260903 1 60 лет подводных исследований

Heriot-Watt University's Scientific Diving Team has been working in Orkney since the start of the Flotta oil development in the 1970s. Over the years its initial role of monitoring has widened out into a richly varied range of activities, from studying the life around Scapa Flow's naval shipwrecks to regenerating areas of seabed for shellfish. The team's 60th anniversary was marked at the 2026 Orkney International Science Festival with a presentation which combined classic images of marine life in Orkney waters with stories of some of underwater surveys in Scapa Flow and further afield – from horse mussel reefs and flame shell beds to seagrass meadows and kelp forests. Prof. Joanne Porter from their Stromness campus was joined by Edinburgh-based Prof. Hamish Mair who spent his early years in Orkney and by Prof. Tahirah Jaafar of the University of Terangganu in Malaysia, with which Heriot-Watt and its marine researchers have been building up a wide-ranging collaboration.