INFORMATION IS POWER

Read the latest news from Take 3 for the Sea Ambassador and Clipper Round the World Yacht Race crew member, Dianne McGrath. 

Every year on 6 June we the world celebrates World Oceans Day. There may be a single day of the year to focus on our oceans, but that’s not enough. I’ve spent almost a year circumnavigating our planet now, and rarely has a day gone by that hasn’t seen me gazing across the oceans and seas we were sailing across, wondering how much invisible life was below.

Now in Oban, Scotland – the penultimate stop of the Clipper 2023-24 Round the World Yacht Race, I had the opportunity to visit, meet and learn from the team at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS). The team shared some of the work they are doing to better understand our oceans and the life they contain, so that we can better protect them. In their own words: “We research how the marine environment works, how and why it is changing and how we could use it sustainably. Then we educate, communicate and promote what we find for the public good.”

We visited:

• The Robotics team

  • who explained how ImpYaks (a modified autonomous kayak) conduct echosound surveys and collect GoPro footage of near shore, including beds. This can help identify microplastics on the seabed

  • Showed how their ocean gliders can spend 6 months surveying the North Sea and surrounds, gathering and transmitting live data about our oceans and seas from multiple levels, and

  • Allowed us to play with a model ROV, which was like a small mars rover, but used underwater

• The North Sea 3D team explained how they were using ROV data from offshore installations such as oil and gas rigs to better understand marine growth on the installations. We also got to play with VR goggles to have a different perspective of what such structures look like that ‘host’ these marine ecosystems.

• The Marine Acoustics team, who educated us on how far and fast sound travels underwater, played a guessing game that had us try to identify different underwater sounds (eg seabed, minke whale, dolphin, herring etc), and then informed us of how different sounds (especially man made) affect different marine life.

Reflecting on my year sailing across our world’s oceans, I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to engage with local NGOs around the world in local activities to improve and protect local oceans and waterways. Coupled with educational activities such as the visit to SAMS, it has reinforced how important knowledge and action combined are to having a positive and lasting sustainable impact on our planet, locally and globally.