Concentrating on coastal waters and the sunlit ocean, PML makes valuable contributions to understanding the functioning of those areas of the sea that provide most benefits to the growing global human population, while targeting research efforts at revealing issues and threats that might impact the ocean as the basis of life on our planet. Through its diverse, adaptable and multi-disciplinary approach to marine science PML is able to react quickly to new topics of concern to society. Through its world-class observation, experimentation and modelling PML is at the cutting edge of developing novel approaches to unravelling what the ocean is telling us. For the benefit of the environment and human society PML Listens to the Ocean to ensure its health and productivity into the future.

PML focusses on three PRIMROSE objectives: i) Earth observation (EO) HAB discrimination, extending our existing approach to higher resolution data provided by the latest ocean colour sensor;  ii) Operational hydrodynamic forecasting system for the western UK shelf, combining with EO data for improved HAB risk warning and bloom transport prediction;  iii) Web-based GIS visualisation of project data, towards automatic  generation of graphical risk bulletins.

The PML contribution to PRIMROSE is led by Dr Peter Miller, an Earth observation scientist with over 20 years’ experience and 70 published papers. Peter develops and applies innovations in automated analysis of sea-surface biological and physical processes using satellite data. His research on HAB detection has been tested in 9 European and UK funded projects for monitoring water quality for the protection of the aquaculture industry.