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This Padlet is organized into different sections (named on the left), one for Ocean Currents Retrieval and the others for Scientific and Downstream Applications of the WOC products.

For each section, click the + button to insert new Limitations, Challenges, Opportunities and Recommendations relative to the state-of-the-art ocean currents product and their use for scientific and downstream applications.

Below, we suggest some examples of discussion topics for each category (Limitations, Challenges, Opportunities and Recommendations). Please respect the color code used for each category and feel free to add reactions and comments to existing posts.

An extra section, called "Anything Missing", is dedicated to broaden the discussion to other perspectives.

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Ocean Currents Retrieval: limitations on methodologies, data quality, validation procedures etc...

Scientific and Downstream Applications: limitations of state of the art ocean current products vs. user needs.

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Ocean Currents Retrieval: technical/methodological challenges that need to be addressed to further validate and/or improve state of the art ocean currents products.

Scientific and Downstream Applications: challenges (e.g. resolved physical processes, effective space/time resolutions) required for the dedicated applications.

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Ocean Currents Retrieval: opportunities to further validate and/or improve state of the art ocean currents products, e.g. how new and future missions can address the current limitations.

Scientific and Downstream Applications: opportunities to reach out the main external users of ocean current product for dedicated applications.

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Ocean Currents Retrieval: recommendations on new methods to improve ocean current quality.

Scientific and Downstream Applications: recommendations on the next steps to focus on to increase the use of ocean current products for the dedicated applications.

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Limitations/challenges include: The variety of potential users in fisheries is large. Needs of small-scale coastal fishers are much different from industrial scale fishing operations that operate in the high seas. Technological advances among small-scale fishers are limited. However, they commonly use mobile phones and GPS, which may provide entry points. The financial and technology adoption capacity of fishers in developing countries to purchase tools and effectively use these is limited. Most fishers only speak their local languages, which means that with tools/capacity building in English or French we will not reach this group. Translation in local languages is costly, but needs to be considered in projects targeting fisheries.

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Opportunities include:

1. Ocean current data can be of use for fishing safety improvement – to avoid going to sea in bad weather, avoid storms and swells, forecasting weather change/ early warnings. Goal: safe fishers lives.

2. Search and rescue services for fisheries, where fishers with engine breakdown are sometimes found after weeks at sea, could benefit from ocean current info. Goal: safe fishers’ lives.

3. Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems (EBUSs) – climate change impact forecasting of fish production within EBUSs can benefit from ocean current monitoring data. Goal: fisheries production forecasting – contribute to food security objectives.

4.       Fish stock migration forecasting – climate change impact forecasting on movement of stocks of migratory fish species, using ocean current data – temperature, salt, speed, etc. Goal: fisheries production forecasting – contribute to food security objectives.

5. Monitoring and forecasting of movement of non-satellite tracked drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (dFADs) and other drifting gears, using ocean current data. Goal: Reducing marine pollution from fisheries.

6.Searching and recovery of abandoned, lost and otherwise discarded fishing gears (ALDFG) after gear loss due to storms, hurricanes and typhoons, could potentially benefit from ocean current data. Goal: Reducing marine pollution from fisheries; rehabilitation of fishers livelihoods after a natural disaster

7. Assessment of (oil) pollution risks to identify areas that should be temporarily closed for fishing, for health and safety purposes. Generation ocean pollution data to facilitate damage compensation programmes. Goal: contribute to food safety and sustainable livelihood objectives.

8. Regional fishery management organizations (RFMOs) can use ocean current data to support their conservation and fisheries management decision making processes, such as: Establishment of MPAs, Closed seasons for fishing, Allocation of fishing quota, and Searching or identifying new fishing grounds. Goal: Sustainable fish stocks management = sustainable fisheries

9. The development of historical time series of ocean current data, combined with wave height and water temperature data, and the continues monitoring of these data, can be very useful for establishment of risk levels for parametric/weather index insurance of fishing and aquaculture operations. Goal: climate change resilience of the fisheries sector.

10. With access to ocean current information the fishing vessel operators can better plan their fishing trips and reduce fuel costs and GHG emissions. This will improve the fuel efficiency, in litres per ton of fish landed, and will contribute to the profitability of the fishing fleets. Goal: increase fishing profits and contribute to climate change mitigation in fisheries.

11. Coastal current information can help to improve the quality of siting decisions for fisheries and aquaculture infrastructure, such as harbours, jetties and marine cage culture. Avoid the waste of investment funds in “white elephant” infrastructure that will not be used. Goal: Improve infrastructure investment in the Blue Transformation/Blue Economy.

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recommendations from FAO for work  in support of sustainable fisheries

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recommendations from FAO for work  in support of sustainable fisheries

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+ Establish a Sustainable Fisheries Task Force with key members from the fishing industry (e.g. large fishing companies, fisheries associations, RFMOs, associated industry partners) to identify technology/application needs, and develop a workplan for addressing these needs. FAO can assist with bringing the key stakeholders together.
+ Develop a platform with an overview of currently available tools that can be accessed free of charge or with low cost by  individuals and companies. The platform could give a short introduction of each tool developed, pros and cons, and its possible applications.
+Expand the application of valuable tools (e.g. as presented by NAVTOR, AMPHITRITE and CLS) developed for merchant shipping to the fisheries industry, addressing fishing specific needs. There are about 60 000 fishing vessels of >24m LOA and about 430 000 fishing vessels of 12-24 m LOA worldwide. There are thus business opportunities in expanding to the fishing industry.
+ Further increase coastal current data availability, linking these with bathymetric maps of near shore areas, with the aim to make these data accessible by small-scale fishers in developing countries (increasing safety at sea) and for coastal  fisheries infrastructure development.
+Model the ocean currents and temperature layers at greater depths, thus expanding from sea surface temperature to about 200 m depht, and develop tools that can support fishers to access these temperature and current models for their fishing operations (e.g. for longlining and midwater trawling)

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Ocean surface currents can be used in ship routing models for computing least-CO2 routes.

The CO2 savings will be highly dependent on region and date. Preliminary results obtained via VISIR-2 in the western Pacific indicate that the annual-mean contribution of currents to CO2 savings can be on the order of 1-3 %. It is the dominant effect whenever sea state is not too rough (significant wave height less than 2m).

More systematic runs were performed via VISIR-1 in the Atlantic Ocean, https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/12/3449/2019/gmd-12-3449-2019.html

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Gianandrea Mannarini and Lorenzo Carelli

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VISIR-1.b: ocean surface gravity waves and currents for energy-efficient navigation

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Abstract. The latest development of the ship-routing model published in Mannarini et al. (2016a) is VISIR-1.b, which is presented here.

The ne…

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Response to the question on the use of ERA5 fluxes in the TSCV OSSE assimilation experiments:
The key thing about the design of the OSSE is that there are differences in the forcings between the Nature Run and our OSSEs. Our simulated observations will be independent because they are generated from an independent model run which differs in numerous ways to our assimilation experiments.

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Ship's speed over ground (SOG) is an essential component of a ship routing modelling system.

In order to estimate speed over SOG, surface currents should be combined with realistic estimations of  ship's speed through water (STW).

Ways to estimate STW include using towing tank data, semi-empirical parametrizations, CFD computations, etc. However, ground-truth from onboard data would be needed for validation.

Is it possible to actively engage ship companies in sharing their rich onboard data?

This would contribute to more realistic assessments of potential CO2 savings through optimal routing.

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Rogue waves, wave-current interaction, cross sea index, WOC safety of navigation indicator: this diversity is a richness but might also hamper uptake by end-users.

I would recommend to produce standard indicators for the safety of navigation. The Maritime Safety Committee of IMO rules about e.g. vessel intact stability and sets criteria for assessing five dynamic stability failure modes in waves
https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Safety/Pages/ShipDesignAndStability-default.aspx

G.Mannarini (CMCC)

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The work of the IMO on ship design is mainly carried by the Sub-Committee on Ship Design and Construction (SDC) which is directed by the Maritime Safety Committee as the parent IMO organ. The safe design of a ship is primarily regulated in SOLAS chapter II-1, parts A (General) , A-1 (struct…