About Scanning Ocean Sectors

With years of Marine Mammal Observers out working in the field, records did not show a standardisation of quality within the industry. Equipment for observations has improved tremendously leaving the quality of MMOs questionable.

Industry and researchers wanted to review this situation and know that when they employed an MMO they would get exactly the same efficiency, knowledge and understanding from each MMO.

There were two people who started this research into the efficacy of MMOs in the UK, Dr Cath Owens (formerly, Southampton Solent University) and Andy Williams (formerly, BDRP). So the base line research started into how effective MMOs were, the effects of quality training, if certain personality type’s best fitted the role of MMOs and if visual perception had any effect on MMOs observations, which finally led to eye drill training and its effectiveness.

A team of researchers were involved in the three years of this study into the efficacy of MMOs and eventually finished the project with the funding from the Royal Navy, English Nature, JNCC and a number of other contributors.

Company History

The company was formed in 2003 after 3 years of research into the effectiveness of Marine Mammal Observers. Observations of MMOs were done in real time situations of research, with data collected from, experienced MMOs, untrained MMOs, trained MMOs and inexperienced.

The foundation for the course was formulated and first tested on and used for Royal Navy training. The training proved very effective for the RN and assisted then in their aims. The course has evolved over the 3 years of research and has taken into account all the outcomes from the research, putting them all to use within the course training.

The MMO course was then standardised to obtain the best out of the training for an MMO. The standardisation will ensure that each MMO that we train will complete the course with all the most relevant up to date information and the MMO will be best equipped for industry and research. This will ensure that all data collected will be as accurate as the conditions allow, and improve on data accuracy.

This course can now be taken during the year, all course dates will be updated on the site. The course is lead by a team of experts in their fields, with the course will being constantly monitored and reviewed by the our company and JNCC.