Three resident academics from the Department of Geosciences within the Faculty of Science – Prof. Alan Deidun, Dr Anthony Galea and Dr Adam Gauci – along with Dr Joel Azzopardi from the Department of Artificial Intelligence, recently participated within the 15th International Coastal Symposium (ICS) held in Busan, South Korea.
Two peer-reviewed papers were presented as posters by the Maltese academics, the only ones representing the Maltese Islands at such a high-profile conference, focusing on an analyses of four-year-long shipping data for Maltese waters as well as analyses of jellyfish occurrence data for the same waters as gleaned through the Spot the Jellyfish citizen science campaign. The latter paper presents the results of research conducted by Ms Marija Pia Gatt as part of the M.Sc. in Applied Oceanography dissertation.
The two papers have been published in the Journal of Coastal Research and is available at:
Two peer-reviewed papers were presented as posters by the Maltese academics, the only ones representing the Maltese Islands at such a high-profile conference, focusing on an analyses of four-year-long shipping data for Maltese waters as well as analyses of jellyfish occurrence data for the same waters as gleaned through the Spot the Jellyfish citizen science campaign. The latter paper presents the results of research conducted by Ms Marija Pia Gatt as part of the M.Sc. in Applied Oceanography dissertation.
The two papers have been published in the Journal of Coastal Research and is available at:
The first scientific study basically involved the processing and interpretation of AIS (Automated Identification System) data collected since February 2013 through an ad hoc infrastructure developed within the Physical Oceanography Research Group premises at the University through a past Italia-Malta project called BIODIVALUE.
A second AIS antenna was also installed during the course of the project on the island of Lampedusa, situated circa 100km to the south-west of the Maltese Islands, such that the combined coverage of the two AIS antennae covers large swathes of the Central Mediterranean, one of the busiest waterways in the world which is subject to an estimated 25-30% of the global oil traffic. A user-interface open to the public is available online and allows anyone to query the database in searching for the shipping traffic data of interest.
A second AIS antenna was also installed during the course of the project on the island of Lampedusa, situated circa 100km to the south-west of the Maltese Islands, such that the combined coverage of the two AIS antennae covers large swathes of the Central Mediterranean, one of the busiest waterways in the world which is subject to an estimated 25-30% of the global oil traffic. A user-interface open to the public is available online and allows anyone to query the database in searching for the shipping traffic data of interest.
Post-processing of the AIS data allowed the researchers to decipher important attributes of each recorded vessel, namely geographical coordinates, dimensions, draught, speed, ship type, distance from shore and even port of destination, permitting a full characterisation of the shipping traffic in the Central Mediterranean, with the system being able to distinguish between anchored vessels and those in transit.
This output, in turn, contributes to the management of shipping-related impacts, such as the potential risk of oil pollution, of collisions with marine mammals and of ballast water discharge, besides assessing the density of anchoring impact on the seabed. The data analyses also allowed the characterisation of shipping making use of Malta’s designated bunkering zones. An interesting statistic emerging from such data analyses is that, over the period June 2016 and June 2017, a total of 170,000 vessels passed through the Malta-Sicily Channel without entering Maltese territorial waters, of which slightly more than 35% (i.e. ca. 6,000) were oil carriers.
This output, in turn, contributes to the management of shipping-related impacts, such as the potential risk of oil pollution, of collisions with marine mammals and of ballast water discharge, besides assessing the density of anchoring impact on the seabed. The data analyses also allowed the characterisation of shipping making use of Malta’s designated bunkering zones. An interesting statistic emerging from such data analyses is that, over the period June 2016 and June 2017, a total of 170,000 vessels passed through the Malta-Sicily Channel without entering Maltese territorial waters, of which slightly more than 35% (i.e. ca. 6,000) were oil carriers.
