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The authors present evidence of the difficulties facing human taxonomists/ecologists in identifying marine dinoflagellates. This is especially important for work on harmful algal blooms in marine aquaculture. It is shown that it is difficult for people to categorise specimens from species with significant morphological variation, perhaps with morphologies overlapping with those of other species. Trained personnel can be expected to achieve 67 to 83% self-consistency and 43% consensus between people in an expert taxonomic labelling task. Experts who are routinely engaged in particular discriminations can return accuracies in the range of 84 to 95%. In general, neither human nor machine can be expected to give highly accurate or repeatable labelling of specimens. It is also shown that automation methods can perform as well as humans on these complex categorisations.

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Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are playing an ever-growing role in modern subocean operations, generating a demand for faster, more manoeuvrable designs capable of deployments of increasingly longer durations. In order to meet these demands, vehicle developers have been looking to biological aquatic animals for inspiration. After evolving for millions of years, fish and cetaceans have developed fast efficient locomotion techniques, with levels of manoeuvrability that far outperform conventional engineered marine locomotion systems. This paper aims to give a brief introduction into some of the biologically inspired propulsion mechanisms that have been developed, to explain their strengths, their weaknesses, and the motivation behind them, and then finally to predict future trends in biomimetic AUV propulsion design.

In the future, if marine science is to achieve any progress in addressing biological diversity of ocean plankton, then it needs to sponsor development of new technology. One requirement is the development of high-resolution sensors for imaging field-collected and in situ specimens in a non-invasive manner. The rapid automatic categorisation of species must be accompanied by the creation of very large distributed databases in the form of high-resolution 3D rotatable images of species, which could become the standard reference source for automatic identification. These 3D images will serve as classification standards for field applications, and (in adjusted optical quality) as training templates for image analysis systems based on statistical and other pattern-matching processes. This paper sets out the basic argument for such developments and proposes a long-term solution to achieve these aims.

A robust adaptive autopilot for uninhabited surface vehicles (USV) based on a model predictive controller (MPC) is presented in this paper. The novel autopilot is capable of handling sudden changes in system dynamics. In real life situations, very often a sudden change in dynamics results in missions being aborted and the uninhabited vehicles have to be rescued before they cause damage to other marine craft in the vicinity. This problem has been suitably dealt with by this innovative design. The MPC adopts an online adaptive nature by utilising three algorithms, individually: gradient descent, least squares and weighted least squares (WLS). Even with random initialisation, significant improvements over the other algorithmic approach were achieved by WLS by maintaining the intermittent continuous values of system parameters and periodically reinitilaising the covariance matrix. Also, a time frame of 25 seconds appears to be the optimum to reinitialise the parameters. This novel approach enables the autopilot to cope well with significant changes in the system dynamics and empowers USVs to accomplish their desired missions.

:Adverse effects of invasive alien species (IAS), or biological pollution, is an increasing problem in marine coastal waters, which remains high on the environmental management agenda. All maritime countries need to assess the size of this problem and consider effective mechanisms to prevent introductions, and if necessary and where possible to monitor, contain, control or eradicate the introduced impacting organisms. Despite this, and in contrast to more enclosed water bodies, the openness of marine systems indicates that once species are in an area then eradication is usually impossible. Most institutions in countries are aware of the problem and have sufficient governance in place for management. However, there is still a general lack of commitment and concerted action plans are needed to address this problem. This paper provides recommendations resulting from an international workshop based upon a large amount of experience relating to the assessment and control of biopollution. Highlights► We summarize the results of an international workshop on marine biopollution. ► We recommend science-based information support for bioinvasion management. ► We outline types of bioinvasion monitoring and consider topical research needs. ► We emphasize the role of taxonomy training and public involvement. ► Biopollution should be treated in the same way as any other type of pollution.

We investigate the modification of the optical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) resulting from a chemical reaction triggered by the presence of a specific compound (gaseous carbon dioxide (CO2)) and show this mechanism has important consequences for chemical sensing. CNTs have attracted significant research interest because they can be functionalized for a particular chemical, yielding a specific physical response which suggests many potential applications in the fields of nanotechnology and sensing. So far, however, utilizing their optical properties for this purpose has proven to be challenging. We demonstrate the use of localized surface plasmons generated on a nanostructured thin film, resembling a large array of nano-wires, to detect changes in the optical properties of the CNTs. Chemical selectivity is demonstrated using CO2 in gaseous form at room temperature. The demonstrated methodology results additionally in a new, electrically passive, optical sensing configuration that opens up the possibilities of using CNTs as sensors in hazardous/explosive environments.