The Underwater Technology Podcast

Podcast 21, 6th August 2020. This week SUT CEO Steve Hall interviews PhD student Karen Boswarva of the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Dunstaffnage, Scotland, about her almost-finished doctorate using the SAMS Gavia Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) 'Freya' to conduct environmental surveys in sea lochs, and overseas on fieldwork in Chile.
Contact Karen via the SAMS website (linked above) or follow on Twitter as '@bozwoz'. Find out more about SUT at www.sut.org, contact Steve Hall here especially if you've got a subject for a future episode of the podcast.
Thanks to Emily Boddy for producing the podcast artwork and composting and performing he podcast theme music, and to Zapsplat for ambient ocean sounds. 

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30th July 2020 - this week SUT CEO Steve Hall interviews Professor Ed Hill, OBE, who is Executive Director of the UK's National Oceanography Centre, which is based on two sites in Southampton & Liverpool. The National Oceanography Centre is the United Kingdom’s centre of excellence for oceanographic science, with a remit to provide national capability and leadership for big ocean science. It is home to two of the UK's fleet of Royal Research Ships, RRS Discovery and RRS James Cook, and houses major national facilities for marine autonomous systems, sensor development, the national oceanography library, the British Oceanographic Data Centre, National Marine Equipment Pool, and much more. NOC leads the UK delegation to UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and provides expert advice to government, industry and stakeholders across the world.
Read the NOC 'Big Science for Big Challenges' here. We are honoured that NOC is also a long-standing member & supporter of SUT. 
Please subscribe, rate & review our podcast. Find out more about SUT including details of how to join here. Contact Steve Hall if you'd like to be featured on a future episode of the podcast. Thanks to Emily Boddy for composing & performing the podcast theme music and creating the artwork, thank you to Zapsplat for ambient ocean soundscape. 

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For podcast 19 SUT CEO Steve Hall interviews Mick Cook about his long career in offshore site investigation, geotechnics and geophysics.
Mick talks through how he entered the sector in the 1980s, how the technology and techniques have evolved, and how particular incidents & individuals influenced and shaped how he learned to interpret and add value to the data that constantly-improving instrumentation, software and sensors provided him. He speaks about the work of the SUT Offshore Site Investigations Committee (OSIG) and of the help and support being a member of the Society for Underwater Technology has given him throughout his career. He heartily recommends that young people enter the field, there's plenty to do as the world moves forward with renewable energy, carbon capture & storage and other disciplines that will require knowledge about the sea floor.
Contact Mick at [email protected], find out more about SUT at https://www.sut.org and contact Steve Hall at [email protected] if you'd like to be featured in a future podcast episode. 
Thanks to Emily Body for podcast artwork, and for composing and performing the podcast theme music. 

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SUT Underwater Technology Podcast episode 18, 16th July 2020 - Steve Hall interviews Alexander Fuglesang of FASTsubsea & FSubsea AS, Norway, about subsea pumping systems - essential tools for offshore industry, be it traditional oil and gas, future carbon capture & storage, deep sea mining and even aquaculture - fish farms turn out to also be major users of subsea pump systems. Many human activities below sea level would quite literally be impossible without effective, reliable pumping systems.

In the FASTsubsea partnership the standardised Hydromag™ Drive Unit from FSubsea is developed in partnership with Aker BP, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, Lundin, NOV, OMV and Voith Turbo. It combines the a powerful magnetic coupling with a proven Hydrodynamic Variable Speed “Torque” Converter. The Multiphase Pump Hydraulics are from Aker Solutions, based on the qualified MultiBooster™ , in partnership with Aker Energy, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Equinor, Chevron, Shell and Total.

Find out more about FSubsea at http://fsubsea.com, about FastSubsea at https://fastsubsea.com 
Alex can also be found easily on LinkedIn.
Contact Steve Hall if you'd like to be featured in a future episode, find out more about SUT at https://www.sut.org Thanks to Emily Body for composing and playing the podcast theme music, and for creating the podcast artwork. 

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Judith Patten MBE is one of those people who isn't a marine engineer or scientist but has nonetheless Made Things Happen for our broad offshore community for years. She's been there in the background, organising trade shows and events, facilitating meetings between companies, researchers and policy makers, lately in particular a champion of the offshore renewables sector via the show All-Energy, which she created.
SUT CEO Steve Hall spends an enjoyable half an hour talking to Judith about her career, her enthusiasm for what we do, what it was like being a woman in the industry in the early days, and reveals that she'd like to be reincarnated as an Engineer - well done Judith!
Pour yourself a drink, sit back and enjoy her company.
Find out more about SUT at sut.org, contact Steve Hall at [email protected]
Thanks to Emily Boddy for creating the podcast artwork, and composing & performing the theme music. Please subscribe, rate and review. More from us next week. 

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Second of the AUV under-ice double bill we've recorded for the week beginning 29th June 2020, following from Pod15's interview with Bruce Butler about the 1996 mission of the ISE Theseus vehicle to lay fibre-optic cable under Canada's Arctic ice.
For this episode, Pod16, SUT CEO Steve Hall speaks to Peter King of the University of Tasmania about their missions at the other end of the world - underneath the ice of Antarctica using an 'Explorer' AUV also from ISE.
You can follow Peter on Twitter as @AuvPeter with his most recent paper about 'Cold Ocean Cavity and Weak Basal Melting of the Sørsdal Ice Shelf Revealed by Surveys Using Autonomous Platforms'online at: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019JC015882
Also here's web link to Peter's facility: https://www.amcsearch.com.au/amsl and to the project: https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/antarctic-gateway-partnership
This is a link to a University of Tasmania article on the Thwaites mission, which includes some video: https://www.imas.utas.edu.au/news/news-items/researchers-celebrate-antarctic-under-ice-voyages-of-underwater-vehicle

Find out more about SUT at Sut.org, contact Steve Hall if you'd like to be featured in a future podcast episode. Thanks to Emily Boddy for podcast artwork and composing & performing the podcast music. Background ambience courtesy of ZapSplat
Please rate, review and subscribe to this podcast - and if you'd like to donate to SUT to help us fund future work, provide scholarship and educate the next generation about underwater technology we have a UK Just Giving page at https://www.justgiving.com/soc-underwatertech

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This week SUT CEO Steve Hall interviews Canadian engineer Bruce Butler about the extraordinary, and history-making, mission of the 'Theseus' autonomous underwater vehicle from ISE to lay a cable under Arctic Ice in 1996, following several years of development. See https://ise.bc.ca/product/theseus-auv/ or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseus_(AUV)
In the 1990s Canada and the USA needed to find a way to attach fibre optic cable to monitoring equipment located under the sea ice of the Canadian Arctic - the innovative solution found under Project Spinnaker was to develop a cable-laying autonomous underwater vehicle to unspool the delicate cable under hundreds of kilometres of ice.
In the interview Bruce outlines his career to date, and the development of Theseus, finishing with the successful mission and aftermath.
Bruce has written an excellent book 'Into the Labyrinth: The Making of a Modern Day Theseus - the book website is at http://www.theseusbook.com/ - also see https://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-Labyrinth-Making-Modern-Day-Theseus/dp/0994953836/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= that covers the project in great detail - it's available as paperback, e-book and audiobook.
You can see a sample of Bruce's book at https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/embed?asin=B07JN6VNJ1&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_UHW-EbMQ8PYA6
Find out more about SUT at sut.org, contact Steve Hall at [email protected] Thanks to Emily Boddy for composing and performing the theme music, and for creating the podcast artwork. Thanks to https://www.zapsplat.com/ for ocean sound effect. 

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Underwater Technology Podcast Pod14, 25th June 2020 - this week Steve Hall interviews Keith Broughton, a highly experienced underwriter who specialises in underwater systems including autonomous underwater vehicles and seabed-systems. Keith was a Royal Navy officer and mine clearance diver for a decade before entering the insurance sector, and is also an accomplished sailor and a qualified marine biologist. Keith speaks about underwriting, the evolution of marine insurance legislation and the value that being an active SUT member has given him throughout his career.
If you have questions Keith welcomes contact via [email protected], see the Beazley website at https://www.beazley.com/london_market.html to find out more about the company. Contact Steve Hall at [email protected] and find out more about SUT at https://www.sut.org
Thanks to Emily Boddy for podcast artwork and composing and playing the podcast theme music. Thanks to ZapSplat for ambient sounds. 

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In podcast 13 SUT CEO Steve Hall talks to Steffan Lindsø of Oceaneering, who introduces the 'Freedom' resident ROV/AUV, a radical new design that can behave as an AUV in transit to the work area, or for missions such as pipeline survey, then can be operated via blue laser communications as a ROV with multitool attachments fore and aft. It also features inductive charging technology so that it can be 'refuelled' from a base station on the seabed. Think of it as a resident ROV that can operate as an AUV without a tether to go off and conduct missions down to 6000m depth.
Find out more about the Freedom vehicle at: https://www.oceaneering.com/brochures/freedom-rov/
There's also a presentation online about the vehicle at https://www.oceaneering.com/tradeshows/freedom-autonomous-vehicle-development-overview/
Find out more about SUT at https:/www.sut.org, contact Steve Hall at [email protected]
Thanks to Emily Boddy for composing and playing the podcast theme music, and creating the podcast artwork. Additional sound effects from https://www.zapsplat.com 
Please rate, review and let your colleagues know about our weekly podcast - thanks!

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On World Oceans Day 8th June 2020 we issued a feature length podcast episode 10 featuring Steve Hall interviewing UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Chair Ariel Troisi of Argentina, and a second interview with Dr Francesca Santoro who looks after IOC's Ocean Literacy initiative from their Venice office.
By popular demand we're adding the interview with Francesca as an additional episode 'Podcast 12' for listeners who wanted a stand-alone interview on Ocean Literacy as part of the follow up to World Ocean Day. Think of it as 10.1 really :)
Thanks to Emily Boddy for composing & performing podcast theme music & creating the artwork. Additional sound effects from https://www.zapsplat.com 
Find out more about SUT at https://www.sut.org, contact Steve Hall at [email protected] 

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