Marine Conservation and P&O
P&O Ferries has a lot of policies to decrease carbon emissions, pollution and waste; they also play an active role in marine conservation through a number of innovative partnerships. Murali Podila takes a look at who they are and what they do to help the seas we sail over.
P&O Ferries, as an industrial company, tries to play a major role in decreasing its environmental impact both on and off the sea. Examples of this include the sulphur scrubbers on board the Pride of Kent and a stringent attitude towards dumping waste and recycling.
Their role in marine conservation is no less active. P&O Ferries actively participates in the Biscay Dolphin Research Programme, Marine Conservation Seasearch and also assists the National Oceanographic Centre Southampton (NOCS) in their research.
The partnership with NOCS serves a very important purpose, as it undertakes vital scientific research into marine organisms, ecosystems and oceanic behaviour, particularly looking at the effects and behaviour of their currents.
Oceanography, or marine science, is an earth science that covers a vast number of topics such as Geochemistry, ocean biology, ecosystems and ocean currents and behaviour. The NOCS make use of the Pride of Bilbao by putting equipment on the ferry to measure properties of the ocean water such as temperature, salinity and the density of plankton.
The equipment used, a FerryBox, is an automated instrument that is filled with different sensors and analysers, providing a valid alternative to buoys, which are often both expensive and very high maintenance. The complexity of the instruments in the FerryBox is usually dependant on conditions in and around the ship. These measurements help scientist’s at NOCS learn more about the oceanic conditions and how they affect the wider environment.
The NOCS is a world renowned oceanographic research institute that achieved international recognition after its contribution towards understanding the ocean’s role in the global climate system, and continues to work closely with P&O Ferries as mankind struggles to meet the environmental challenges of the 21st Century.
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Image Credit: State library and Archives of Florida
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