HYDRO 2025 Conference Day 1

David L. Mearns OBE, OAM is a chartered marine scientist, historical researcher, award-winning author, and expedition leader of deep ocean projects.  He is one of the world’s most experienced and successful deep-sea shipwreck hunters having located 29 major shipwrecks with an overall success rate of 91%.  His formidable reputation has been built on a career finding notoriously difficult wrecks that others predicted would never be found or their mysteries solved.  David’s most important discoveries include MV Lucona, MV Derbyshire, HMS Hood, the Portuguese East Indiaman Esmeralda, HMAS Sydney, HSK Kormoran, AHS Centaur and Rio Grande – formerly a Guinness World Record for the deepest shipwreck ever found at 5,762 metres.  David was also a key member of Paul Allen’s team that located and filmed the iconic Japanese battleship Musashi in 2015, based on the research and search area analysis he conducted.

David was made an officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the location and recovery of historic shipwrecks; was awarded an honorary Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to Australia for locating the wrecks of HMAS Sydney and AHS Centaur; and was awarded a King Charles III Coronation Medal for a significant contribution to Canada for his role in locating the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last ship Quest.  Other awards include the Joseph Elzéar Bernier and QUEST Medals from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society; a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of South Florida, a prestigious Maritime Fellowship by the UK-based Maritime Foundation for an outstanding lifetime contribution, the Explorers Club Lowell Thomas Award, and the Sir Robert Craven Award from the Britannia Naval Research Association.  David’s last book The Shipwreck Hunter was the unanimous choice for the Mountbatten Best Book Award in 2018.  He is a long-standing fellow of the Explorers Club and the Royal Geographical Society, and is listed in the UK Who’s Who published by A&C Black.

Layton Quinton is Commercial Software in the Marine Information Products and Services Team at the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC). He leads a team that develops and brings to market software applications and data developed through NOC’s scientific research and technology development work.

Layton has over 20 years of experience in the development and launch of new products and a particular passion for technology that brings cutting-edge science to solve real world problems. Layton has previously worked in chemical, automotive, travel, higher education, financial services technology and software sectors. Immediately prior to working at NOC, Layton led an international team to develop new cloud software products using AGILE working practices and is an advocate of an AGILE derived approach to product management.

Simon is the Operations Director at DDK Positioning, where he leads the operations team, responsible for the quality and performance of the company’s high-precision GNSS and resilient PNT services worldwide. He is a chartered surveyor with an extensive professional background in surveying. Simon brings a deep technical and managerial understanding of the hydrographic and geospatial industry, as well as the development and deployment of advanced positioning systems. During his career Simon has gained extensive and varied experience in the offshore energy sector.

Simon was instrumental in bringing DDK’s LEO-based Precise Point Positioning (PPP) delivery to market — a world-first in satellite-delivered, end-to-end managed navigation enhancement. His expertise bridges technical innovation with operational excellence, ensuring that mission-critical positioning solutions meet the highest standards of accuracy, reliability, and resilience for offshore and maritime industries.

Dr. Kim Knauer is a remote sensing specialist with advanced knowledge and experience in satellite imagery applications, data analysis and workflow automation. At EOMAP, he works as a project and innovation manager developing and leading commercial as well R&D projects around the globe. He received his diploma (equivalent to master) and later his PhD at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, both in the field of remote sensing of terrestrial vegetation. Directly after his studies, Dr. Kim Knauer worked for one year at the public research institute Gabriel Lippmann in Luxemburg in the domain of hyperspectral remote sensing. Since 2017, he has been working for EOMAP leading ESA and EU projects with large consortia like 4S or BLUE-X.

Nina Wetzig is a researcher in the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oldenburg, Germany. Her research work at DLR is focused on monitoring of autonomous driving systems and specification of testing scenarios. Nina received her M.SC. in Life Science Informatics from the University of Bonn.

Rúben Santos holds an MSc in Geodesy from the University of Lisbon and a PhD in Geophysics from Évora University. He is currently an Auxiliary Investigator at the Hydrographic Institute in the Hydrography Division, where his research focuses on developing and applying artificial intelligence methods for satellite-derived bathymetry, with a particular emphasis on shallow coastal environments.

Andrijana Horvat is R&D lead geophysicist and GIS specialist at Hidrocibalae, with a Master’s inGeography from the University of Zagreb. Her professional interests include hydrography, GIS,Python programming, and cartography, with a current focus on automating processes inmarine geophysical data processing.

Commander Carlos Rubrio Marques, (M) holds an MSc in Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering from University of New Brunswick. He is currently Head of Hydrographic Division He is a Navy Officer, since 1998, he is a Informatics Engineer with a degree (five years Pre-Bologna degree) from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He has been working in the Instituto Hidrográfico since 2007, having been a surveyor, Lead Surveyor, researcher, Head o Hydrographic Surveys, and now being in Project Management. He is currently lecturing Hydrography at the Portuguese Naval Academy and at the Hydrographic and Oceanographic School. He is presently developing procedures for Bathymetric data collection, storage and management. Has been researching water column object detection since 2012. He is now focused on Satellite Derived Bathymetry and watercolumn data processing for the Hydrographic Division at the Instituto Hidrográfico.

Senior Geophysicist (Data Processing and Reporting Supervisor), Next Geosolutions UKCS Ltd. Clinton is the primary developer of the RSL extraction tool. He specializes in seabed geophysics and geospatial data analysis for large-scale marine datasets, with applications in sediment analysis, geohazard assessment, and subsea infrastructure design.

Eng Coraline Delblond graduated as a perception and observation system engineer in 2020 from ENSTA Bretagne (France). Since, 2024, she has joined the French Hydrographic Service (Shom) as Data Scientist for bathymetric data including Multi-Beam Echo Sounder and LIDAR. Her work consists in processing bathylmetric data and designing, evaluating and deploying models.

Dr Cassandra Nanlal is an Assistant Professor in Marine Geospatial Science in the department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University College London (UCL) since 2022. She is the programme director of the MSc Geospatial Science Hydrographic Surveying, Chair of the Education Committee of the Hydrographic Society UK and Ireland (THS UK&I) and co chair of the UK Centre for Seabed Mapping (UK CSM) Research and Education Working Group. Her areas of research includes vertical separation models for land and marine use, tides, hydrographic surveying standards and quality control, port engineering surveying, real time reliable water quality  data, coastline change detection, lidar based object detection and tracking and carbon cost of data in the maritime industry.

Evert Noordijk is a regional sales manager at Teledyne CARIS, supporting the EMEA region with a focus on hydrographic software solutions for marine geospatial applications. Prior to his current role, Evert served in the Netherlands Navy for over 15 years, where he held various operational and instructional positions related to naval mine warfare. His experience includes leadership roles aboard minehunters and the development of training programs for international naval personnel. Evert holds a BSc in Business Economics and brings a strong foundation in maritime operations and applied geospatial technologies to his current work.

Julien Smeeckaert graduated from Ensta Bretagne in 2012 as a military engineer specialising in hydrography and marine cartography. He currently holds the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Between 2008 and 2009, he completed a year of initial military training on a French Navy ship and took part in an operational deployment in the Indian Ocean.
He completed his end-of-study internship at the National Institute of Geographic and Forest Information (IGN) at the MATIS laboratory in the field of automatic classification of data from airborne topographic LiDAR.
After graduating, he joined the French National Hydrographic Service, Shom, as a hydrographic engineer and mission leader on the hydro-oceanographic vessels Beautemps Beaupré, Pourquoi Pas and Borda from 2012 to 2015. In 2015, he received IHO Category A certification.
Since September 2025, Julien Smeeckaert has been head of the Coastal Altimetry Department, managing LiDAR surveys at Shom carried out as part of the Litto3D programme and the production of products for this programme. The department is also responsible for research and development issues in the field of bathymetric LiDAR.