Society needs to invest in human resources and infrastructure to promote marine sector development against a background of the rising industrialisation of Europe’s seas and oceans.
European seas are experiencing increasing human impact, such as from renewable energy provision, aggregate extraction, fishing and leisure industries. This is naturally also applicable to maritime Malta, with its 266-kilometre-long shoreline, a marine territory up to the 25-nautical-mile limit amounting to 20 times the extent of the land area, and the economic, social and scientific dimensions of human activity that are inextricably linked to the sea.
To achieve sustainable development, one needs to protect the marine ecosystem, minimise the impacts of climate change, natural hazards and anthropogenic influences, while maximising benefits to society. Marine environmental policies, management of marine resources, coastal planning and marine operations should support sustainable development.
Managers need to adopt an integrated approach to make the best informed decisions. Good management and decision support systems are becoming more dependent on the timely delivery of routine, reliable, quality-assured marine data.
Operational oceanography provides systematic and long-term routine measurements of the seas, oceans and atmosphere through the use of multi-purpose meteo-marine observing systems; coupled with rapid interpretation and dissemination of information, the aim is to support integrated, service-oriented applications to meet a range of different requirements: policy, research, monitoring, surveillance, security and industry.
The Physical Oceanography Unit of the International Ocean Institute-Malta Operational Centre at the University of Malta will offer a new Master’s degree in Applied Oceanography as from October precisely to provide the human resource backbone needed to achieve such targets. The course will draw upon professional academic staff at the University as well as an international faculty of high repute.
The specialised course programme is spread over seven study units spanning and merging the legal, socio-economic, scientific and environmental elements into one whole to offer students a wide-ranging vision to marine affairs, linking science to management, putting technology at the service of users and stakeholders, and providing tools and training for more efficient service-oriented applications.
Targeted areas of such applications include environmental monitoring and surveillance, assessment and mitigation of risks, marine science-based policy development and strategic planning, climate change, sustainable resource exploitation, ocean governance, marine industries and service provision and the overall empowerment of human resources to face current and emerging challenges in the marine domain.
Candidates suitable for this postgraduate course would be students with a first degree in science, engineering, architecture or computing as well as mid-career professionals aiming to supplement their background with a grounding in marine and maritime studies and willing to augment their academic portfolio with a new suite of capabilities. Certified proficiency in computer programming and mathematics is considered to be an essential requisite.
For further information visit www.capemalta.net/msc/applied_oceanography.
Prof. Aldo Drago is head of the Physical Oceanography Unit, University of Malta.