With all this emphasis on seabed mapping seems strange to scrap HMS echo just last month….
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new- ... er-threats
The UK’s position as a world-leading maritime nation is secured by a new strategy that will enhance capabilities in technology, innovation and cyber security.
Unveiling the 5-year strategy, the Secretary of State for Transport has today (Monday 15 August 2022) set out the guiding principles for the UK government’s approach to managing threats and risks at home and around the world, including leveraging the UK’s world-leading seabed mapping community and tackling illegal fishing and polluting activities at sea.
The new strategy redefines maritime security as upholding laws, regulations and norms to deliver a free, fair and open maritime domain. With this new approach, the government rightly recognises any illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and environmental damage to our seas as a maritime security concern.
In addition, to enhance the UK’s maritime security knowledge, the government has established the UK Centre for Seabed Mapping (UK CSM), which seeks to enable the UK’s world-leading seabed mapping sector to collaborate to collect more and better data.
Seabed mapping provides the foundation dataset that underpins almost every sector in the maritime domain, including maritime trade, environmental and resource management, shipping operations and national security and infrastructure within the industry.
Working with industry and academia, Secretaries of State from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department for Transport (DfT), the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) will focus on 5 strategic objectives:
Protecting our homeland: delivering the world’s most effective maritime security framework for our borders, ports and infrastructure.
Responding to threats: taking a whole system approach to bring world-leading capabilities and expertise to bear to respond to new, emerging threats.
Ensuring prosperity: ensuring the security of international shipping, the unimpeded transmission of goods, information and energy to support continued global development and our economic prosperity.
Championing values: championing global maritime security underpinned by freedom of navigation and the international order.
Supporting a secure, resilient ocean: tackling security threats and breaches of regulations that impact on a clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically-diverse maritime environment.