Stan Chamberlain, IEEE Life Member, First OES President
Is it possible to use sports to advocate for environmental sustainability? The Ocean Race says you not only can but they are doing it big time.
The Ocean Race is a high performance, hydrofoil-based, sailboat race around the world (Figure 1), with teams representing France, Germany, Switzerland, European Union and the United States. Since 1973, The Ocean Race has provided the ultimate test of a team and a human adventure like no other.
The 14th edition of The Ocean Race started from Alicante, Spain on January 12, 2023, and finished in Genova, Italy on June 29, 2023. The race visited nine cities around the globe during the six-month period: Alicante, Spain; Cabo Verde; Cape Town, South Africa; Itajai, Brazil; Newport, Rhode Island, (RI), USA; Aarhus, Denmark; Kiel Fly-by, Germany; The Hague, the Netherlands; and Genova, Italy. The longest leg was from Cape Town to Itajai, a distance of 12,750 nautical miles with no stopping between (Figure 2).
The leg of most interest to me was leg 4, from Itajai, Brazil to Newport, RI, USA, and leg 5, from Newport to Aarhus, Denmark, since my home is in RI. I had the opportunity to see (and photograph as an IEEE OES official photographer) the first boat to reach Newport, to observe the boats racing while in Newport, and to watch their start of leg 5 heading for Aarhus, Denmark. It was exciting to see that the boat which won leg 4 ending in Newport was the boat from the United States (11th Hour Racing) and that its captain, Charlie Enright, is from the town next to mine.
So how is The Ocean Race advocating for Environmental Sustainability?
In support of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030, The Ocean Race believes they have a platform from which they can educate, inspire and accelerate action for the ocean at this critical time in history. They believe the ocean environment is in serious decline, that this is “the ocean hour,” that it is, in fact, in “the 11th hour” as it moves most rapidly toward its potential midnight of destruction. They are using their global platform to inspire all those that they can reach to take action to help the ocean, explaining that this is the most important race they are in, and emphasizing that it is a Race We Must Win. Note the messages emblazoned on the racing boats themselves (Figure 3).
As they seek to reach the sailing community, wider sports industry, businesses, host cities, governments, children, fans and many more, they have embraced a program of Racing with Purpose. In conjunction with the 11th Hour Racing organization, Premier Partner of The Ocean Race and Founding Partner of Racing with Purpose, this includes a number of initiatives, including a Race Team Commitment, One Blue Voice, Ocean Summits, and Science – Capturing Ocean Data.
Race Team Commitment
Before the start of the round-the-world race, teams signed up to a series of individual and team-wide actions that support a healthy ocean. The skippers and managers, on behalf of each of the racing teams, signed a Race Team Sustainability Charter. This charter pledges team actions across four key themes: (1) Advocacy for the ocean, (2) Science support with onboard scientific equipment, (3) Support for the Race’s Learning Programs that teach young people about the threats to the seas and empower them to take action, and (4) Onboard renewable energy operations.
One Blue Voice
The Ocean Race sponsors believe a healthy ocean starts with recognizing ocean rights – valuing our marine world not just for the services that it provides us, but because the ocean has a right to thrive. From climate change and pollution to industrial overfishing, these rights are being ignored. To make them heard, The Ocean Race has established a global petition for a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights. This petition, with a mechanism for individuals and organizations to sign, and which was open for signatures before, during and after The Ocean Race (https://www.onebluevoice.net/), will be presented to the UN General Assembly members in September 2023. This is in support of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), which is also actively supported by OES, as exemplified, among others, by the OES presentation on July 12, 2023, at the United Nations High-Level Political Forum (UNHLPF) on “Ocean Sustainability and the Impact of Pollution.”
Ocean Summits
The Ocean Race Summits are a series of summits seeking to drive new and improved policies around the major issues affecting the ocean: lack of governance, lack of protection, and climate change. The series examines whether giving the ocean rights could be a key to ensuring its future. The Summits use the Race’s global platform to help accelerate action for our marine world. One of the ways they are doing this is by reaching the decision-makers who can make this happen. The Summits support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG14) to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.
Starting as a stand-alone event during the 2014-15 edition of the Race, at the stopover in Newport, Rhode Island, USA, the Summits have become one of the most important elements of the Racing with Purpose sustainability program. During this year’s edition, the Summits were held in each of the stopover cities, except Cape Town and The Hague. They included a physical presence from local government, industry and civic participants and virtual participation from attendees from around the globe. The Carbo Verde Summit was opened with a powerful message from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. In his remarks, he noted that in the face of climate change and plastic pollution, humanity has its own race to win — the race to protect our ocean for the future.
The Summits feature innovative Action Labs, in which the participants break into groups to look at different issues relating to ocean health, building on best practice from across the world to create clear pathways and actions. The Summit at the final city focused on the outcomes of the “Genova Process,” a pathway bringing together international experts in international law, diplomacy, ocean science and sport to drive the ambitious goal of giving the ocean a voice. The Genova Process included a series of Innovation Workshops towards the drafting of principles on Ocean Rights. Along with the One Blue Voice petition, the principles will be delivered to the UN Assembly in New York in September 2023.
Science – Capturing Ocean Data
An important element of The Ocean Race Science Program is using their unique race – which goes through some of the most remote parts of the planet that are rarely accessible for scientific research – to gather valuable information about the health of the ocean. With guidance from leading oceanic science organizations, they collected key ocean measurements to help provide a more accurate view of what is happening to the ocean and the important role it plays in maintaining a healthy planet. They believe this is the most comprehensive science program of any sporting event in the world. Their goal is to take 4.3 million measurements during the 32,000 nautical mile long race and more than 400 samples of marine litter. Data was transmitted to science organizations via satellite in real time, contributing to the Ocean Decade Odyssey project, an endorsed project of the UN Decade of Ocean Science (2021-2030). Figure 4 provides an overview of the comprehensive data collection program and Figure 5 identifies the ocean parameters that were collected during the race.
The Ocean Race – Over The Water
These are the some of the activities associated with “the Race We Must Win.” What of the 32,000 nautical mile, nearly 6-month race around the world? The Race started in Alicante, Spain on January 12, 2023 and ended in Genova, Italy on June 29, 2023 when the last of the boats to arrive in Genova was declared the winner (last, not first to arrive, as explained in Leg 7 below).
The Ocean Race, sometimes considered “the ultimate test of a team in sport,” had situations that give some credence to the characterization:
- Leg 3: Shortly after the start of leg 3, from Cape Town, South Africa, one of the boats (GUYOT environment – Team Europe) experienced delamination in a portion of its hull and had to withdraw from leg 3.
- Leg 4: One boat (Team Holcim – PRB) was 200 miles off the coast of Brazil when it lost the top half of its only mast. They jury-rigged a jib and were able to slowly return to Itajai, Brazil, ship the boat to Newport, get a new mast from Europe, and be ready for the start of the next leg. Another boat (GUYOT environment – Team Europe) on that same leg broke its port shroud supporting the mast. Under reduced sails they slowly sailed the boat to Canada. From there they shipped it to Denmark where they obtained a new mast in time for the start of leg 6.
- Leg 5: One boat (Team Holcim – PRB) broke a world distance record by sailing 640.9 nm in 24 hours. But less than 24 hours later one of the other boats (Team Malizia) set a new world record by sailing 641.13 nm in 24 hours. These averaged speeds of 27 knots while sailing in an average wind speed less than 27 knots. Also on that leg, a third boat (11th Hour Racing) was abruptly stopped dead in the water when they rammed into a large marine mammal, presumably a whale. One crew member sustained a concussion from the abrupt stop, but to a degree deemed by a shore doctor insufficient to abandon the leg.
- Leg 7: Shortly after the start of this the last leg, the boat then in the overall Race lead and expected to win the Race, 11th Hour Racing, was unintentionally rammed by one of the other boats (GUYOT environment – Team Europe), causing 11th Hour Racing to abandon that leg. This resulted in the loss of its lead with no more legs remaining to regain the lead. Fortunately for them, 11th Hour Racing, not being at fault in the collision, was granted points by the international race jurors, sufficient to recapture the lead and be crowned the overall winner of The Ocean Race.
I had the opportunity of covering the race on behalf of our OES Beacon newsletter, and was granted Photographer credentials allowing me onto one of the Official Photo Boats (Figure 6).
In addition to the ocean sustainability aspects, of most interest to me was the performance of the sole United States boat, 11th Hour Racing, with its captain from the town next to mine. By winning leg 4, coming in to Newport, he arrived as a local hero and I was able to meet him (Figure 7).
11th Hour Racing was able to go on to also win Legs 5 and 6. And after being rammed by a competitor boat and thereby knocked out of Leg 7, but being granted points by the international jurors, 11th Hour Racing was declared The Ocean Race overall winner (Figure 8).
Suleman Mazhar has been working as a professor in Information & Communication Engineering at Harbin Engineering University (China) since July 2019. He did PhD from Tokyo University (Japan) and postdoctorate from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). He had BS-CS from FAST-NUCES (Lahore) and MS from GIK Institute (Pakistan). He is TYSP young scientist fellow (Ministry of Science & Technology China) and have won several research grants from international organizations such as DAAD (Germany), ICIMOD (Nepal), NRPU (Higher Education Commission Pakistan), WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Pakistan. His research focus is deep learning and signal processing applications for environmental monitoring, with particular focus on underwater acoustics, and marine mammal conservation. He is a reviewer for professional journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society (America), IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Sensors Journal, Applied Acoustics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Peng Ren is a full professor with the College of Oceanography and Space Informatics, China University of Petroleum (East China). He is the director of Qingdao International Research Center for Intelligent Forecast and Detection of Oceanic Catastrophes. He received the K. M. Scott Prize from the University of York, the Natural Science award (first rank) from China Institute of Electronics, and the Eduardo Caianiello Best Student Paper Award from 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing as one co-author. He has served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
Mohd Rizal Arshad is a full professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, where he specializes in ocean robotics technology and intelligent system. He received his B.Eng. in Medical Electronics & Instrumentation and PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Liverpool, UK in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He completed his MSc. in Electronic Control Engineering from the University of Salford, UK in Dec 1995. He has supervised many postgraduate students and published extensively in local and international publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and was awarded IEEE OES Presidential Award in 2019.
Itzik Klein is an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
John R. Potter (IEEE M’94, SM’02, F’18) graduated in the previous century with a joint honours Mathematics and Physics Degree from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge, UK studying Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. This work helped underscore the non-linear fragility of polar ice to climate change and led to him receiving the Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
Nick is a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Oceanographic Center, Southampton His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Technology Committee. He had worked as a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Birmingham and has been working as a Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He has also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research Global. He is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Nick has also been serving as Assoc. Editor for IEEE JoE and JASA. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise are seabed acoustics, parametric array modeling, sonar beamformer, underwater signal processing.
Maurizio Migliaccio (M’91-SM’00-F’17) is Full professor of Electromagnetics at Università di Napoli Parthenope (Italy) and was Affiliated Full Professor at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA). He has been teaching Microwave Remote Sensing since 1994. He was visiting scientist at Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Lüft und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He was member of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) scientific committee. He was member of the ASI CosmoSkyMed second generation panel. He was e-geos AdCom member. He was Italian delegate of the ESA PB-EO board. He was Member of South Africa Expert Review Panel for Space Exploration. He serves as reviewer for the UE, Italian Research Ministry (MIUR), NCST, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong Research board. He lectured in USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Italy. He was Italian delegate at UE COST SMOS Mode Action. He is listed in the Italian Top Scientists. He is an IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing AE, International Journal of Remote Sensing AE, and was IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering AE Special Issue on Radar for Marine and Maritime Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS AE of the Special Issue on CosmoSKyMed, Member of the Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics Editorial board. His main current scientific interests cover SAR sea oil slick and man-made target monitoring, remote sensing for marine and coastal applications, remote sensing for agriculture monitoring, polarimetry, inverse problems for resolution enhancement, reverberating chambers. He published about 160 peer-reviewed journal papers on remote sensing and applied electromagnetics.
He has developed various types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and related application technologies including navigation methods, a new sensing method using a chemical sensor, precise seafloor mapping methods, a precise seabed positioning system with a resolution of a few centimeters, a new sensing system of the thickness of cobalt-rich crust; and more. He has shown, by using these technologies that AUVs are practicable and valuable tools for deep-sea exploration.
Donna Kocak has had an outstanding career in defense and scientific projects developing and applying solutions in subsea optics, imaging and robotics. She graduated with an M.Sc in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Central Florida; an MBA in 2008 from the University of Florida; and M.Sc in Industrial Engineering in 2011 from the University of Central Florida. She is currently a Senior Scientist, Advanced Concepts Engineering, and Fellow at the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, where she has developed novel optical imaging and communication solutions for under-sea defense and scientific projects. Prior to 2008 Donna Kocak was Founder and President of Green Sky Imaging, LLC (GSI) who developed laser/video photogrammetry software for underwater inspection and survey. Her earlier career positions were with Naval Training Systems Center, Florida; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida; eMerge Interactive; and the Advanced Technologies Group in Florida.
John Potter has a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from Bristol University in the UK and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography from the University of Cambridge on research in the Antarctic, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal in 1988. John has worked on polar oceanography, underwater acoustics, ambient noise (including imaging), marine mammals, communications, IoUT, autonomous vehicles and strategic development. He has 40 years’ international experience working at the British Antarctic Survey in the UK, NATO in Italy, SIO in California, NUS in Singapore and most recently at NTNU in Norway. John is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer & an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club.
Dr. James V. Candy is the Chief Scientist for Engineering and former Director of the Center for Advanced Signal & Image Sciences at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy received a commission in the USAF in 1967 and was a Systems Engineer/Test Director from 1967 to 1971. He has been a Researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 1976 holding various positions including that of Project Engineer for Signal Processing and Thrust Area Leader for Signal and Control Engineering. Educationally, he received his B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a registered Control System Engineer in the state of California. He has been an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University, University of Santa Clara, and UC Berkeley, Extension teaching graduate courses in signal and image processing. He is an Adjunct Full-Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Candy is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and elected as a Life Member (Fellow) at the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall College). He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. He was elected as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Candy received the IEEE Distinguished Technical Achievement Award for the “development of model-based signal processing in ocean acoustics.” Dr. Candy was selected as a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for oceanic signal processing as well as presenting an IEEE tutorial on advanced signal processing available through their video website courses. He was nominated for the prestigious Edward Teller Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy was awarded the Interdisciplinary Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal in Signal Processing/Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America for his technical contributions. He has published over 225 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports as well as written three texts in signal processing, “Signal Processing: the Model-Based Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1986), “Signal Processing: the Modern Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1988), “Model-Based Signal Processing,” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2006) and “Bayesian Signal Processing: Classical, Modern and Particle Filtering” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2009). He was the General Chairman of the inaugural 2006 IEEE Nonlinear Statistical Signal Processing Workshop held at the Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He has presented a variety of short courses and tutorials sponsored by the IEEE and ASA in Applied Signal Processing, Spectral Estimation, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Applied Model-Based Signal Processing, Applied Acoustical Signal Processing, Model-Based Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing and Bayesian Signal Processing for IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society/ASA. He has also presented short courses in Applied Model-Based Signal Processing for the SPIE Optical Society. He is currently the IEEE Chair of the Technical Committee on “Sonar Signal and Image Processing” and was the Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on “Signal Processing in Acoustics” as well as being an Associate Editor for Signal Processing of ASA (on-line JASAXL). He was recently nominated for the Vice Presidency of the ASA and elected as a member of the Administrative Committee of IEEE OES. His research interests include Bayesian estimation, identification, spatial estimation, signal and image processing, array signal processing, nonlinear signal processing, tomography, sonar/radar processing and biomedical applications.
Kenneth Foote is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1973. He was an engineer at Raytheon Company, 1968-1974; postdoctoral scholar at Loughborough University of Technology, 1974-1975; research fellow and substitute lecturer at the University of Bergen, 1975-1981. He began working at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, in 1979; joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1999. His general area of expertise is in underwater sound scattering, with applications to the quantification of fish, other aquatic organisms, and physical scatterers in the water column and on the seafloor. In developing and transitioning acoustic methods and instruments to operations at sea, he has worked from 77°N to 55°S.
René Garello, professor at Télécom Bretagne, Fellow IEEE, co-leader of the TOMS (Traitements, Observations et Méthodes Statistiques) research team, in Pôle CID of the UMR CNRS 3192 Lab-STICC.
Professor Mal Heron is Adjunct Professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is CEO of Portmap Remote Ocean Sensing Pty Ltd. His PhD work in Auckland, New Zealand, was on radio-wave probing of the ionosphere, and that is reflected in his early ionospheric papers. He changed research fields to the scattering of HF radio waves from the ocean surface during the 1980s. Through the 1990s his research has broadened into oceanographic phenomena which can be studied by remote sensing, including HF radar and salinity mapping from airborne microwave radiometers . Throughout, there have been one-off papers where he has been involved in solving a problem in a cognate area like medical physics, and paleobiogeography. Occasionally, he has diverted into side-tracks like a burst of papers on the effect of bushfires on radio communications. His present project of the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) is about the development of new processing methods and applications of HF radar data to address oceanography problems. He is currently promoting the use of high resolution VHF ocean radars, based on the PortMap high resolution radar.
Hanu Singh graduated B.S. ECE and Computer Science (1989) from George Mason University and Ph.D. (1995) from MIT/Woods Hole.He led the development and commercialization of the Seabed AUV, nine of which are in operation at other universities and government laboratories around the world. He was technical lead for development and operations for Polar AUVs (Jaguar and Puma) and towed vehicles(Camper and Seasled), and the development and commercialization of the Jetyak ASVs, 18 of which are currently in use. He was involved in the development of UAS for polar and oceanographic applications, and high resolution multi-sensor acoustic and optical mapping with underwater vehicles on over 55 oceanographic cruises in support of physical oceanography, marine archaeology, biology, fisheries, coral reef studies, geology and geophysics and sea-ice studies. He is an accomplished Research Student advisor and has made strong collaborations across the US (including at MIT, SIO, Stanford, Columbia LDEO) and internationally including in the UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, India, Sweden and Norway. Hanu Singh is currently Chair of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Technology Committee on Autonomous Marine Systems with responsibilities that include organizing the biennial IEEE AUV Conference, 2008 onwards. Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2007-2011. Associate editor, Journal of Field Robotics 2012 onwards.
Milica Stojanovic graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, in 1991 and 1993. She was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2008 joined Northeastern University, where she is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering. She is also a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Milica’s research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She has made pioneering contributions to underwater acoustic communications, and her work has been widely cited. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves as an Associate Editor for its Journal of Oceanic Engineering (and in the past for Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Vehicular Technology). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Communication Letters, and chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Paul C. Hines was born and raised in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. From 1977-1981 he attended Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hon) in Engineering-Physics.