For the 24th episode of the Seabed 2030 Podcast, recorded in August 2026, Head of Partnerships Steve Hall speaks to Iain Vincent, Director & General Manager of ecoSUB Robotics, a specialist manufacturer of highly portable yet capable autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) based in the UK who have customers across the global ocean science and survey community.

Iain is a graduate in Marine Environmental Science from the University of Portsmouth, and was a founder member of the Society of Maritime Industries Marine Autonomous Systems Group who have done valuable work to establish safe operating procedures for autonomous vehicles in crowded coastal waters.

​In 2016 Iain was appointed as a Director of ecoSUB Robotics Limited, when the company was formed to spin out low cost AUV technology developed in collaboration between Planet Ocean and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC). He was appointed General Manager in 2022.

In this interview we learn about the design of the ecoSUB family of vehicles, their range and depth capabilities, the kind of sensor, visual and navigation technologies that they use, and how the company works with customers to ensure that operators can feel confident using systems to carry out science and ocean survey work straight out of the box.

Unlike large AUVs, that require a specialist mother ship and cranes or gantries, even the largest of the ecoSUB family can be carried by two people, and launched from small boats or the shore. The smallest system is one-person portable and can even be launched from aircraft or surface drone survey systems.

ecoSUB and parent company Planet Ocean are strongly engaged in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for sustainable development as technology partners to institutions and universities, and have a track record of supporting the work of Marine Learned Societies such as the Challenger Society for Marine Science and Society for Underwater Technology and others.

They became Industry Partners with Seabed 2030 in 2023 and their products directly contribute bathymetric data to help deliver the first global map of the ocean floor.

For more information contact iain@ecosub.uk or sales@ecosub.uk

To find out more about Seabed 2030 see www.seabed2030.org and to contact the editor of the podcast please mail Steve Hall here.

Revealing Hidden Depths - the Seabed 2030 Podcast
Find out more about our project at www.seabed2030.org
Brought to you by the Nippon Foundation and GEBCO

For our World Ocean Day June 2026 extra-length episode, Seabed 2030 Head of Partnerships Steve Hall interviews Dr Dawn Wright, Chief Scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute, better known as ESRI, and a leading exponent of how we understand data and share our discoveries for the greater good.

Dawn is a member of the Strategic Advisory Group for Seabed 2030 and holds many other honours - see here for her 'about us' page on the Seabed 2030 site and click here for her detailed cv. Many other links out there for Dawn, search for 'Deep Sea Dawn' and you'll find many links! Here's one from her page at ESRI

Her dive with Victor Vescovo to the Challenger Deep marked a career highlight in a long story of achievement that started modestly as a sea-going technician on board the JOIDES Resolution as part of the Ocean Drilling Programme in the 1980s.

In the episode Dawn talks about her long career, which has encompassed being a sea-going technician, 17 years as a professor of geography and oceanography at Oregon State University, authoring more than 180 articles and 12 books on marine geographical information systems and more. Her latest book "Mapping the Deep" is available through ESRI and your regular bookseller.

Dawn is a keen cyclist, a fan of Charles Schulz's 'Snoopy', and an inspirational role model.

Other links - YouTube 'Making the Limiting Factor' click here

Laura Trethewey's book The Deepest Map as mentioned by Dawn.

YouTube Lego Stop Motion Diving Challenger Deep click here

Link to the story about Dawn's 'Snoopy' being archived by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich here

Episode recorded and edited by Steve Hall, click here to email. Find out more about Seabed 2030 here. Music and extra narration by Emily Boddy.

Copyright Seabed 2030, 2026.

Revealing Hidden Depths - the Seabed 2030 Podcast
Find out more about our project at www.seabed2030.org
Brought to you by the Nippon Foundation and GEBCO

Chesapeake Technology is one of our newest MoU partners and in Episode 22 of the Seabed 2030 Podcast, Head of Partnerships Stephen Hall interviews company President Evan Reinsberg who you can contact directly via the link here

Chesapeake Technology is a leader in ocean geophysical and seafloor mapping software, serving defense, government, academic, and commercial marine survey customers worldwide.

Their flagship product, SonarWiz 8, is the industry-standard desktop platform for hydrographic data acquisition, processing, and mapping. SonarWiz unifies multi-sensor data — sidescan sonar, sub-bottom profiling, bathymetry, and magnetometers — into a single GIS environment, and has set the standard for quality, simplicity, and workflow efficiency across the marine survey industry.

SonarWiz Fathom extends the platform to the cloud, bringing the same trusted processing capabilities into a modern, collaborative environment. Fathom enables distributed teams to ingest, process, review, and deliver survey data from anywhere, with scalable cloud compute, role-based access, and streamlined deliverable generation — purpose-built for today's larger datasets, faster turnarounds, and distributed survey operations.

Chesapeake Technology's customers include the world's leading navies, academic and research institutions, commercial survey companies, government agencies, and defence contractors worldwide.

Private sector companies like Chesapeake Technology are key parts of our seabed mapping community, providing the software solutions essential for delivering the global map of the ocean, and we're delighted to welcome Evan and his colleagues as Seabed 2030 Partners.

We'll be back in June with a special World Ocean Day episode featuring Dr Dawn Wright.

Find out more about us at www.seabed2030.org, contact Steve via the link above with any questions, feedback, or to ask to be featured in a future episode.

With thanks to Emily Boddy for music and intro/outro narration.

Copyright 2026 Seabed 2030

#hydrospatial

Revealing Hidden Depths - the Seabed 2030 Podcast
Find out more about our project at www.seabed2030.org
Brought to you by the Nippon Foundation and GEBCO