Ireland could play a leading role in the development of new sub-sea research systems which can predict earthquakes and tsunamis, according to a prominent US oceanographer.
Prof John Delaney of the University of Washington says that the scientific use of sub-sea cable systems is as revolutionary in deep-sea terms as the Hubble telescope is to our knowledge of outer space.
The oceanographer, who has travelled to depths of 4,500 metres to study underwater volcanoes, is among a group of US and Canadian scientists involved in the Neptune project, which is laying an 800km ring of powered fibre-optic cable on the seabed on the Juan de Fuca plate off northwest north America.
He was delivering a keynote address yesterday to a conference on the scientific use of sub-sea cables, which was hosted by the Marine Institute in Dublin Castle.
State support and co-operation for this new area of marine research would yield more information about the impact of seabed geology and seismic behaviour, Prof Delaney said - thus avoiding a repeat of the devastation caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster in southeast Asia and the flooding of New Orleans last year.
The 200,000 square km tectonic plate of Juan de Fuca, where the Neptune project is focused, is the smallest of a dozen major plates which make up the planet's surface.
It serves as a prototype for other areas, according to Prof Delaney, such as the critical north Pacific region, where plate boundaries are more active and generate a great deal more sub-sea earthquake activity.