Tsunami early warning systems currently relay on land-based networks that require water-based systems of deep ocean sensors and tide gauges to reveal how large a tsunami is as well as its direction of travel. The systems are costly and their distribution is spotty. Ships using geodetic GPS systems can detect tsunamis in the open ocean even though they are thousands of miles away.  Researchers are now looking at how commercial ships that are equipped with GPS tools, could provide a network in order to improve tsunami early detection warnings. This would provide a network of accurate tsunami sensors around the world. Providing and equipping commercial vessels with GPS technology that could measure small tsunami waves would be relatively inexpensive and would improve predictions allowing earlier response and evacuation of inflicted areas. Research is currently being carried out by scientists at UH Manoa. A UH research vessel en-route to Hawaii from Guam during a research expedition in 2010 was equipped with a GPS system that recorded data of the tsunami caused by the 8.8 earthquake in Chili. Because a ship has GPS systems more advanced than hand held it can measure and transmit small changes is wave height that is measured in length of time. Tsunami swells take far longer to pass than an average open ocean swell. The GPS systems can cost up to $20,000, but are far less expensive than the current deep ocean buoys that currently provide tsunami data. Researchers are looking to the commercial fleet to bring these systems on board to provide a mobile tsunami detection system. 

With a number of new O&G discoveries popping up nearly continuously in Brazil, both in shallow and deepwater, there has been a significant increase in ROV demand by operators, not only the major players but by all players involved on the Brazilian oil boom.

In general the delivery of a complete ROV system may take around nine months, this includes the delivery of key equipment such as heavy duty winches, power and control umbilicals, flotation foam blocks, control modules, tooling kits and backup equipment. Here in Brazil, ROV manufacturers, which are basically all foreign companies with local offices, have been increasing their local stocks of ROV systems.

 Most companies have some form of technical maintenance warehouses in the city of Macaé, a few hundred miles northeast of the city of Rio. Macaé is still the main hub of the O&G industry in Brazil, concentrating operations offices, training centers and warehouses stocking replacement equipment. Some say the city is reaching its limit in terms of new areas for construction of oil industry facilities, including various kinds of factories. Luckily, this is far from the truth as Macaé still has a lot of land available for construction in the outskirts of town.

With the great amount of PSV, Multipurpose Vessels, Drillships, Rigs and FPSOs being built, and with most of these requiring at least a couple of ROVs, the demand for these vital subsea workhorses is steady and showing a tendency to increase in the next few years.

Most ROV manufacturers and also suppliers of various specialized tools and equipment used in ROV systems appear to be quite satisfied with business in Brazil. I have heard complaints mostly related to logistics problems in delivering equipment to Brazil, mainly due to customs inefficiency and bureaucracy, which unfortunately is an ongoing problem that creates a bottleneck for any equipment placement logistics plan.

It is quite possible that more ROV manufacturers will build construction facilities in Brazil, as has already happened to umbilical and flow line manufacturers. There is also a good possibility that in the next 5 years at least a couple of national ROV manufacturers may join the growing marked. This is true because the technology used in ROV systems, although state-of-the-art, is now more accessible to small and highly technical entrepreneurs, especially with the growing emphasis in high end technology research geared to the O&G industry and led by the UFRJ´s (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) technology park.

Claudio Paschoa

The Alpha Crusis is a 64 meter (213feet)  long and 11 meter (36 feet) wide research ship, capable of carrying up to 20 passengers, weighing 972 tons and with a 40 day sailing autonomy.  The research ship was bought by Fapesp (Foundation for the Support of Research of the State of São Paulo) from the University of Hawaii for use by the Oceanographic Institute of the University of São Paulo.  The ships total cost including renovations ran at $11 million. When it belonged to the U of H, the ship was called the Moana Wave and was being run by NOAA until it was acquired by Brazilian Fapesp, after which it went through 10 months of renovations and refurbishing in a Seattle shipyard.

The new research ship will be launching buoys and deepwater sensors in various locations off the Brazilian coast in order to monitor hot and cold water current circulation in an ambitious project that has the goal of identifying how the forests and the sea in and around Brazil affect the global climate balance.

The Alpha Crusis will be substituting the Professor W. Besnard which was in use between 1967 and 2008, when it had a major fire and has been non-operational since.

Another ship, the Alpha Delphini, which was the first specialized oceanographic ship built in Brazil, is also part of the project. It is 25 meters long and will be launched from a shipyard in Fortaleza, northeast Brazil in July.

The Alpha Crusis is already in Brazilian waters after enduring harsh weather conditions when leaving Seattle, with rough seas and 10 meter waves that tested the ships seaworthiness and endurance. It has already undergone research equipment tests off the mouth of the Amazon River. It will be motoring down the Brazilian coast collecting samples, launching buoys and deepwater sensors at pre-established locations including many river mouths, underwater canyons, deepwater basins and reefs along the coast in a wide area which will take it close inshore and also over 100 nm offshore.

The Alpha Crusis is a DP (Dynamic Positioning) ship, which offers many advantages when collecting underwater data, especially in deep and ultra deep waters.

Claudio Paschoa

The Moana Wave when it was being operated by NOAA, before being refurbished and renamed the Alpha Crusis

The process of undersea monitoring, mapping, and observation is experiencing major changes and advancements. The new paradigm is moving toward data collection and sensing operations using networks of autonomous platforms rather than platform centric and human-controlled sensing, processing and interpretation. A new command and control paradigm is called Nested Autonomy. It is implemented using MOOS-IvP architecture. This architecture is a set of open source c++ modules for providing autonomy in robotic platforms, including AUV technology. It provides fully integrated sensing, modeling, and control allowing each platform, either in collaboration or individually the opportunity to detect, classify, and track a human-created or natural event. It is then able to report back to the operator. The need for an underwater communication infrastructure is tantamount to the operations and robust functions of such communication networks. Because undersea communications are limited by bandwidth and the intermittency of underwater acoustic signal, such high priority events such as those that may indicate an underwater volcanic eruption, transmission to system operators needs to be delivered with out delay, while other less important data can be delayed. In the past communications underwater have not supported priority-based selectivity. MIT is currently working with a cooperative system using collaborative autonomy. Two AUVs are programmed to perform synchronized swimming patterns to maintain a constant angle relative to a target. They are also developing a new communication software that provides robust message handling for collaborative autonomous sensing. Collaboration has been achieved without the intervention of operators. Each vehicle varies its speed based on its current position and the position of the other vehicle. This new MOOS communication stack can be used in a wide range of military and civilian applications.

NOAA is moving forward in efforts to minimize the economic loss for the Georges Bank Fishery. Commercial fishermen have been facing cuts in fishery quotas in an area that is jointly fished and managed with Canada. Due to fish stock not growing to catchable sizes than officials expected the allocation of certain species such as yellow tail flounder will be reduced by 61 percent this season. The scallop and ground fisheries divide the yellowtail flounder allocation for by-catch. Yellow tail by-catch is high in the scallop industry due to their preference for living on the ocean floor and on sandy bottoms, a habitat also preferred by sea scallops. The allocation for yellowtail flounder for the scallop industry will increase by 53 percent while it will drop for the ground fishing industry by 80 percent.

NOAA is working toward mitigating some of the losses being faced by commercial fishermen through a new management plan giving NOAA authorities the ability to re-allocate any unused portion of Georges Bank yellowtail flounder caught by the scallop industry. The new measures also authorize mid-sized vessels to use a new type of trawling gear. The new gear enables fishermen to reduce their yellowtail by-catch rate of yellow tail while targeting other species. There will be several new research projects supported by NOAA’s cooperative Research Program funds in collaboration with the New England Fishery Management Council. Funding will be awarded to the University of Massachusetts School of Science and Technology, and to the Coonamessett Farm Foundation, Inc in collaboration with the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences and the Gulf of Maine Research institute.

NOAA also plans the formation of a new group modeled after the Gulf of Maine’s Cod Working Group in an effort to work closely with the fishing industry to introduce initiatives to advance current programs and identify other management areas for future alternatives. The International Fisheries Agreement Clarification Act of 2011 provided NOAA with the authority to extend the time frame for rebuilding shared stocks. 

Scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in collaboration with the University of California, San Diego have found that although previous studies have shown Venice to be stabilizing, it is in fact continuing to sink at a rate of about 2 millimeters or .07 inches per year. Yahuda Bock a research geodisist with Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego is the lead author on a new research paper about the sinking of the city worked with colleagues from the University of Miami and Italy's Tele-Rilevamento Europa. Tele-Rilevamento Europa is a company that measures deformation to then analyze data collected by GPS and inSar, space borne radar instruments. The GPS measurements are used to get absolute elevations. The inSAR data is then used to calculate elevations relative to other points. These two data sets have been combined from 2000 to 2010 showing Bock and his colleagues that the city has been sinking on an average of 1to 2 millimeters each year. Through this research the scientists have found that not only is the city sinking, but it is also tilting a millimeter or two east each year. The current conditions are due to natural causes, which may have been affecting the area for some time. Plate tectonics play a heavy role in the subsidence of the area. The Adriatic Plate subducts beneath the Apennines Mountains causing the area to drop slightly in elevation. Pumping groundwater was banned when scientists found the practice along with the grounds compaction from centuries of building was causing the area to sink. The city is flooded several times a year especially during the period know as Acqua Alta. Flood gates designed to keep the water levels at bay are nearing completion, but builders will need to take into account this subduction along with the rising water levels. Officials will also need to address the sinking sediment and shore up land in the surrounding lagoon.

Recently scientists have discovered a new ocean current. The previously unknown current is located off the coast of Iceland and was verified by a Woods Hole Oceanographic team lead by oceanographer Bob Pickart, The current is called the North Icelandic Jet current and has proven to be an important aspect in oceanic currents that transport equatorial heat to the North Atlantic therefore tempering the climate. During an expedition cruise on board the WHOI vessel Knorr, Prickart, along with colleagues from MRI and the University of Bergen in Norway took detailed water measurements confirming the existence of the current. The international teams findings were published in Nature Geoscience.

Michael Spall a colleague of Pickart specializes in the use of numerical models to shed light on ocean circulation. Spall’s model showed that the newly identified current was a tail end tributary of a great river of water in the ocean, the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream moves large amounts of warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic. The North Atlantics colder air and water is met by the warmer saltier Gulf water, causing a warming of the region. When the waters temperature drops it becomes denser and sinks to the ocean bottom flowing back to the south. This drives the lower limb of a large loop called the global ocean conveyor. Water in this global conveyor flow through out the planet, rising then circling back to the Gulf Stream. Scientists hope to predict how the rise in global temperature could disrupt the oceanic system and the impacts of this on climate.

In an importand development for Brazilian high-speed communications with the United States, U.S. based Seaborn Networks service provider is primed to lay a new system of submarine cummunications cable that will provide a direct route between the Unites States and Brazil.

Set to go active in 2014, the new Seabras-1 submarine cable will offer 32 Tbps of capacity connecting Miami and Sao Paulo, with a branch that lands in Fortaleza, Brazil. The service provider's timing couldn't be better as the Brazilian government prepares to adopt a National Broadband Plan and the country is also preparing to host upcoming 2014 Soccer World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, which will drive greater growth of voice, video and data services throughout Brazil. The major increase of U.S. oil and gas companies opening offices in Brazil due to the massive exploration of the deep water pre-salt O&G frontier off the Brazilian coast are also set to benefit from this high speed u/w cable.

A Frost & Sullivan report forecast that growth in Brazil's telecom investments will total $35 billion from 2011 through 2016. Over the past three years, Seaborn and a number of traditional telecommunication providers, including BT, Level 3 and Orange Business Services, have made continual investments in Latin America. While Seaborn is new, its founders--including CEO Larry Schwartz--have plenty of experience building out large submarine cable networks. Before the creation of Seaborn Networks, Schwartz led Bridgehouse Marine, an installer of submarine fiber optic cables systems for the telecommunications industry.

This experience will come in handy as the provider begins building out its network and targeting potential wholesale customers in both Brazil and the United States. The recent meeting between the Brazilian and U.S. presidents and the possibility of easier transit through immigration for citizens of both countries is also expected to drastically increase commerce between the two countries, if this really goes through, the new high speed comms will be very handy indeed in order to speed up contact between business men in both countries.

There has not been much talk about eventual environmental impacts caused to the seabed by the u/w cable system but it will definitely be something to look at as there are many sensitive areas along the Brazilian coast that need to be protected. Obviously the fingerprint left by a telecomm cable is negligible as compared to O&G pipelines, but it still is something that needs to be looked at in order to protect the u/w environment as much as possible.

Claudio Paschoa

NOAA has given the ax to the Undersea Research Program (NURP) for the fiscal year of 2013. NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and NURP officially merged on October 1 of 2007. NURP has provided NOAA the ability to use and access submersibles, technical diving, unmanned or remotely operated vehicles as well as seafloor observatories. NURP’s goal was to provide scientists with the tools and expertise needed to investigate and explore the underwater world. NURP also worked to provide grants to both federal and non-federal research communities through its six regional centers and the National Institute of Undersea Science and technology.

The Science Director of Hawaii’s Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL), another program impacted by this decision, has appealed to scientists to write letters to Congress. NOAA has cut the 4 million dollar budget to NURP determining the program has “ a lower-priority function within its portfolio of research activities.”  NURP has provided research and insight into a number of operations and projects including determining impacts of trawling and other fishing practices on essential seafloor habitats, devised new and better methods to improve stock assessments, conducted research on coral reef health, Partnered with the National Science Foundation and the Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service to better understand deep sea chemosynthetic communities, as well as providing and developing educational programs for teachers and students.

Hawaii’s Undersea research Laboratory is asking the community to sign a petition. HURL operates two submersibles Pisces IV and Pisces V. The vehicles are two of only eight vehicles that exist in the world today that are occupied by humans, and can reach depths of greater than 1500 meters. HURL is the only facility in the Pacific Rim supporting undersea research for NOAA and other organizations. They have conducted 1900 dives representing 9300 hours of under sea research. To sign the petition go to:

http://signon.org/sign/support-deep-sea-research-1

An interesting article by the leading Brazilian newspaper O Globo, signed by Journalist Marcio Beck, brings to light the need to urgently create a database with information on the “DNA” of oil produced in Brazilian fields. According to researchers from the Academia and from the O&G industry, this is essential in order to speed up the identification of those responsible for any given oil spill.

According to the article, the basic characteristics found in the formation of an oil reservoir, such as types of stones, sediments and organic matter along with time, temperature and pressure conditions, which give a distinct DNA to each different oil reservoir. Therefore, it would be possible to identify from which field any given oil sample originated from. This would expedite identifying which operator is responsible for a spill in order to quicken response to spills and clean up of affected areas.

This would also help end the mystery pertaining to the so called “orphan” oil slicks (those oil slicks that cannot have their origins immediately identified). A good example is the Chevron oil spill in the Frade field at the Campos Basin, in November 2011, which was originally considered an orphan spill, when first identified by Petrobras between the Frade and Roncador fields. Only 2 days after the beginning of the spill, on November 9^th,did Chevron officially communicate its responsibility for the spill and initiate security and containment measures.

Another good example of how this database could be used is the fact that Chevron claims that the oil that is still seeping through the crack in the rocks under the seabed are not from the same well as the oil from the spill in November. This claim is based on the fact that samples of this oil were analyzed by Ipex, a laboratory belonging to Brazilian independent operator HRT Oil & Gas and revised by Chevron technicians, attests to the fact that the origins of the oil samples differ. The operator does not divulge the exact test results or the oil “DNA” as this is considered classified information.

With such a dynamic growth as the Brazilian O&G industry is experiencing and with the knowledge that this growth will continue for another decade at least, signifying hundreds of new wells to be drilled and put in production, where the oil will go upstream to refineries by way of thousands of miles of pipelines and hundreds of tankers, it may become extremely difficult to identify a spill´s source without a comprehensive independent oil identification database.

It is probable that any such independent oil analysis laboratory would be headed by Coppe-UFRJ as they are the leading academic institution in Brazil, when it comes to oil and gas research. According to Luiz Landau, a leading engineer at Coppe-UFRJ and coordinator of its Laboratory of Computational Engineering Methods (Lamce) at Coppe-UFRJ, the Brazilian database should be centralized and contain the chemical signature of the oil in each well in Brazil. “The companies (operators) have databases because it is interesting commercially.” There is also the strategic value in being able to compare different kinds of oil.

Claudio Paschoa