Ireland and Norway are to co-operate on marine research programmes ranging from seabed surveying to underwater robotics and fish health, under a new agreement signed by the two governments.
The memorandum of understanding (MoU) twins the Marine Institute in Galway with the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (IMR) in Bergen for a four-year period.
The IMR is Norway's largest marine research institution, with four research vessels, and its work is concentrated primarily on the ecosystems of the Barents Sea, the Norwegian and North Seas and the Norwegian coastal zone.
Among the joint programmes will be sound wave use to detect and measure shoals of commercially important fish. The two institutions have already worked together on the first internationally co-ordinated acoustic survey of blue whiting, using Ireland's research vessel, the RV Celtic Explorer, with Russia and the Netherlands in 2004.
The Marine Institute in Galway will also provide the Norwegian institute with strategic and technical support for Norway's seabed mapping programme, drawing on expertise developed during Ireland's survey of 220 million acres off this shoreline which was spearheaded by the Geological Survey of Ireland. Scientists from Ireland and Norway are also co-operating on a study of the occurrence of pancreas disease in farmed fish.
The two institutions will swap equipment and personnel, co-operate on deployment of research vessels and undertake other research programmes as directed by a steering committee. The MoU was signed yesterday in Dublin by Dr Peter Heffernan, chief executive of the Marine Institute, and Tore Nepstad, director of the IMR in Bergen.
It was witnessed by Minister of State for the Marine Pat the Cope Gallagher and Jann Johnssen, secretary general of the Norwegian ministry of fisheries and coastal affairs.