• Title/Summary/Keyword: Ocean exploration

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A Study on the Financial System for Developing Mineral Resources and Protecting the Marine Environment in the Area (심해저 광물자원 개발과 해양환경보호를 위한 재정제도에 관한 연구)

  • Seongwook Park
    • Ocean and Polar Research
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    • v.45 no.1
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    • pp.11-22
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    • 2023
  • For the commercial development of deep-sea mineral resources, the International Seabed Authority is engaged in wide ranging discussions to establish the Regulations on Exploitation. The core issue of the Regulations on Exploitation is how to protect the marine environment along with the royalty system that distributes the profits from such development. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea stipulates the protection of the marine environment in Part 12 (Articles 192-237) for the preservation of the marine environment, and in the 1994 Implementation Agreement, the protection of the marine environment at the stage of application for approval of the plan of work together with the Regulations on Exploration for the protection of the marine environment. For this purpose, certain obligations are imposed on the applicants. In the Regulations on Exploitation, financial systems such as environmental performance guarantee, insurance, and environmental compensation funds, which were not found in the Regulations on Exploration, are added to further specify the measures for marine environment protection generally stipulated in the 1982 Law of the Convention or 1994 Implementation Agreement. Regarding the financial system for marine environment protection, the Marine Environmental Protection and Conservation Informal Working Group meeting is revising the purpose of the environmental compensation fund. Among these financial system elements, it is judged that there is a possibility that the environmental performance guarantee and insurance may overlap considerably, and it is also thought that the establishment of the environmental compensation fund can also provide a substantial sum of money that will meet the purpose of the compensation fund in terms of securing its financial resources. In this paper, the question is posed as to whether or not this can be accomplished. In this respect, this paper examines the environmental performance guarantee, insurance, and environmental compensation fund, which are necessary for the protection of the marine environment of the deep seabed, but which can impose appropriate obligations on contractors for the commercial development of deep seabed mineral resources. At the same time as figuring out how it is operated in relation to relevant domestic laws, I would like to propose a plan to reflect the implications derived from the domestic law operation process in the Regulations on Exploitation.

New techniques in Echoview for fisheries acoustic data analysis

  • Higginbottom, Ian
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Fisheries Technology Conference
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    • 2003.10a
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    • pp.1-8
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    • 2003
  • Acoustics is widely used in marine and inland fisheries research and management. In June 2002 ICES (Council for the Exploration of the Sea) held a symposium titled “Acoustics in Fisheries and Aquatic Ecology” in Montpellier, France. There were several topics to be presented such as ecology marine waters, combination of methods, target strength (TS) method and results, TS modeling, survey design, behavior, avoidance, technology, and identification. (omitted)

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A prediction method of ice breaking resistance using a multiple regression analysis

  • Cho, Seong-Rak;Lee, Sungsu
    • International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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    • v.7 no.4
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    • pp.708-719
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    • 2015
  • The two most important tasks of icebreakers are first to secure a sailing route by breaking the thick sea ice and second to sail efficiently herself for purposes of exploration and transportation in the polar seas. The resistance of icebreakers is a priority factor at the preliminary design stage; not only must their sailing efficiency be satisfied, but the design of the propulsion system will be directly affected. Therefore, the performance of icebreakers must be accurately calculated and evaluated through the use of model tests in an ice tank before construction starts. In this paper, a new procedure is developed, based on model tests, to estimate a ship's ice breaking resistance during continuous ice-breaking in ice. Some of the factors associated with crushing failures are systematically considered in order to correctly estimate her ice-breaking resistance. This study is intended to contribute to the improvement of the techniques for ice resistance prediction with ice breaking ships.

Issues in offshore platform research - Part 1: Semi-submersibles

  • Sharma, R.;Kim, Tae-Wan;Sha, O.P.;Misra, S.C.
    • International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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    • v.2 no.3
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    • pp.155-170
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    • 2010
  • Availability of economic and efficient energy resources is crucial to a nation's development. Because of their low cost and advancement in drilling and exploration technologies, oil and gas based energy systems are the most widely used energy source throughout the world. The inexpensive oil and gas based energy systems are used for everything, i.e., from transportation of goods and people to the harvesting of crops for food. As the energy demand continues to rise, there is strong need for inexpensive energy solutions. An offshore platform is a large structure that is used to house workers and machinery needed to drill wells in the ocean bed, extract oil and/or natural gas, process the produced fluids, and ship or pipe them to shore. Depending on the circumstances, the offshore platform can be fixed (to the ocean floor) or can consist of an artificial island or can float. Semi-submersibles are used for various purposes in offshore and marine engineering, e.g. crane vessels, drilling vessels, tourist vessels, production platforms and accommodation facilities, etc. The challenges of deepwater drilling have further motivated the researchers to design optimum choices for semi-submersibles for a chosen operating depth. In our series of eight papers, we discuss the design and production aspects of all the types of offshore platforms. In the present part I, we present an introduction and critical analysis of semi-submersibles.

Exploration of the Glycosyltransferase BmmGT1 from a Marine-Derived Bacillus Strain as a Potential Enzyme Tool for Compound Glycol-Diversification

  • Liu, Quanquan;Ren, Pengfei;Liu, Yang;Qin, Wen;Li, Huayue;Li, Wenli
    • Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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    • v.28 no.6
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    • pp.931-937
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    • 2018
  • Glycosyltransferases (GTs) from microbes are an emerging and rich source for efficient glycol-transformation of natural/unnatural compounds. Here, we probed the catalytic capability and substrate promiscuity of BmmGT1 from marine-derived Bacillus methylotrophicus B-9987. The regioselectivity of BmmGT1 on macrolactin A (1) was explored by optimization of the reaction conditions, in which a series of O-glycosylated macrolactins (1a-1e) were generated, including two new di/tri-O-glucosyl analogs (1b and 1e). Furthermore, BmmGT1 was able to catalyze the glycosylation of the thiol (S-) or amine (N-) sites of phenolic compounds (2 and 3), leading to the generation of N- (2a) or S-glycosides (3a and 3b). The present study demonstrates that BmmGT1 could serve as a potential enzyme tool for O-, N-, or S-glycosyl structural diversification of compounds for drug discovery.

ROV Manipulation from Observation and Exploration using Deep Reinforcement Learning

  • Jadhav, Yashashree Rajendra;Moon, Yong Seon
    • Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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    • v.3 no.3
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    • pp.136-148
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    • 2017
  • The paper presents dual arm ROV manipulation using deep reinforcement learning. The purpose of this underwater manipulator is to investigate and excavate natural resources in ocean, finding lost aircraft blackboxes and for performing other extremely dangerous tasks without endangering humans. This research work emphasizes on a self-learning approach using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). DRL technique allows ROV to learn the policy of performing manipulation task directly, from raw image data. Our proposed architecture maps the visual inputs (images) to control actions (output) and get reward after each action, which allows an agent to learn manipulation skill through trial and error method. We have trained our network in simulation. The raw images and rewards are directly provided by our simple Lua simulator. Our simulator achieve accuracy by considering underwater dynamic environmental conditions. Major goal of this research is to provide a smart self-learning way to achieve manipulation in highly dynamic underwater environment. The results showed that a dual robotic arm trained for a 3DOF movement successfully achieved target reaching task in a 2D space by considering real environmental factor.

A NEW METHOD OF MASKING CLOUD-AFFECTED PIXELS IN OCEAN COLOR IMAGERY BASED ON SPECTRAL SHAPE OF WATER REFLECTANCE

  • Fukushima, Hajime;Tamura, Jin;Toratani, Mitsuhiro;Murakami, Hiroshi
    • Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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    • v.1
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    • pp.25-28
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    • 2006
  • We propose a new method of masking cloud-affected pixels in satellite ocean color imageries such as of GLI. Those pixels, mostly found around cloud pixels or in scattered cloud area, have anomalous features in either in chlorophyll-a estimate or in water reflectance. This artifact is most likely caused by residual error of inter-band registration correction. Our method is to check the pixel-wise 'soundness' of the spectral water reflectance Rw retrieved after the atmospheric correction. First, we define two spectral ratio between water reflectance, IRR1 and IRR2, each defined as RW(B1)/RW (B3) RW (B3) and as RW (B2)/RW(B4) respectively, where $B1{\sim}B4$ stand for 4 consecutive visible bands. We show that an almost linear relation holds over log-scaled IRR1 and IRR2 for shipmeasured RW data of SeaBAM in situ data set and for GLI cloud-free Level 2 sub-scenes. The method we propose is to utilize this nature, identifying those pixels that show significant discrepancy from that relationship. We apply this method to ADEOS-II/GLI ocean color data to evaluate the performance over Level-2 data, which includes different water types such as case 1, turbid case 2 and coccolithophore bloom waters.

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P-wave velocity analysis around BSR depth using surface and ocean bottom seismic data (탄성파 자료를 이용한 BSR 부근의 속도 분석)

  • Kim, Byoung-Yeop;Koo, Nam-Hyung;Yoo, Dong-Geun
    • 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2007.06a
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    • pp.151-156
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    • 2007
  • In December 2006, 2D surface streamer and Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS) data were acquired in the Ulleung basin in Korea where strong Bottom Simulating Reflectors (BSR) were shown as a result of 2D and 3D multichannel (MCS) reflection survey. The aim of this study is to provide another reliable source for estimating P wave velocity around BSR depth using OBS data in addition to velocity information from 2D surface seismic data. Four OBSs were deployed and four 20-km shot lines which pass two OBSs respectively were designed. To derive P wave velocity profile, interactive interval velocity analysis using ${\tau}$-p trajectory matching method (Kumar, 2005) was used for OBS data and semblance analysis was used for surface data. The seismic profiles cross the OBS instruments in two different directions yield recordings for four different azimuths. This raised the confidence for the results. All velocity profiles in the vicinity of BSR depth of four OBS sites show almost definite velocity changes which we could consider as upper BSR and free gas layer. Making comparison between velocity from OBS and that from 2D seismic semblance velocity analysis gives consistency in result.

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Evolution of the eastern margin of Korea: constraints on the opening of the East Sea (Japan Sea)

  • Kim, Han-Joon;Jou, Hyeong-Tae;Suk, Bong-Chool
    • 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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    • 2007.12a
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    • pp.73-83
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    • 2007
  • We interpreted marine seismic profiles in conjunction with swath bathymetric and magnetic data to investigate rifting to breakup processes at the eastern Korean margin that led to the separation of the southwestern Japan Arc. Analysis of rift fault patterns suggests that rifting at the Korean margin was primarily controlled by normal faulting resulting from extension rather than strike-slip deformation. Two extension directions of E-W and NW-SE for rifting are recognized. We interpret that the E-W direction represents initial rifting at the inner margin and the NW-SE direction probably represents the extension in response to tensional tectonics associated with the subduction of the Pacific Plate in the NW direction. No significant volcanism was involved in rifting. In contrast, the inception of sea floor spreading documents a pronounced volcanic phase which appears to reflect asthenospheric upwelling as well as rift-induced convection particularly in the narrow southern margin. We suggest that structural and igneous evolution of the Korean margin, although it is in a back-arc setting, can be explained by the processes occurring at the passive continental margin with magmatism influenced by asthenospheric upwelling.

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