The Little Book of Irish Science SFI Little Book of Irish Science | Page 52

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Protecting Ireland’s
Marine Wildlife
A major data collation exercise is underway in the
Science Foundation funded MaREI Centre for Marine
and Renewable Energy, involving Dr Mark Jessopp in
collaboration with Kosmos Energy and others. The
three year DCENR ObSERVE programme will take
all existing marine datasets, and identify data gaps
specifi c to protected seabirds and cetaceans (whales and
dolphins) in Irish territorial waters. The aim is to improve
our knowledge of seabird and mammal occurrence,
habitat and population ecology in the seas, ocean and
continental trenches off Ireland. Given that Irish waters
are 10 times larger than its land mass, fi lling in the
gaps has proved challenging, necessitating the use of
specialist aircraft and sophisticated ship based surveys.
www.marei.ie