New eyes in the deep

Overview

The 21^st century ocean technologies that will transform how we explore, monitor, defend and extract resources including energy, minerals and food from the global ocean.

As we enter the UN decade of ocean science for sustainable development 2021-30 we find ourselves at a point where researchers, governments, conservationists and ocean industry are all in a situation where new technology is changing how we observe, conserve, defend, extract resources from and monitor the global ocean.

Autonomous platforms able to stay at sea for months on end give us the ability to keep sensors and instrumentation on station for extended periods, new sensors and quantum techniques begin to deliver a truly transparent ocean, and even military conflict may soon be fought by opposing teams of robotic systems - with risks that even friendly ones can be 'hacked' and turned into adversaries - and all in a legal and policy framework that was never intended to govern systems without a human crew on board.

The move away from fossil fuels will require more renewable energy resources from the ocean, as well as metals obtained from deep sea mining. Feeding 9 billion or more humans and their livestock will require radical new approaches to offshore aquaculture too.

In this talk, Steve Hall, CEO of the Society for Underwater Technology, opens the veil on a partly hidden world where technology is moving fast, and the balance of power is changing too.