Car ferry monitors pollution

A project that used the Irish Ferries Ulysses to monitor water quality in the Irish Sea has proven to be a success.

European INTERREG funding via the Welsh European Funding Office enabled the joint project between the University of Wales, Bangor's Centre for Applied Marine Sciences and the National University of Ireland, Galway, with, of course, assistance from Irish Ferries.

Dr. Gay Mitchelson-Jacob, of Bangor's Centre for Applied Marine Sciences said: "We are interested in using colour images to monitor water quality. We wondered whether we'd be able to monitor water quality above the sea surface using sensors placed on the Ulysses. Being the largest-capacity vehicle ferry in the world, the Ulysses provides a very stable platform that hardly ever fails to sail due to poor weather. Instead of relying on satellite images, which are at the mercy of cloud conditions, we have now established the validity of data collected from sensors placed on Ulysses' bridge and have more than a year's data for the Irish Sea."