News
The Oceanography Department wants to congratulate Dr. Mark Matthews on being the winner of the Copernicus Masters Ideas Challenge 2014, for his idea on CyanoLakes. The Copenicus Masters 2014, which was held worldwide for the first time, received more than 170 entries from 43 different countries. The ideas submitted offer a glimpse into the next generation of Earth observation services.
The results of a ten-year study by Dr. M Matthews have revealed that harmful cyanobacteria are widespread in South Africa’s 50 largest dams, with the Hartbeespoort dam, in the North West, the Darlington dam, in the Eastern Cape, and Spitskop dam, in the Northern Cape, found to be the worst affected by cyanobacterial surface scum.
Oceanography students Hayley Evers-King (Ma-Re) and Marie Smith (ACCESS) were recently awarded second prize at the international 2013/14 LearnEO! lesson writing competition. They received their prize at the Earth Observation Education workshop at ESA/ESRIN in Frascati, Italy, on 5 November 2014. Their lesson looked at the detection of harmful algal blooms in coastal waters and included examples from the southern Benguela upwelling system.
As a contribution towards solving the unemployment problem amongst the youth of South Africa and using an endowment from the sale of the TB Davie Research Vessel, the Department of Oceanography is offering a one year work contract to a graduate from the MSc programme (you need not have officially graduated but you must have had your corrected thesis approved by the HoD / supervisor in order to be appointed). In exceptional cases, an Honours graduate may be considered. The position is not open to PhD students / graduates as the expectation is that these students will take up a postdoctoral position or other junior research scientist employment.