We'll now move to our second short debate, and I call on Rhun ap Iorwerth to speak to the topic that he has chosen. 

Thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd, and I want to talk about mapping the Welsh seas. I'm pleased to have an opportunity to present this debate. I'm grateful to Sam Kurtz and Joyce Watson for showing an interest in the topic, and I'm more than happy to give a little of my time for them to contribute before we hear the Minister's response.

One isn't selected from the hat very often to present a short debate, but when your name is pulled from the hat, it's a wonderful opportunity, but it's also quite a headache. We deal with so many issues that are important to our constituents or regions, so how can you choose a subject that will have the greatest impact? But the subject I've chosen today is a follow-up to a short debate that I presented back on 11 July 2018, because that debate did have an impact. It did lead to action from Government and, Minister, my expectations are very high this time too. With the Government having delivered last time, I fully expect you to deliver again this time.

Now, at that point, I was making the case for making Bangor University's research ship, the Prince Madog, which is located in Menai Bridge in my constituency, a national marine research vessel for Wales. This valuable resource faced an uncertain future. We were facing its loss, in fact, and I wanted to see it saved, not because it and its predecessor, the original Prince Madog, were of sentimental importance to me who was brought up on the banks of the Menai, but because it was too important to be lost—supporting jobs locally, an important research tool for Wales, an important tool to attract students to study oceanography at Bangor University, in that department in Menai Bridge that is so widely respected internationally. 

I'm pleased that the Minister at the time understood what was at stake then. The First Minister also understood it; I remember talking to him about the issue, and the Government came to the table and found a way forward to support research using the Prince Madog. We succeeded in giving new life to the vessel, but now we need to build on that. And I will be making a case today that a national programme to map Welsh seas could be a central part of that. I do think that this can be a strategic project of significant national benefit that the Government should lead.  

Let me go on to a bit of context. For those who don't know the Prince Madog, she's a beautiful vessel and a highly specialised one. She arrived at Bangor University in 2001, replacing the original Prince Madog that had been operational since 1967. Throughout all that time, this unique Welsh asset has been used to teach many, many thousands of marine science undergraduate and higher level students, it's proved to be invaluable in collecting scientific data from the sea shelf around the UK, it's underpinned thousands of scientific publications, and through the brilliant SEACAMS programmes in particular, has been key in the delivery of hundreds of collaborative research projects designed to support, develop and enhance Wales's marine economy. 

Now, at 20 and a bit years old, she still has years of service to offer. She's well maintained—very well maintained. As one of the team working with her told me, 'She's in her prime.' She's also very cost-effective. Going backwards and forwards to ports costs a lot of money, but the Prince Madog can offer 24-hours-a-day research for 10 days at a time. Similar vessels can cost tens of thousands of pounds a day to charter, some of that relating to the costs of things like dynamic position control systems. Now, the Prince Madog doesn't need that because of the kind of technology that it carries on board, and it's the technology that is the big wow factor. It's state of the art. 

Now, the technology itself is here because of the investment made through successive EU-funded SEACAMS projects. SEACAMS provided a direct way for Bangor University to maintain and continuously enhance the pool of scientific instrumentation used on the vessel. That includes the multibeam sonar systems, which have easily been the most frequently used piece of scientific equipment over the last decade. The most recent kit, just a couple of years old, is the Teledyne Reson T50 multibeam transducer. Now, just saying it feels like I'm in a Star Wars movie. But, put it this way, it's currently one of the most advanced bits of kit that you can get, and this system, in combination with the standard and flexibility of the ship itself, presents Wales with a unique opportunity to get to know its marine environment in an unprecedented level of detail over the coming decade, and we would benefit massively from doing so.

What does detailed mapping of our seas look like? Let me describe it, with the help of a truly fascinating new book, a fascinating new study, published this week—I'm not here to plug it; it's useful to explain what I'm talking about. But you may have read about it, actually, or heard about it in the news this week. The study was done by marine historian Innes McCartney. It's called Echoes from the Deep, and the echo referring to the multibeam sonar on the Prince Madog, because it's to the Prince Madog that Innes McCartney turned to carry out a quite incredible study of shipwrecks in the Irish sea. Now, the research features 273 shipwrecks, and 129 of those surveys, in incredible detail, down there in the depths of the Irish sea, have either identified ships for the very first time—we just didn't know which ships they were—or they had been misidentified. Some of those are huge and many well over 100m long. Ships sunk by U-boats; a world war fought off the coast of Wales. One of those victims of the U-boats was the SS Mesaba, torpedoed in 1919. Seven years previously, she was one of the ships that intercepted the distress calls of the Titanic. Now, the evidence provided by the Prince Madog is there, clear for us to see. History, you're coming alive from the depths of the sea off the coast of Wales.

What's the significance of this to my pitch today? Well, the technology that can identify ships in minute detail on the sea bed can map our marine landscape for a host of other applications: environmental, economic, for fisheries, for offshore energy. And this is detail, this is information that we need for our future, and there's so much that just hasn't been mapped. So, I'm asking Government to come to the table to discuss how we can get the ball rolling on a new national marine mapping programme for Welsh territorial waters. And we have a lot of territorial waters. We're often called the 'land of song'; perhaps it should be the 'sea of song' because we have more sea than we have land—around 50 per cent more. There's 21,000 sq km of land, 30,000 sq km of Welsh territorial sea beds. And 'môr o ganu', incidentally, works very well in Welsh, as a well-known phrase describing us as a nation when we're really in full voice.

Since 2010, the SEACAMS and SEACAMS2 projects at Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences have been responsible for undertaking the most expansive sea bed mapping study ever undertaken in Welsh territorial waters. High-resolution multibeam sonar surveys, covering more than 1 million acres, 5,000 sq km of sea bed have been undertaken, surveys carried out over a total linear distance of more than 45,000 km—that's greater than the circumference of the earth—and it's not just done for fun. It's not just done for books. The mapping data has provided the baseline information for the vast majority of existing marine industry activity and new initiatives; all sorts of marine energy projects have benefited.

Now, SEACAMS stands for sustainable expansion of applied coastal and marine sectors. It's about application of this research for economic activity. But maybe I should've said that's what SEACAMS did stand for, because the SEACAMS programme ended in April 2022—EU funded. There's another Welsh European Funding Office project, the Smart Efficient Energy Centre, running for just a few more months now, but after these projects, there are no successor projects post Brexit that have enabled us to plan ahead, to use the capabilities and the expertise of the department at Bangor University. We need to act now to plan how we can keep, let alone exploit and maximise the potential of, the Prince Madog and the expertise sitting behind it beyond next year. The idea of losing this is something that I'm very, very worried about and I'm very keen to avoid. I hope the Minister agrees with that. If we lose this expertise, we'll really struggle to get it back, and currently many contracts, as I understand, are set to expire in April next year. I'm hoping to hear from the Minister that she's willing to engage quickly on this matter.

I could spell out the figures—costs, actually—that the team at the Centre for Applied Marine Sciences have shared with me. I don't think we need to go to the details of daily charter rates and data processing costs and that kind of thing here, but suffice to say that a cutting-edge programme, funded to the tune of hundreds of thousands rather than the many, many millions, could underpin a venture of real national significance here, allowing us to reap many, many times that as we make the most of the resources that we have in the seas all around us, be that fisheries or energy.

We need to know what's there. We wouldn't settle for not knowing every square kilometre of land in minute detail, and the seas around us require the same focus, and a strategic sea bed mapping programme, led by Bangor University's Centre for Applied Marine Sciences, can hugely increase our knowledge and understanding of Wales's marine environment. We'd all benefit from it.

Very, very briefly—

I want to conclude by referring to the name of this particular vessel. Who was Prince Madog? According to the legend, Madog ab Owain Gwynedd, according to the legend, was the son of Owain Gwynedd, the king of Gwynedd, who sailed to the American continent around 1170. He settled there 300 years before Christopher Colombus. The story is that him and his brother Rhirid sailed there in their boat, Gwennan Gorn, discovered a country, came back to Wales, collected more people who wanted to settle there, and sailed back. Is this a true story? Well, it's fair to say that there's little evidence for its veracity, but the evidence is quite clear as to what the vessel named after Madog ab Owain Gwynedd can offer us in Wales today. I'm very happy to work with the Government to see how we can deliver this idea. Thank you.

It's a pleasure to follow the Member from Anglesey.

It was a pleasure to have that history lesson and science lesson as well, for me to learn more about mapping Welsh seas. I think the point around funding is one that's purely pragmatic. We're able to overcome that, I think, either side of the M4, which is something that I would be very happy to throw my weight behind as well, because if we are looking to make the absolute most of the opportunities that are in renewable energies off our coasts here in Wales—for me, that's floating offshore wind off the coast of south Pembrokeshire—then we absolutely need to know what we're working with in terms of mapping the sea floor. And, especially when the UK Government are looking to expedite flow, which they've announced in the last week or so, I think it's imperative that a project like this, the Prince Madog, is absolutely allowed to continue to do the vital work that it's doing. So, I'm willing to offer my support in helping that going forward. Diolch.

Thank you for bringing this debate forward—an important debate, and the history lesson behind it. We've had a summer of sewage on our shores; we've had record-high temperatures; a winter ahead of us with unpayable energy bills; record unearned profits for the big energy companies; and an energy system exposed to dictators. These crises are connected, so we do need long-term solutions to that, and mapping the sea bed will help deliver the energy revolution that has to happen, but, at the same time, respect and protect the environmental impact within it. I would be more than interested to come to Bangor and see this ship, and I'm sure, as a member of our committee, you could invite us along.

I call on the Minister for Climate Change to reply to the debate. Julie James.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Well, 'follow that', as they say—I'm not even going to attempt it. I really enjoyed the contribution of Rhun ap Iorwerth, and I can assure you that we are very aware of the really important work that the vessel, Prince Madog, has done in conjunction with Bangor University. I've had the real privilege of speaking to some of the scientists who have been involved in that, and, indeed, some of the poets that have been involved in it as well. We're very, very well aware of the asset that we have there. 

As everyone has acknowledged, we're faced with the twin threats of climate and nature emergencies, and that, more than ever, includes our seas. We need clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse seas, and that's why I welcome the opportunity to respond to the debate. I commend the Member on his pitch—I think that’s what it was, really—for the continuation of the role of the research vessel, the Prince Madog, and to highlight the essential role that research science and evidence play in our drive to deliver our vision for those clean, resilient and biologically diverse seas.

Members will be aware—indeed, Rhun has just told us—that in 2019 the Welsh Government contracted Bangor University for the use of the Prince Madog research vessel. It has enabled us to undertake an enormous range of survey projects at sea. It included the associated laboratory work, facilitated access to the marine academic projects and data sets, and it played a real role in securing the future of the research vessel, which Rhun has acknowledged. The contract has enabled the delivery of very high-quality science, world-leading science, to help us better understand our seas and support a range of public priority policies and statutory obligations.

It has delivered a number of surveys and reports, including the co-designed Whelk Fishing Permit (Wales) Order 2021, which Members will remember going through the Senedd. I think you were the only speaker on it, actually, Rhun, at the time. It developed the fisheries stock assessments for scallop, crab, lobster, whelk, skate and ray, and it did the seabed characterisation to identify the marine conservation zones and support the completion of the marine protected area network. So, it's been really fundamental in what we've been doing. They've also been exploring and mapping the seabed in resource areas and gathering evidence to improve our understanding of blue carbon in Welsh waters. It supports the delivery of our key ministerial priorities and ensures we meet our statutory monitoring obligations also.

As Rhun has pointed out, that contract has now ended. We are currently assessing our requirements for seagoing science provision for future years. I absolutely assure Members, Rhun in particular, that we've continued a close dialogue with the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University, alongside all our Welsh marine research institutions. We’ll continue to do so as we consider the potential next steps and the next contract that will be coming along.

As I've said, it's imperative that we balance development with protecting the environment. I'm currently completing, as Members will be aware, a deep dive into biodiversity, with a specific focus on the 30x30 target. That commits us to protecting 30 per cent of our land, and our seas, importantly, by 2030. I'll be publishing a written statement on the recommendations from the deep dive on Monday 3 October, and there's a conference down at the national botanic gardens to go through the recommendations from the deep dive. I think you'll be very pleased with the outcome of that, and you'll see how the work that we've done in the universities around Wales has contributed to that.

I can't comment on the ongoing contract because it's currently in procurement, but I can assure you that we're well aware of the asset that we have up there in Bangor.

In closing, Dirprwy Lywydd, I welcome today's debate on the recognition of the crucial importance of our seas. They're an incredible natural asset, and the development of research science and evidence plays a crucial role in addressing both the climate and nature emergencies. My clear focus is ensuring we sustainably manage this incredible resource and understand it thoroughly, for both our current and future generations. Diolch.

Diolch, bawb. I'd like to put on record that it's nice to see you back in the Chamber, Minister, after your short illness. It's good to see you back.

 That brings today's proceedings to a close.

The meeting ended at 17:33.