Editorial

Inspired by the Austrian explorer and naval officer Lt. Karl Weyprecht, an international meteorological congress was held in Vienna (Austria) in 1873, which resulted in the International Polar Year (IPY; 1882–1883). The main idea of the first IPY was that geophysical phenomena could not be surveyed by one nation alone, but required a co-ordinated international effort. Beyond the advances to science and geographical exploration, a principal legacy of the first IPY was the setting of a precedent for international scientific co-operation. The great success of this first IPY asked for more IPYs: a second IPY was held in 1932–1933, the third in 1957–1958 and the fourth is scheduled for March 2007–March 2009. These “years” give a major thrust to international research of the polar regions.
While perusing the IPY website (1) and related websites, I searched for bathymetry and hydrography, etc. Lack of deep ocean data will not hamper safe surface navigation, but can have a great impact on our life; for example, for ocean mixing, especially in these regions where cold water finds it way along the bottom. However, to my surprise, no search results were found with these keywords. Checking the projects, I came across a few related projects (e.g. ideas 150, 284, 334g and 479, see: 2 Ideas for IPY > National). The plea to project leaders by Dave Monahan in his article GEBCO and Deep Water (Hydro International, March 2007) to collect deep water data at all times (as these soundings are sparse) is even more valid in these polar regions. No doubt these data will demonstrate once again that the deep-sea floor is not featureless, or constant (see also one of the articles related to this issue’s theme, Geodetics: Acoustic Seafloor Geodetic Observation by Masayuki Fujita on page 7).
The IPY is likely to see some interesting tests to collect data in polar environments, for example, by the use of AUVs (see ideas 36 and 38 on 2), the deployment of autonomous drifting echo sounder buoys and a hovercraft carrying equipment including a multibeam echo sounder (see Hydro International, June 2006 for more information on these buoys and hovercraft).
I was glad to see the IOC project (idea 333b): Rescue inaccessible analogue ocean data and store it in digital form for ease of retrieval, application, and exchange. See my March editorial in which I mentioned the aspect of migrating data to the next generation of storage media.This IPY is linked to the International Geophysical Year celebrating its 50th anniversary with the Electronic Geophysical Year, 2007–2008 (eGY). eGY focuses on the themes of electronic data location and access, permission and release of data, conversion of data into modern digital form, data preservation, capacity building, and outreach (see 3).
This issue of Hydro International focuses on the IHO and its XVIIth conference (Monaco, 7–11th May 2007). The IHO initiating in the same era maintains a very similar credo to that of IPY and IGY/eGY: the task (in IHO’s case: world hydrography) cannot be done by one nation alone but requires a co-ordinated international approach and a policy of data stewardship: e.g. open access to data, data preservation, data collection and capacity building.


Enjoy your read,

Leeke van der Poel, [email protected]