing the risk of disasters. The programme builds on existing efforts by expanding the number of companies and vessels involved and increasing the geographic areas and parameters covered. It is also connected to other sectors with vessels, such as fishing, or with fixed infrastructure, like oil and gas, aquaculture, wind energy, submarine cables. “There are a number of major cruise lines that have had vessels participating in data collection in partnership with government and research institutions for quite some time,” says Holthus. “Royal Caribbean, for example, has several ships with instrumentation to collect data on a range of key ocean variables. “For ferries, a standard instrumentation package called FerryBox was developed in Europe and is installed on the ferries of several companies operating in the Baltic, North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean. “Crystal Cruises responded to WOC outreach and participated in data collection during the historic transit of the Northwest Passage by the Crystal Serenity.” There are many ways companies can participate and financial, equipment and time commitments vary with the specific situation. “For example, for the Global Drifter Program, ‘drifter buoys’ are provided at no cost for companies to deploy from moving vessels after which the buoys automatically collect and transmit data on surface currents, temperature and salinity,” says Holthus. WOC engages scientific institutions to identify the priority data collection needs and the appropriate, cost-effective, technology to collect the data. “We then “Data contributes to describing the status, trends and variability of ocean, weather and climate”