MASTS is made by and for its members
Search
Close this search box.

2019 Workshops

The conference facilities are also opened up to allow for workshops.

See below for details about the workshops that took place at the 2019 ASM.

Afternoon workshops (2nd Oct)

  • Auditorium A (16.45-18.15) – Science-policy workshop
  • Conference room 1 (16.45-18.15) – Dipping your tow in or diving in? A world of varied careers in aquaculture – how to find out what’s out there and how to progress your own career once you know where you want to go.

Two day workshop (3rd/4th Oct)

  • Auditorium A – SUT/MASTS Decommissioning and Wreck Removal (13.30-17.30 on Thursday 3rd Oct and 8.45-12.45 on Friday 4th October). If this workshop is the only part of the ASM that you will be attending, please contact masts@st-andrews.ac.uk for a registration discount code. Download the presentations from this workshop below.

One day workshop (4th Oct):

  • Conference room 2 (09.30-16.30) – MEDIN Data Management Training for new Scientists and Surveyors
  • Exec room A/B (09.30-16.00) – Addressing the ecological implications of offshore renewable energy developments across receptor groups – shaping future marine energy research. Download final workshop report.
  • Conference room 6/7 (09.00-15.30) – INVITATION ONLY – The Scoping and Ranking of Pressures in Scottish Marine Regions and Scottish Offshore Marine Regions

Morning workshops (4th Oct)

  • Conference room 3 (09.00-13.00) – Arctic marine science: current research and opportunities for engagement in the Russian Arctic
  • Conference room 4/5 (09.30-13.00) – An Introduction to Modelling in Scottish Waters

Afternoon workshops (4th Oct)

  • Auditorium A (13.30-16.30) – NERC Innovation Programme for Oil & Gas
  • Conference room 3 (13.30-16.30) – Making more of passive acoustic data: Introduction to Tethys, a database for passive acoustic metadata

Science-Policy Workshop

Organiser: Dr Jacqui Tweddle

Timings & Location: 16.45-18.15 Wednesday 2nd Oct in Auditorium A

Details: This workshop is part of a project focusing on understanding the reasons why researchers do or do not engage with government organisations on marine and coastal management issues. The workshop will bring together researchers and government organisations with marine and coastal interests, and will explore incentives for and barriers to science-policy engagement.

It is anticipated that a publication will result from several workshops being run around the UK, of which this workshop is one. The publication will focus on innovative solutions to issues and barriers to engagement between policy and research communities.

The outputs of this workshop will feed into the results of a larger project (comprising a survey, interviews and the workshops), which will also be written into reports for government organisations. Guidance documents will be produced for academics and government organisations, to facilitate improved engagement in the future.

Dipping your toe in or diving in? A world of varied careers in aquaculture – how to find out what’s out there and how to progress your own career once you know where you want to go.

Organiser: Dr Mary Fraser (SAIC)

Timings & Location: 16.45-18.15 Wednesday 2nd Oct in Conference Room 1

Details: WiSA is a collaborative network for everyone working in the Scottish Aquaculture Industry. Open to all, WiSA will promote the diverse and rewarding careers that are available in aquaculture, to encourage more women to enter the sector. It will also support the progression, opportunities and development of women who are already working in aquaculture. This workshop will include presentations from women already working in a variety of roles across theindustry, allow participants to find out more about the industry and allow discussion about current challenges for the industry.

SUT/MASTS Decommissioning and Wreck Removal

Organiser: Karen Seath

Timings & Location: 13.30-17.30 Thursday 3rd & 08.45-12.45 Friday 4th October in Auditorium A

Details: Influence, educate and unlock opportunities: informing key decom and wreck removal challenges. Workshop flier now available here.

26th Aug – Agenda now avavilable here.

Join us at this seventh Society for Underwater Technology (SUT) and Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS) Decom and Wreck Removal Workshop, where we bring together international expertise from oil and gas decommissioning, marine salvage, renewables and marine science, to build a shared understanding and explore solutions within wreck removal and offshore decommissioning.

Connect, network and debate with a range of international scientists, engineers, salvors, operators, regulators, trade bodies, NGOs, insurers, lawyers, and other users of the sea, to consider topics using a holistic life cycle approach.

Download the workshop presentations:

Session 1 – Moya Crawford

Session 2 – Mike Elliott

Session 3 – Moya Crawford

Session 4Mark Robertson

MEDIN Data Management Training for new Scientists and Surveyors 

Organiser: Dr Sean Gaffney (BODC/MEDIN)

Timings & Location: 09.30-16.30 Friday 4th October in Conference room 2

Details: The Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) is a partnership of UK organisations committed to improving the management and accessibility of marine data. A consortium of fourteen sponsoring organisations fund the network, which has been providing increased access to marine data since 2008.

MEDIN workshops help scientists and surveyors improve their knowledge and skills in marine data management. The workshop shows why good data management is essential, how to avoid common data management pitfalls, what a good approach to data management looks like and the solutions and tools that help you to achieve this. The workshops will also touch on data citation and the benefits of ‘open data’ to the marine community.

This workshop is especially relevant to SUPER DTP students.

The expected outcomes would be a group of diverse people who collect or use marine data coming away from the course with a much more improved awareness of the need for proper marine data management.

Addressing the ecological implications of offshore renewable energy developments across receptor groups – shaping future marine energy research

Organisers: Dr Beth Scott & Janelle Braithwaite

Timings & Location: 09.30-16.00 (part 1) on Friday 4th October in Exec room A/B (top floor)

Details:This workshop aims to identify the next steps in multidisciplinary research required to understand the ecological implications of offshore renewable energy, to inform policy and feed into the production of a Joint Strategic Response application. This will be an application only event – if you are interested in attending, please email Janelle Braithwaite (Marine Scotland) with a brief bio.

Through the ScotMER programme a range of high priority knowledge gaps have been identified for key receptor groups: seabirds, marine mammals, fish and fisheries, diadromous fish, benthos, and physical processes that are significant barriers to the development of offshore wind, wave and tidal energy generation. To date research addressing such knowledge gaps has tended to focus on individual receptors in insolation, despite a general acceptance that the receptors do not operate in isolation within the ecosystem. This workshop will bring together representatives from these groups to narrow down the key ecological pathways that link priority evidence gaps between receptor groups to focus research effort to address key research questions.

The Scoping and Ranking of Pressures in Scottish Marine Regions and Scottish Offshore Marine Regions

Organisers: Martyn Cox, Colin Moffat & John Baxter

Timings & Location: 10.30-16.30 on Friday 2nd November in Conference room 4/5

Details: Scotland is preparing its next assessment of the status and trends in our seas. As part of this process, it is intended to publish the main activities and pressures in each of the Scottish Marine Regions and Scottish Offshore Marine Regions as recently published. The main activities in each of the regions will be established and shared in advance of the workshop. The objective is to gather experts on the various marine pressures and identify the key pressures in each region using an auditable process.

Arctic marine science: current research and opportunities for engagement in the Russian Arctic 

Organiser: UK Science & Innovation Network in Russia & Dr Kim Last

Timings & Location: 09.00-13.00 on Friday 4th October in Conference room 3

Details: The workshop will feature a delegation of Russian scientists from St. Petersburg State University and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences based in St Petersburg. The workshop will give an overview of recent and ongoing Arctic ecology and wider Arctic marine work by a line-up of speakers from across the UK and by St. Petersburg participants. It will give UK-based researchers a unique opportunity to meet and hear directly from leading Russian scientists on their research projects and opportunities to connect. There will be a Q&A after each talk and discussion time in the final part of the workshop to explore potential avenues for future research engagement and cooperation.

St. Petersburg State University and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences are among Russia’s leading research and educational organisations in the field of Arctic marine science. St. Petersburg State University has been involved in international research projects and programmes with a raft of partners, including the ‘Marine Night’ project with SAMS and Norwegian colleagues. The university operates Belomorskaya research station at the White Sea (https://www.arctic.ac.uk/research/educational-and-research-station-belomorskaia-russia/). In March 2019, St. Petersburg State University hosted science visits by SAMS researchers and the NERC Arctic Office, organised by UK Science & Innovation Network in Russia (SIN Russia).

Outputs from this workshop will include:

  • Science talks from Arctic marine scientists in the UK and from St Petersburg State University and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
  • A talk by SIN Russia Actic lead on the role of SIN and practical opportunities for engagement in Russia
  • Discussion involving speakers and participants

Outcomes:

  • Increased understanding of ongoing research projects and trends in Arctic marine science in the UK, Russia and internationally
  • Contacts established with leading Russian scientists in the field and potential opportunities to engage with St. Petersburg research community identified
  • Potential avenues for future international cooperation mapped
  • Identify potential joint research funding opportunities for new collaborations

An Introduction to Modelling in Scottish Waters  

Organiser: David Woolf and the NEHM Forum

Timings & Location: 09.30-13.00 on Friday 4th October in Conference room 4/5

Details: The workshop will:

  • Provide an introduction to hydrodynamic modelling
  • Provide an introduction to existing Scottish modelling activity and availability
  • Provide tutorials on accessing model outputs, data analysis and visualisation (demonstrations and interactive activities)
  • Provide sufficient detail so participants can benefit from the opportunities that modelling expertise and activities in Scotland can bring to your own research.

NERC Innovation Programme for Oil & Gas  

Organiser: Mark Calverley

Timings & Location: 13.30-16.30 on Friday 4th October in Auditorium A

Details: The aim of the workshop is to disseminate some of the key science findings and and highlight how they have been utilised  to reduce uncertainty in the regulatory environment and/or to reduce cost in monitoring.  The workshop also seeks to inform the future strategy of NERC’s IPOG and therefore industry engagement is sought.

NERC established the Innovation Programme for Oil & Gas in 2016 as a 5-year programme to address challenges identified by the industry including:

  • Decommissioning
  • Extending the life of mature basins
  • Exploration in challenging environments
  • Unconventional hydrocarbons

This resulted in the funding of 16 projects under three calls:

  • Innovative Monitoring Approaches – 2017
  • Decommissioning call – 2016
  • Decommissioning call – 2015

Making more of passive acoustic data: Introduction to Tethys, a database for passive acoustic metadata  

Organiser: Denise Risch

Timings & Location: 13.30-16.30 on Friday 4th October in Conference Room 3

Details: Recent technological advances in passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) have led to the collection of large data sets. Systematic and efficient long-term storage and backup of acoustic raw data and metadata thus becomes imperitive for research on spatio-temporal occurrence patterns of species, long-term ambient noise statistics or anthropogenic activities. Since analysis is often shared across groups and may be carried out by multiple analysts over time, metadata information, inclusing system calibration, data conditioning and filtering, software version, automated detector settings and sampling strategies, need to be standardised to ensure comparablity of results. However, in practice such systematic storgae of raw and metadata is rare, which hampers overall data accessibility and prevents effective collaboration between research groups.

This workshop will be a short introduction to the recently developed Tethys database system for metadata related to acoustic recordings (https://tethys.sdsu.edu/; Roch et al., 2015). The database is intended to house the metadata from acoustic research, allowing the user to perform meta-analyses or to aggregate data from many experimental efforts based on a common attribute. The database can be queried based on time, space, or any desired attribute and the results may be integrated with external datasets such as climate and oceanographic data, tidal state or lunar cycle.

The aim of the workshop is to introduce PAM data collectors to the Tethys database system and have an open discussion on how this system could be used efficiently to store and share passive acoustic data within and between institutions.

MASTS Resources

We’re working behind the scenes to bring you a suite of useful, and updateable, resources including: 

  • Find an expert
  • Find facilities & equipment
  • MASTS Publications

 

If you would like to be updated when the resources section is live please let us know.