Milestones

The presentations from the 2017 International Marine Contractors Association (IMCA) Lifting and Rigging Seminar with its theme ‘Slings and rigging: ‘The soft revolution’’ held on 14 June at the Novotel Amsterdam Schiphol are now online, as is a full report on the seminar and details of the workshops held as an integral part of the day.

M2 Subsea, a global independent provider of ROV services’ has had its ability to deliver high quality services to the oil, gas and renewables sectors verified by Achilles FPAL.

Ocean Marine Systems (OMS) announce the successful factory installation of a Cerberus Yacht Sonar from Atlas Electronic UK in partnership with a UK based security consultant.

Reef Awareness Week (July 25-Aug. 1) presented by Reef Relief, is a celebration of the living coral reef in Key West, Florida, part of the third largest coral reef system in the world. Reef Relief is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting living coral reef ecosystems worldwide. Even though coral reefs take up less than two percent of the ocean's surface, 25 percent of the ocean's animals call coral reefs home. Unfortunately, many of the world’s coral reefs are dying due to multiple stressors such as water pollution, ocean acidification and disease.

C. Herb Ward, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering and ecology and evolutionary biology and presently a scholar at Rice's Baker Institute for Public Policy, edited "Habitats and Biota of the Gulf of Mexico: Before the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill" at the behest of BP Exploration and Production, which leased the platform. BP paid for production of the books and the open-access fees.

Shell, LLOG, Total, Marubeni, ConocoPhillips, Wild Well, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger are amongst the speakers who will be gathering at this year’s Offshore Well Intervention Conference on November 1-2 in Houston to discuss the critical challenges facing the Gulf of Mexico’s well intervention community.

Based around Portsmouth, Southampton and the South East of the Isle of Wight, ASV Global along with BAE Systems, Blue Bear Systems Research (Blue Bear), Marine Electronic Systems (MES), SeeByte and the University of Southampton, will work together to provide the service’s infrastructure, with other organizations set to join later this year.

In July, Valeport, a leading UK manufacturer of oceanographic, hydrographic and hydrometric instrumentation underwent a number of ISO audits, successfully updating the firm’s certifications to ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management and ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management. For the first time in 2017, Valeport is also now certified to BS OHSAS 18001, the internationally applied British Standard for occupational health and safety.

Spend an hour with CTI Chief Scientist, David Finlayson, as he highlights the major new features of SonarWiz 7 and discusses the migration from previous versions of SonarWiz.

Alex Miller, Hawkins Williams, and Alex Dewar have been selected as recipients of the Marine Technology Society’s 2017 ROV Committee Scholarships. In addition, Nicholas Orndorff received MTS ROV Committee MATE Center Scholarship.

Greensea, creator of OPENSEA^TM, the universal marine industry operating platform, has recently announced the appointment of Geoffrey Abbott as Robotics Engineer. Prior to joining Greensea, Geoff was a software development manager at MyWebGrocer, where he led a team in the Rapid Application Development Group.

Aquatec Group announces the launch of Aquatec Rentals, a comprehensive rental service featuring the most popular oceanographic, environmental and offshore instruments.