Subsea cable protection specialist, Tekmar Energy, is bucking the market trend after experiencing steady growth in the oil & gas sector during what has been a challenging time for the industry. Since the start of the year, and against the dramatic fall in the oil price, the company has expanded its reach into new global regions, won multiple orders of repeat business and brought in six new clients so far this year including JDR Cables, FlexLife and GE Oil & Gas.

Xodus Group has been awarded a contract with Nexen Petroleum U.K. Limited to provide Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) services in support of the decommissioning of the Ettrick and Blackbird fields in the central North Sea. The workscope will assess the best practice decommissioning methods for the main items of field architecture, including the structures, flowlines, umbilicals and risers. The work involves developing the decommissioning methodology for the field taking account of current industry best practice to ensure a technically robust decommissioning solution is developed.

SMD are pleased to announce that they are set to contribute to a major offshore wind research project lead by The University of Dundee. The project will look to determine whether cheaper, more environmentally friendly and more effective foundations can be developed for the offshore renewables industry. The project, funded by a £1million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, will look at the use of screw piles for offshore installations. These are foundations which are screwed into the ground and currently widely used onshore, for example, to support motorway signs and gantries.

An incredibly rare sighting of a Blue Whale in English waters was captured on camera by scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) on-board the RRS James Cook. The huge mammal, twice as long as a double-decker bus, was spotted on 24 August approximately 400 km southwest of Cornwall, over a deep-sea canyon on the northern margin of the Bay of Biscay.

Stork to deliver ECITB certified MJI 21 bolt tensioning course Leading subsea training and trials facility, The Underwater Centre, is working in collaboration with Stork, global provider of knowledge-based asset integrity services focused on the oil & gas, chemical and power sectors, to deliver a brand new one-day certified course in bolt tensioning. The ECITB approved course, MJI 21 Hydraulically Tensioned Subsea Bolted Connections, addresses a key activity which every offshore construction diver should be familiar with and will be added to the Centre’s commercial diving training suite, firstly as a standalone course.

Seabed survey company Bibby HydroMap have completed survey operations on the €30 million Deep Green marine energy project based off Holyhead for consultant Xodus Group on behalf of developer Minesto AB.

Conserve Oilfield Services, RentAir Offshore and Seanic Ocean Systems will be showcasing their product capabilities at this years Offshore Europe in Aberdeen, 8th - 11th September as part of the Centurion Group.

Impact Subsea is pleased to announce the launch of the ground breaking ISA500 – a 500kHz underwater altimeter which also provides heading, pitch and roll. With 120 meter (394 feet) altitude range measurement capability, the ISA500 is the longest range 500kHz altimeter available today. Making use of a composite transducer and advanced digital acoustic engine, the ISA500 is able to achieve significantly long range while providing sub-millimetre measurement accuracy. In addition to altitude, the ISA500 also provides heading, pitch and roll readings – ideal for basic AUV/ROV navigation or to monitor underwater equipment deployment.

Refreshed, and with ideas for presentations buzzing in their heads, vacationers from around the world are returning to their desks to find they have just days to submit their conference abstracts for Oceanology International 2016 – ‘give us more time’ is the constant plea. Therefore Reed Exhibitions, organisers of the biennial event being held at London’s ExCeL, Tuesday 15 – Thursday 17 March 2016, have extended the deadline for the submission of abstracts for the global forum for marine technology and ocean science until Friday 16 October 2015.

Safety by Design, Innovation in Action Seanic Ocean Systems will be showcasing its product capabilities at this years Offshore Europe in Aberdeen, 8th - 11th September along side Conserve and RentAir Offshore as part of the Centurion Group.

This contains insights into the trends affecting the industry today, taken from the upcoming Next Level Report. The report analyzes recent research on the views of offshore professionals across the globe and will be launched at Offshore Europe in Aberdeen 8th - 11th September.

Abu-Dhabi based TES Survey Equipment Services LLC is to become the first company in the Middle East to rent the latest 6G underwater acoustic positioning technology from Sonardyne International Ltd. The order for multiple Mini-Ranger 2 Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL) systems and Wideband Sub-Mini 6 Plus (WSM 6+) transponders will be added to TES’ existing hire pool of Sonardyne equipment and used to support offshore survey and construction projects across the region.

Canadian-built technology was recently used to locate and record images of a lost World War II submarine. In early August 2015, a team of experts and Japanese TV crew members discovered a missing World War II icon. Off the coast of Nagasaki, the 120 meter long submarine "I-402" was located using a SEAMOR Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV). TOYO Corporation, SEAMOR's Japanese dealer, used their built-in-Nanaimo (British Columbia) 300 F 2/4 ROV system with high definition video to seek out and then document the sunken vessel. Found at 190 meters below the surface, the bright LEDs on the SEAMOR ROV were able to illuminate key features of this submarine. A pair of rails along the front of the ship were key identifiers as the I-402 as they provided a track upon which the three on-deck Seiran seaplane dive bombers were able to be launched (the I-400 and I-401, the only two other vessels of this kind, also had this capability).The crane/hoist system to retrieve the planes and the exhaust stack were also spotted and help confirm the identity of this ship.

U-Boat Worx (UBW), today announced the launch of the C-Researcher 3, world’s first transparent 3-person submersible capable of diving to 1,700 meters (5,577 feet). UBW has teamed up with leading scientists to design a compact and cost-effective submersible that enables scientists, policy makers and philanthropists to explore the world’s oceans with an unrivalled combination of safety, high performance, ultra-wide field of vision and outstanding comfort. UBW already builds a range of private submersibles that provided the proven technology for this CResearcher 3.

Trelleborg Sealing Solutions has “pushed the barriers of science” to produce a “highly innovative” seal for a ground-breaking valve designed by Schoolhill Hydraulic Engineering for BP’s Shah Deniz field. The pioneering high flow, high integrity, safety critical subsea QEV (quick exhaust valve), believed to be the first of its kind, has been created for a subsea HIPPS (high integrity pressure protection system) at the South Caspian Sea site.

Fugro has undertaken successful trials of its new GeoWing, a system designed to detect low ferrous content unexploded ordnance (UXO) items in challenging marine environments.

The complex programme of work comprises geophysical, geotechnical and environmental surveying of the proposed pipeline route to shore and will be undertaken using a multi-vessel approach. Bibby HydroMap’s own vessels Chartwell and Eagle will perform the geophysical and environmental scope, acquiring multibeam bathymetry, side scan sonar data, sub-bottom profiler and magnetometer data, alongside benthic grab samples and visual inspection. For the geotechnical aspect of the work, Bibby HydroMap will perform vibrocores to 5m and CPTs to 5m and 20m.

Every Spring, the Marine Technology Society and the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society sponsor the OCEANS conference in either Asia or Europe. It is a prestigious conference/exhibition that draws hundreds of international attendees. The venue for OCEANS'16 MTS/IEEE Shanghai, the Shanghai International Convention Center, has a high reputation both at home and abroad for holding large-scale international conferences, has expansive meeting and exhibition space, with a riverside view, and is convenient to major airports and other local, modern attractions.