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Marine researchers have successfully recovered a series of seismometers from the Atlantic Ocean, which will provide data on a variety of activities, in the depths of Irish coastal waters.
Scientists at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies spent two weeks collecting a total of 14 devices, which were deployed in 2018. Last night they returned to the port of Galway.
Four other recorders will be brought ashore in the coming months.
The seismometers were placed at the bottom of the ocean, in various places, covering thousands of kilometers. They will be used to measure movements on the Atlantic floor and to record acoustic waves in the water.
In addition to helping shed light on the nature and history of the ocean floor, the data is expected to provide insight into the movements of marine life, such as large baleen whales.
The information will also help investigate the potential to develop tsunami warning systems.
This video presents the vocalizations of a fin whale recorded by the LOCH (Loch Ness Momemter) seismic station, deployed by SEA-SIX at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean in April 2019.
The sounds were created from the acoustic vibrations measured by the ocean floor station hydrophone, accelerated by a factor of 10. Without acceleration, the whale song would have been less audible to the human ear.
The devices had been scheduled to run until spring 2020 and had to be retrieved at this time, to safeguard the data that had been collected.
A team of six scientists and a crew of 15 members in the Marine Institute RV Celtic Explorer participated in the expedition.
Seismometers have waterproof memory cards that have recordings collected over the past 19 months.
Speaking about RTÉ driving time, the team’s leader, Dr. Sergei Lebedev, a seismologist at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Study (DIAS), said they spent three weeks aboard the RV Celtic Explorer collecting this information.
Dr. Lebedev said these sixometers recorded small vibrations at the bottom of the sea and recorded the North Atlantic earthquakes and the songs of the great bearded whales.
He said Ireland’s largest earthquake was offshore west of Ireland, but with this new information gathered from the ocean floor, they will be able to learn more about its occurrence and frequency and the possible dangers it can cause in Ireland.
The project was co-financed by Science Foundation Ireland, the Geological Survey Ireland and the Marine Institute.
Work on a detailed analysis of the information that has been collected will begin in the coming weeks.
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