研究プラットフォーム運用部門
Institute for Marine-Earth Exploration and Engineering (MarE3)

Greetings from the Director General

部門長の写真

Approaching an understanding of the marine “space”
Understanding the marine environment is absolutely necessary for solving many of the problems facing modern society; the progress of global warming, the occurrence of natural disasters, and securing food, energy, and mineral resources. As part of an initiative to resolve these issues, the Institute for Marine-Earth Exploration and Engineering (MarE3) has been established to perform world-leading research activities, and provide research vessels with highly maintained and diverse research and observation capabilities to the research community.

The rapid changes in social norms triggered by the recent COVID-19 pandemic have forced many social restrictions and changes in the way we think about social interaction. These changes have even affected marine research, since most science & research is conducted in close quarters aboard ships and submersibles. Our urgent goal is to ensure the maximum of safety for our science teams and crew, while at the same time increasing the accuracy and quality, as well as the density in both time and space, of scientific research and observations.

These goals will be achieved through advanced research and development of observation technologies including implementing research and observation platforms, such as autonomous marine robots. All these efforts will contribute to the formulation and achievement of Japan's ocean-related policies.

Institute for Marine-Earth Exploration and Engineering (MarE3)
Katsuyoshi Kawaguchi, Director