SAEON Marine Offshore Node gets off to a good start

“Preliminary thoughts on the structure of the Node, in the form of a distributed data management model incorporating existing facilities, are taking shape,” says Juliet Hermes, newly appointed manager of the SAEON Marine Offshore Node (Picture © Johan Pauw) South Africa's new flagship marine research vessel, the Ellen Khuzwayo was launched by Marine and Coastal Management of the Department of Environmental Affairs & Tourism in September 2007 (Picture © Farocean Marine)

In the first three months since her appointment, SAEON’s Marine Offshore Node Manager Juliet Hermes has set up the physical location of the Node, and has done considerable footwork to familiarise herself with the marine offshore organisational environment as well as the SAEON environment.

She spent the majority of July studying SAEON documentation, establishing what is currently available in terms of offshore marine data management (in particular web based) and meeting with members of the marine community to begin establishing elements of a draft business plan.

Apart from links to marine organisations, Juliet says that it is vital that the Offshore Node should establish connections with relevant research initiatives in order to minimise the cost of carrying out offshore long-term monitoring. These include the African Coelacanth Environment Programme, Agulhas-Somali Current Large Marine Ecosystem, Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem, South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Programme, and ongoing projects within Marine and Coastal Management (MCM).

Such relationships will need to be formalised, but an even greater need is to start the recruiting process for the rest of the Nodal team members, says Juliet. She is currently in the process of recruiting a marina data scientist, a marine education officer and an administration assistant for the Node (see recruitment advertisements).

Juliet has also visited the SAEON Elwandle Node to familiarise herself with their operations. The various meetings with stakeholders and other parties is helping to crystallise the operational model of the Node, but also to start considering the management model.

“Preliminary thoughts on the structure of the Node, in the form of a distributed data management model incorporating existing facilities, are taking shape,” says Juliet. It is expected that the Offshore Node will not have the same structure as other SAEON nodes, not only because the Southern African Data Centre for Oceanography (SADCO) and the African Node for Ocean Biogeographic Information System are already well established as data archive facilities, but also because offshore work is so data intensive.

The role of SADCO

SADCO is seen as a key element in the development of the Offshore Node. SADCO, a long established data centre, holds large amounts of data from surface weather observations, physical, chemical and nutrient profiles, current meters and weather stations, and Juliet says that the Offshore Node should avoid any possible duplication. SADCO provides largely raw data (http://sadco.csir.co.za) and it could be mutually beneficial if SAEON constructed a user interface to provide useful end products, online state of the environment reports as well as pre-generated graphs showing trends in sea surface temperature for example.

Juliet can be contacted at:
Physical: Office B9, Fifth Floor, Foretrust Building, Cape Town
Postal: Dr Juliet Hermes, SAEON Marine and Coastal Management, Private Bag X2, Roggebaai, Cape Town, South Africa, 8012.
Tel: +27-21-402 3547
Fax :+27-21-402 3674