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Dr Caroline Cusack
Oceanography and Ocean Climate Team Leader in Ocean, Climate and Information Services, with a research focus on ocean climate and ecosystems.
Ocean observing and climate leadership
Her work spans operational oceanography, climate services, and marine data analytics. She contributes to ICES, GOOS, GO-SHIP, and EuroGOOS.
Dr Cusack has extensive seagoing experience and often serves as Chief Scientist. She promotes best practice in data stewardship, staff development, and stakeholder engagement across the ocean-observing community.
She leads the Marine Institute’s annual Ocean Climate Section and Deep Mooring Survey aboard the RV Celtic Explorer. This long-term monitoring programme has operated in the Rockall Trough and off Ireland’s west coast since 2006.
Dr Cusack was a co-editor and author of the Irish Ocean Climate and Ecosystem Status Report 2023. The report synthesises evidence of ocean change in Irish and Northeast Atlantic waters across physical oceanography, ocean chemistry, marine biodiversity, and fisheries.
She supports national and international policy and scientific coordination through government agencies, EU expert groups, and global observing networks. Her advisory and steering roles have included GOOS, GO-SHIP, EOOS, and EuroGOOS, and she previously chaired ICES.
Across more than 20 years, she has contributed to ASIMUTH, AtlantOS, EuroSea, EuroGO-SHIP, and CoCliME. This work has advanced ocean observing and forecasting, harmful algal bloom forecasts, remote-sensing applications, and climate-driven early-warning tools for aquaculture and marine management.
Dr Cusack also features in the Marine Institute’s Voyages video series about scientists and operational staff working on Ireland’s national research fleet.
Dr Fabio Sacchetti
Hydrographic Team Leader and Research Coordinator working in marine geospatial mapping, seabed classification, and remote-sensing innovation.
Marine geospatial mapping and innovation
From marine surveying to national seabed mapping
He studied marine biology, ecology, geology, oceanography, and chemistry at the University of Bologna. During his master’s research at the Institute of Marine Research in Bologna, he mapped underwater volcanoes along southern Italy using multibeam, side-scan, and geophysical systems.
He later worked in the marine survey industry across the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Caspian Sea.
Dr Sacchetti joined the Marine Institute in 2003 as it commissioned the RV Celtic Explorer and assembled a team for the Irish National Seabed Survey. He contributed to the national seabed-mapping programme that became INFOMAR.
INFOMAR data now underpin fisheries management, the designation of aquaculture and marine protected areas, offshore renewable energy development, coastal-zone management, and deep-water geological and biological research.
In 2008, he began a PhD at Ulster University in marine geomorphology and glacial processes. He used survey data to help reconstruct Ireland’s last Ice Age across the continental shelf and slope. After returning to the Marine Institute in 2012, he expanded his work into research coordination, project management, and supervision of MSc, PhD, and postdoctoral researchers while continuing to work at sea.
Remote sensing, shipwreck risk, and research training
- A Marine Institute and Enterprise Ireland remote-sensing study mapped and estimated commercially sensitive seaweed around the Irish coast. The work developed into two Cullen Fellowship PhD projects using drone-mounted multispectral and hyperspectral sensors.
- A five-year postdoctoral project produced the first comprehensive, high-resolution geomorphological map of Ireland’s Exclusive Economic Zone using more than two decades of INFOMAR multibeam data.
- The I-POINT project with University College Cork is developing a risk-assessment framework for nearly 600 shipwrecks mapped by INFOMAR in Irish waters, many of which pose pollution risks because of their contents.
- Postgraduate modules delivered with Advanced Mapping Services and Geological Survey Ireland help students develop marine remote-sensing skills.
Fish biodiversity
Dr Ilaria Coscia: conservation and population genomics
Dr Ilaria Coscia is Team Leader for Fish Biodiversity in Fisheries Ecosystem Advisory Services. Growing up beside the sea in Liguria on Italy’s Tyrrhenian coast shaped her early interest in marine life.
She studied at the University of Genoa before completing a PhD at University College Dublin, where she began working in fish population genetics. After her PhD, she studied cockles at Aberystwyth University and European sea bass at KU Leuven.
A Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship supported her research into populations of deep-water North Atlantic species, including common ling and blue ling.
Her current population-genetics work examines pollack in Irish waters and cuckoo ray around Ireland in collaboration with Atlantic Technological University. Understanding the number, location, and connections of populations within a species supports effective conservation and sustainable management.
Dr Coscia also leads the first comprehensive environmental DNA monitoring of elasmobranchs along Ireland’s west coast using Marine Institute scientific surveys. Environmental DNA identifies species by collecting and filtering the DNA traces they leave in water, without directly observing or capturing them.
Through the EU Horizon-funded Marine Beacon project, she works with partners in Belgium, Spain, the Azores, and Denmark. The project is optimising environmental DNA methods for monitoring North Atlantic elasmobranch bycatch by sampling water from fishing nets. The approach may identify captured species and help estimate their abundance.
This research could fill critical data gaps and provide efficient tools for fisheries monitoring and conservation.