Awarded jointly by both societies, the Captain Don Walsh Award for Ocean Exploration is presented annually to an individual who has made an outstanding, sustained, international contribution to the development, application, or propagation of marine/ underwater technology toward the advancement of ocean exploration. The award is named in honour of Captain (Ret) Don Walsh, an accomplished American oceanographer, explorer, retired naval officer, and marine policy specialist. He and Jacques Piccard were aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste on January 23, 1960 when it made a record descent into the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest point of the world's oceans. Dr. Edie Widder, an MTS member, won the inaugural award in 2020.

Maersk Drilling has secured a contract with Shell Malaysia for the 7th generation drillship Maersk Viking to drill four development wells at the Gumusut-Kakap project offshore Malaysia. The contract is expected to commence in December 2021, with an estimated duration of 150 days. The firm contract value is approximately USD 34m, including a mobilisation fee. The contract includes five additional one-well options for work offshore Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei Darussalam.

The team behind Oceanology International are putting together the final touches to Oi Connect – the leading digital meetings platform for the ocean tech and science community.

Hydramec have designed and built a bespoke Launch and Recovery System (LARS) for Louis Dreyfus Travocean which is being used to Launch their own purposely designed ROV, which will be put to in the wind energy sector.

Seanic Ocean Systems, a Centurion company providing subsea engineering services, has joined the U.S. Department of Energy-supported Testing Expertise and Access for Marine Energy Research (TEAMER) program.

Boston-based subsea robotics company Dive Technologies has entered into commercial partnership with Metron to offer fully autonomous seabed surveys.

Offshore energy services provider Helix Robotics Solutions partnered with UTEC Survey, an Acteon Group company, to support the recent installation of Simec Atlantis’ demonstration tidal turbine in Japan.

Scottish ROV specialist HPR ROV has signed a two-year agreement with Saudi-based Intelligent Energy Services (i-Energy) to act as its exclusive agent in the region.

VARD, one of the world’s major designers and shipbuilders of specialized vessels, is pleased to announce that it has secured contracts for the design and construction of three Service Operation Vessels (SOVs) for North Star Renewables in Scotland. The state-of-the-art hybrid trio will operate on the Dogger Bank Wind Farm in the North Sea.

New Singapore-based operation strengthens ties to the region Energy market intelligence specialist Archer Knight has hailed launching its new Asia Pacific venture as a “major statement of intent”.

Ashtead Technology has created a new role to head up its increasing activities in renewable energy.

Subsea UK unveils new TV debate style event to highlight opportunities in the energy transition and the blue economy

The James River is a tributary of the Missouri River. It is roughly 710 miles long and spans over 20,000 square miles of North and South Dakota with more than 70% of the river’s drainage occurring in South Dakota. River conditions during normal years include both still-water and flooding on both the James River and its tributaries. Water easily breaches the low banks, and these floods tend to cover a significant portion of the floodplain. When the river is still, water quality drops and it becomes quite difficult to see more than a few feet underwater.

Arctic Rays, LLC has released Swordfish, a fully-integrated, geo-referenced, still and video imaging system payload for small AUVs.

75Ω Performance in a 50Ω Footprint/SHF Band Ku Capabilities BIRNS, Inc. a world leader in the design and manufacturing of high performance connectors, cable assemblies and lighting systems, has introduced new RF subsea connector contacts that offer groundbreaking performance attributes. Coax subsea connectors had in the past been challenged in a range of design requirements, in many cases resulting in poor impedance, high losses, and inability to provide open face pressure resistance. However, BIRNS launched proprietary RF technology with contacts capable of open face pressure ratings to 1433m, UHF insertion loss of ≤0.7 dB at signal frequencies to 3GHz and maximum UHF voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of 1.7:1.

Transmark Subsea becomes the European distributor of ROV systems from Boxfish Research, New Zealand, expanding their offering of high-tech subsea solutions to help their customers operations stay relevant and effective.

Blueprint Lab has been awarded a Defence Global Competitiveness Grant to grow our in-house verification and testing capabilities. The grant will go towards the purchase of an inspection class ROV deployable test vehicle and associated equipment as well as fund certification activities to meet international EMC safety standards.

Scientists, industry leaders and local government are counting down to the launch of a first-of-its-kind multi-million-pound fleet of innovative and interconnected marine technologies off the coast of Plymouth.