Students from two Donegal secondary schools are supporting one of the boldest deep-ocean research projects ever to be undertaken in Europe.
The students from Coláiste Phobail Cholmcille, Tory Island and Scoil Mhuire, Buncrana have joined the project team to give names to two state-of-the-art ocean bottom seismometers which will be used to explore the farthest depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
In the leadup to the launch, secondary schools from across the country were invited to put forward names for the each of the seismometers, which had, up until then, just been numbered 1-18.
The winning entries hailing from County Donegal were:
- Allód, an ancient name for the Irish god of the sea, proposed by Coláiste Phobail Cholmcille, Tory Island, Co. Donegal; and
- Loch Ness Mometer which was proposed by second-year student, Marie Barr, from Scoil Mhuire, Buncrana, Co. Donegal.
Each seismometer is now named and will be labelled before they reach the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where they will remain in place for the next two years to measure movement at the ocean floor, hundreds of kilometres off the coast of Ireland. The network will cover the entire Irish offshore area, with several sensors also being placed in UK and Icelandic waters.
Pictured are scientists (left/right) Mick Smyth, Raffaele Bonadio, Janneke De Laat, lead researcher Dr. Sergei Lebedev, DIAS, Laura Brdi, and Clara Gmez Garcia.
Speaking about the research project, lead researcher, Dr. Sergei Lebedev, DIAS, commented: “Ireland is uniquely suited to this type of deep-sea science, as 90 per cent of the Irish territory is offshore, most of it to the west of Ireland.
“Our scientists are most grateful to the students at Coláiste Phobail Cholmcille and Scoil Mhuire and all the schools who entered the competition, for supporting us with our research project.
“Allód and Loch Ness Mometer will record the tiny vibrations of the Earth caused by seismic waves, generated by earthquakes and by the ocean waves. As the waves propagate through the Earth’s interior on their way to the seismic stations, they accumulate information on the structure of the Earth that they encounter.
“Using this data, the scientists at DIAS can do a 3D scan of the matter beneath the Earth’s surface. We will discover how the structure of the tectonic plates varies and what happens beneath these plates.”
The equipment is being deployed on a mission on the RV Celtic Explorer over the next three weeks, with the ship returning to dock in Galway on 7th October 2018.
This project is made possible using the network of ocean-bottom seismometers which will be provided by iMARL, the “Insitu Marine Laboratory for Geosystems Research” and which are hosted by DIAS.
The SEA-SEIS project is co-funded by Science Foundation Ireland, Geological Survey of Ireland, and Marine Institute.
