The Creature Features and Chemosynthesis Presentation is a simple PowerPoint presentation about life in the hydrothermal vent ecosystem. The presentation introduces students to some of the unique creatures that live there and how the vents provide energy for them to survive through the process of chemosynthesis.

The lesson enables students to imagine, design and construct their own film set using recycled materials and papier-mache that is based on the Moytirra hydrothermal vent field. The students will experience working in groups and through a creative process develop skills intrinsic to working scientifically.

The lesson enables students to respond to scientific footage about hydrothermal vents and visually interpret their findings through a two-part printmaking process. The students will experiment with colour, line, shape and mark-making techniques to compose a print.

The lesson introduces students to how stories are developed for film. Students will draft a storyboard for a film imagining they are a team of marine scientists embarking on their own underwater voyage of discovery. They will interpret marine and scientific language and through a combination of the real and the imaginary, develop their own storyboard and film.

The lesson allows students to explore the effects of solids in hot and cold liquid by conducting a range of experiments mixing different materials in water solutions.

The lesson provides students with an understanding of the physical features of the world – under the ocean. Students will learn about tectonic plates and underwater features such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The students will discover how physical features such as hydrothermal vents form in this natural environment, deep under the ocean.

Farmed stocks of Atlantic salmon in Ireland are inspected on 14 occasions throughout the year to monitor sea lice levels as part of a national programme.

This paper proposes an algorithm for mosaicing videos generated during stock assessment of seabed-burrowing species. In these surveys, video transects of the seabed are captured and the population is estimated by counting the number of burrows in the video. The mosaicing algorithm is designed to process a large amount of video data and summarize the relevant features for the survey in a single image. Hence, the algorithm is designed to be computationally inexpensive while maintaining a high degree of robustness. We adopt a registration algorithm that employs a simple translational motion model and generates a mapping to the mosaic coordinate system using a concatenation of frame-by-frame homographies. A temporal smoothness prior is used in a maximum a posteriori homography estimation algorithm to reduce noise in the motion parameters in images with small amounts of texture detail. A multiband blending scheme renders the mosaic and is optimized for the application requirements. Tests on a large data set show that the algorithm is robust enough to allow the use of mosaics as a medium for burrow counting. This will increase the verifiability of the stock assessments as well as generate a ground truth data set for the learning of an automated burrow counting algorithm.

The 2017 Irish Anglerfish and Megrim Survey (IAMS) took place from 14th February to 7th March (area 7bcjk) and 8-17th April 2017 (area 6a) on RV Celtic Explorer. The main objective of the survey is to obtain biomass estimates for anglerfish (Lophius piscatorius and L. budegassa) and establish an abundance index for megrim (Lepidorhombus whiffiaginis and L. boscii) in areas 6a (south of 58°N) and 7 (west of 8°W). Secondary objectives are to collect data on the distribution and relative abundance of anglerfish, megrim and other commercially exploited species. The survey also collects maturity and other biological information for commercial fish species. The IAMS survey is coordinated with the Scottish Anglerfish and Megrim Survey (SIAMISS) and uses the same gear and fishing practices.

The second annual Irish Beam trawl Ecosystem (IBES) took place from 7-16th March 2017 on RV Celtic Explorer in the western Celtic sea. The main objective of the survey is to connect the Irish Anglerfish and Megrim Survey (IAMS) to the UK beam trawl surveys in the Celtic Sea, English Channel and Irish Sea, with the purpose of providing a swept-area biomass estimate for anglerfish (Lophius piscatorius and L. budegassa) in area VII. Secondary objectives are to collect data on the distribution and relative abundance of commercially exploited species as well as invertebrates and by-catch species, particularly vulnerable and indicator species. The survey also collects maturity and other biological information for commercial fish species in the western Celtic Sea. The IBES survey uses the same gear, methods and stratification as the CEFAS Q1 South-west Ecosystem Survey (Q1SWECOS). The IBES survey is formally coordinated by the ICES Working Group on Beam Trawl Surveys