Perry Wright, Director of Integrated Subsea Systems for Ocean Specialists, Inc. (OSI), and Kevin Comer, President of Marine Ventures Int’l, (MVI) attended the OilComm 2019 Conference and Exhibition in Houston the 2^nd and 3^rd of October. Although the conference was limited to a single track this year, the event was reasonably well attended, and as always, provided an ideal location to catch up with Oil Industry customers, contacts and friends, often all the same person.

Ocean Specialists Inc. (OSI) attended and moderated another fascinating Submarine Networks World (SNW) in Singapore, held at the Suntec Convention and Exhibition center the 16^th through the 19^th of September. Tony Mosley, Director of Business Development at OSI, moderated a panel on Innovative technologies deployed in Disaster Prevention and Management, with the CEO of Avaroa Cables Dr. Ranulf Scarborough, CEO of PC1 Takahiro Sumimoto, and Terrance Fong, Partner at ERM.

Late last month, Ocean Specialists Inc. (OSI) was in attendance at the United Nations ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) roundtable titled: Maritime Sector Strategies to Augment Tsunami Monitoring with Economic Safety and Environmental Co-Benefits.

Many of you will be aware of the concept of so-called “SMART” – Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications cables.  The idea is simple – to incorporate temperature, pressure and acceleration sensors into repeaters for the purposes of detecting earthquakes and tsunamis, studying climate and improving our knowledge of the Earth’s interior.  However, the implementation has not been simple; despite a decade of study, no SMART cables have yet been developed or deployed.  Naturally, the endeavor has chicken and egg syndrome: without a proven, working example, no one will undertake the effort to develop one.  Anything that will slow the installation, increase the cost, or (possibly) reduce the reliability of a submarine cable system is anathema to developers and owners.

Last week, Ocean Specialists (OSI), was well represented at ITW2019 with the attendance of Tom Soja (VP) and Tony Mosley (Director of Business Development), who formed part of the more than 7000 attendees of this key annual telecom conference. Running from the 22^nd to the 25^th of June, this was the first year that the conference was held in Atlanta, GA.

As articles of subsea cable system installations become more prominent in news feeds, the focus tends to be on the route and installation. Knowing that there is a myriad of critical steps during the development, fabrication, and installation of a subsea cable, one that is not talked about often is that of the cable load, the reason probably due to the monotony of the process.