Last week our ABT Marine, Namate Sililo, had the opportunity to attend the 2nd EurofleetsPlus “ROV Lab” workshop.

The scientific ROV Lab workshop was organized within the scope of the EurofleetsPlus training program and was held at MARUM – Center for Environmental Sciences, University Bremen, Germany. MARUM operates one of the three IODP core repositories in the world and, together with the AWI and the World Data Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (PANGAEA), provides an advanced infrastructure with several mass-spectrometer labs and underwater vehicles, e.g., ROVs and AUVs.

This three-day workshop (22nd-24th of November 2022) presented by Dr. Nicolas Nowald and Volker Ratmeyer covered core topics such as dive preparation, mobilization and manipulator exercises including training dives in the ROV QUEST Simulator and outside test-pool exercises with the ROV MARUM Squid.

Bringing together European research-ROV Pilots/Technicians, the objective was to offer a comprehensive overview of real-life cruise preparation, mobilization and operation at sea illustrated by field experts operating and maintaining underwater vehicles.

Immersive workshops offered practical exercises in an individual and team setting with an ROV Manipulator (Orion7P), the ROV QUEST Simulator as well as the ROV SQUID dive in the test-pool.

Participants were provided great insight into the fact that scientific ROV teams do not only need a solid technological background and detailed understanding of their system but also need to handle special requirements for scientific ROV operations and requests from the scientific community. The use of new-era ROVs are a revolutionary opportunity which enable marine researchers to access a greater plethora of ocean data.