High Frequency Radar first of it’s kind in the Pacific Region

A consultation on the installation of a high frequency radar is taking  place today with the Niue Meteorology Services and representatives from the Pacific Community.

Director of Niue Meteorology Services-Rossy Mitiepo says the consultation is focused on marine and ocean monitoring with discussions centered on a range of activities such as the deployment of the environment buoy, wave buoys, high frequency radar and associated monitoring systems and capacity strengthening. 

“Met Service is implementing activities that looks at ocean monitoring so this is one of the activities that we have not included in our work program but through the support of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) CIS-Pac5 funded by the Green Climate Fund we have managed to include a list of equipment’s and activities to deploy here in Niue. The SPC team are here to support us this week, we have managed to deploy the wave buoys, the work started last year and this is the second round of deployments including other environmental wave buoys.” she said.

Team Leader for Ocean Prediction and Monitoring at the Pacific Community (SPC) -Herve Damlamian says the high frequency radar will be the first of its kind to be implemented in any Pacific Region.

He says it’s quite a high value piece of equipment that is proposed to be procured under the project and what this instrument will do is to scan the ocean and be able to provide in real time ocean current, the map of the ocean current near Alofi.

“Because there is a lot of challenges in establishing this capacity, not just in Niue but in the region, and there is no country in the South Pacific that has this system, so Niue will be the first country with high frequency radar capacity to strengthen and support ocean monitoring.” he said.

Mitiepo added these equipment will benefit the people of Niue in terms of information, climate adaptation, planning for the various sectors, for our villagers, our men and women that go out to sea in regards to information for our use and for the local people.

The 5 year project is funded by the Green Climate Fund to support climate resilience across five Pacific countries. This will be conducted in stages and endorsed by the Niue Government.

All the lessons learnt from the ocean monitoring through the Project will be shared with neighboring countries.

Representatives from the Maritime, Fisheries and Transport Department were part of today’s consultation held at Scenic Matavai Resort.