Ship Alliance, a multi-purpose research unit of the Navy, has concluded its scientific research activity Mediterranean Recognized Environmental Picture 2020 (MREP20) in the Central Mediterranean and is headed for the Arsenale della Marina in La Spezia where it will moor tomorrow.
MREP 20 is an activity in support of the program Environmental Knowledge and Operational Effectiveness (EKOE), developed byAllied Command Transformation (ACT) of NATO with the aim of advancing research on marine environmental characterization useful to provide decision support to NATO operations.
In recent years, EKOE's activities have focused on environmental characterization at high latitudes, while this year we wanted to apply the aforementioned program, in the Strait of Sicily, in order to study oceanography and environmental acoustics in a frontal area where the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea meet those of the Western Mediterranean Sea.
The research on acoustics and oceanographic dynamics in the Central Mediterranean area was performed using particular autonomous drones called gliders, through the installation of vertical anchors (moorings) to which oceanographic and acoustic instruments are connected (current meters, hydrophones and acoustic profilers), from conductivity, temperature and salinity measurements with the use of CTD type instruments (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth
The activity was conducted by team scientific of the NATO Science and Technology Organization - Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation (STO - CMRE), with the collaboration of international and national research bodies, such as Woods Hoole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine (SHOM), theHeat Light and Sound Research, Inc. (HLS), the French Directorate General of Armaments (DGA), on Defense Research and Development Canada (DRDC), the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (OGS) el'University of Bologna (UNIBO).
