The State's £21 million sea-bed survey has mapped almost 18 per cent of the territory and hopes to have the first definitive results by next summer. Potential gas reserves associated with carbonate mounds have been identified in preliminary findings, released at a Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) seminar in Dublin this month.
Two ships have been dedicated to the seven-year survey by the GSI - the 79.25-metre RV Bligh, a former British navy ship, and the 68-metre RV Siren. Both are owned and run by Global Ocean Technologies Ltd (Gotech), which was contracted by the GSI as manager of the initiative.
The Waterford-based company, which has been involved in sea-bed projects around the world, believes that this is the most ambitious survey of its type. Ireland has one of the largest offshore areas in Europe - 850,000 square kilometres.
Our national sea-bed territory is 10 times the size of our land area. "Only Indonesia has tried something similar," Mr Noel Hanley of Gotech told the GSI seminar, which was co-ordinated by Enda Gallagher of the GSI.
Presenting an overview of progress to date, Mr Hanley and the GSI's team of Deepak Inamdar, Helen Gwinnutt, Mick Geoghegan and Garrett Duffy reported that 72,563 square kilometres had been mapped. The main focus initially has been on zone 3, the more distant and deeper part of the sea-bed.
The multi-beam sounding system fitted for the work - known as the EH120 - is proving to be very successful, according to Mr Hanley. Its area of coverage is five times as wide as the water depth. It can penetrate the sediment and is fitted with a yaw correction to stabilise images in bad weather.
The high-resolution data collected include an image of the wreck of the Lusitania.The wreck has been lying in 100 metres of water 18 kilometres south of the Old Head of Kinsale since its sinking by a first World War torpedo in 1915, with the loss of 1,200 lives. The wreck was first located by a hydrographic survey ship using echo-sounding in 1937.
The Bligh and Siren are also using sub-bottom profiling to detect rocks, gas and other minerals. They have been fitted with magnetometers and gravity meters. It is not the first survey of its type, and scientific interest is already reflected in the naming of several underwater features on the charts after characters in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
Some 15 major canyons on the side of the Rockall trough were identified in earlier work, and the GSI's reconnaissance survey of the Irish Continental Shelf and Shelf edge in 1996 is regarded as essential groundwork for this initiative.
However, the value of this survey to fishermen, engineers, biologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, geologists and exploration interests was emphasised by several speakers at the seminar. The Marine Institute is also co-ordinating a series of ancillary projects.
The range of data being harvested emphasises the need for policy initiatives, according to Dr Anthony Grehan of NUI Galway's Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute and Lieut Cdr Mark Mellett of the Naval Service.
Dr Grehan, who is associated with the EU-funded Atlantic Coral Ecosystem Study (ACES), has already reported discoveries of carbonate mounds and coldwater coral reefs in the Rockall and Porcupine areas. He has set up a scientist/stakeholder task force under the ACES project to influence policy on protecting the sensitive deep-sea ecosystem.
He believes that there is a need for an integrated ocean management strategy which would take responsibility for stewardship of the resource. Duchas, the Heritage Service, which has the legal competence, is "hopelessly under-resourced," he said.
Lieut Cdr Mellett, staff officer with responsibility for plans and policy at Naval Headquarters and the Naval Service's representative on Dr Grehan's task force, said that our sea area was currently valued at about €3 billion in market value in terms of food, water-based leisure, tourism and technology. In non-market terms, however, its value could be up to €50 billion. This suggested that the Naval Service should have a key role to play in integrated ocean management.
In the short term dwindling fish stocks would increase international tensions, he suggested. Maritime traffic is set to triple in the next 20 years, with ships travelling at increased speeds, and greatly increasing the risk of another Kowloon Bridge incident off this coastline. The Naval Service is already gearing up to the extra responsibilities through its new implementation plan to underpin the sovereign rights of this State at sea.